During today’s march, a political intervention took place, specifically breaking into the offices of the New Democracy Party. We broke the glass entrance, then went up to the 2nd floor, broke the door and threw white paint.
The above action took place on the occasion of the attempted state murder of 16-year-old K. Fragoulis on the eve of December 6, the boiler room explosion that led to the death of a student in a primary school in Serres and the provocative attitude of the Prime Minister who praised the cops with 600 euros.
AGAINST THE STATE AND THE GOVERNMENT OF THE DAY
WE ORGANIZE HORIZONTALLY AGAINST THE HIERARCHY AND RESPOND IN THE STREETS
At dawn on Monday 5 December, we attacked supermarkets of large chains in the city of Patras, with sledgehammers, causing damage. We chose the supermarkets:
Sklavenitis on the El. Stratiotou
Sklavenitis in Notaras
Market In on Souda Street
It is known to all that accuracy and the unbearable cost of living are not “sky-high” concepts that “happened” to be created by the war in Ukraine and the revaluations it brings, as the Greek state sells as a narrative. On the contrary, they are the result of an increasingly deepening crisis that capital has been in for at least 15 years. In the midst of this crisis, and the opportunity it presents to the world’s rulers, wealth is being redistributed, geopolitical balances are being redistributed, new energy hubs are being created and overall competition is intensifying. In this context, the effect on everyday life for the vast majority of society is more brutal than ever. More and more impoverishment and misery, the imposition of a working dark ages and modern slavery.
In this crisis, the state and capital are attempting ever harder, more totalitarian changes in their functioning, imposing ever harsher conditions on our lives, creating the necessary conditions and situations for the further plundering and exploitation of our lives and the natural world for the sake of their profitability.
The Greek state is certainly moving in the same direction. Only in the last 10-15 years we can mention the memoranda, the neglect and dismantling of the public health care system for the benefit of private interests, the continuous subsidizing of banks from state funds, costs that fall on the backs of society, financial scandals in every sector, bills for the exploitation of the environment, the dismantling of the remaining public character in education and health, the anti-labour bill – the infernal Hantzidakis bill, the tightening of repression and criminal treatment especially of those who struggle and so much more. Continue reading “Patras, Greece: Responsibility claim for attacks on supermarket chains”→
It was during the early hours of Monday 5 December 2022, when a 16 year old kid was shot in the head by a greek police officer of the DIAS motorcycle unit during a car chase in Thessaloniki.
He was accused that he filled his pick-up truck with 20 euros worth of petrol and left the petrol station without paying. Following the news and his dire physical condition, riots erupted in the city of Thessaloniki, located in the north of Greece, later on the same day. At the same time, in Athens, several different protests were held in the evening of December the 5th. The protest in Exarcheia, held in front of the memorial of Alexis Grigoropoulos, (a 15 year old kid that was shot dead by a cop on 6 December 2008, sparking the events that would lead to massive riots all over Greece, known as the December Revolt) soon turned into a march that led to a riot, as seen in the video.
It has to be noted, that today 6 December, protests have been planned in dozens of cities and towns all over Greece, in remembrance of the December Revolt and the murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos by the police in Exarcheia 15 years ago to this day.
This conversation between Paul Cudenec and the Italian group Resistenze al nanomondo was first published in the July 2022 issue of the printed journal L’urlo della Terra and has recently also been made available online, again in Italian.
1. Resistenze al nanomondo: Can you can tell us about your story, your path, when you started developing a critique of techno-scientific developments and what thinkers you learned from?
Paul Cudenec: I don’t think I could separate my critique of techno-scientific developments from the rest of my opinions and analysis. I have been an anarchist for 30 years now, but even before then, in my youth, I felt a strong instinctive aversion to high-tech consumer society. On the one hand it was associated with everything that I most disliked – big business, the state, the military, authority and control in general. On the other hand it stood against everything that I most appreciated – nature, freedom, community, a sense of historical and cultural continuity. The arrival of CCTV cameras in England was a wake-up moment for me. I worked at the time as a journalist with a local newspaper in one of the first towns to have cameras installed and, since I knew for a fact that there was very little crime there, it was clear to me that this project was nothing to do with fighting crime, as was claimed, but was the roll-out of something much more sinister. I wrote a punk song about this in the mid-1990s (which I put online last year), warning about “the cameras that steal our liberty” and the techno-tyrants who were going to scan our DNA, put microchips in our brains and turn us into robots. With the local anarchist group, which I subsequently helped to create, we used to hold annual protests against the cameras, marking the anniversary of their installation as “Big Brother’s Birthday”.
As you will gather from the above, George Orwell was, unsurprisingly, an influence on me. The history of the Luddites was another inspiration (via Kirkpatrick Sale among others), along with anarcho-publications like Green Anarchist, SchNEWS, Do or Die, Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed and various EF! publications. I also read David Watson’s Against the Megamachine, Fredy Perlman’s Against His-story, Against Leviathan, the Unabomber Manifesto plus a lot by John Zerzan and Derrick Jensen. I have more recently been influenced by reading the likes of Miguel Amorós, Jacques Ellul, Theodore Roszak, Charlene Spretnak, Renaud Garcia… But intertwined with that thread of my self-education have been other inspirations. The English nature mystic Richard Jefferies has been very important to me, as has René Guénon, who combined his metaphysics with a strong critique of modernity. I have also read elsewhere about sufism, Taoism, comparative mythology, English folklore, Indian philosophy, German idealism, Jewish anti-capitalist romanticism, Jungian psychology… What interests me, above all, are the connections between these accounts and traditions, or rather, perhaps, the new space that is opened up for our reflection when we consider them together, in the same conceptual context. Continue reading “Resisting Techno-Tyranny: A Dialogue”→
Update on the December 5 hearing on the recalculation of sentences against anarchists Alfredo Cospito and Anna Beniamino as part of the Scripta Manent trial
On December 5, the second appeal hearing of the Scripta Manent trial against comrades Alfredo Cospito and Anna Beniamino was held. The general prosecutor asked for 27 years and one month for Anna and life imprisonment without parole with 12 months of daytime solitary confinement for Alfredo, going even further than prosecutor Sparagna’s previous requests, which were 30 years for Alfredo.
The Turin appeals court failed to pronounce the sentence and turned to the Constitutional Court: the Turin judges are asking whether it is legitimate to be forced to disallow mitigating circumstances for Alfredo Cospito because of his previous penal background. Indeed, this would force them to sentence Alfredo to life in prison, although for an action that caused neither deaths nor injuries.
Next December 19 there will be a new hearing in Turin, a formal hearing aimed at working out the question to submit to the Constitutional Court.
Alfredo and Anna intervened with spontaneous statements. Alfredo reiterated that he will continue his hunger strike until his last breath against 41 bis and life imprisonment without possibility of parole, Anna remarked that anyone with a modicum of critical thinking will know how to identify the principals and perpetrators of his comrade’s annihilation. The people in solidarity in the courtroom greeted the accused comrades with slogans and applause.
Shortly afterwards, a demonstration set off through the streets of Turin that, despite the massive deployment of repressive forces, managed to approach the city center, passing through some of the city’s neighborhoods.
Get Alfredo out of 41 bis.
To end 41 bis and life imprisonment without possibility of parole.
Free them all!
Anna Beniamino’s declaration read out at the appeal trial for the recalculation of the sentences related to the Scripta Manent trial (Turin, Italy, December 5, 2022)
This is a political trial, which has aimed from the outset at the administration of exemplary punishment, a trial of our anarchist identities rather than deeds, a trial of those who do not renounce their ideas.
A massacre without a massacre attributed without evidence is the culmination of a growing commitment of Antiterrorism and Prosecution to exorcise the spectre of anarchism of action.
The imposition of the 41 bis regime to Alfredo Cospito, guilty of engaging in relations with the anarchist movement from the prison, is in the same vein. The hunger strike to the end that the comrade has been conducting since October 20th is the last resort against isolation and sensory, physical, psychic deprivation, against a political gag. A gag that even prevented him from reading the reasons for the strike itself.
41 bis is the extreme degree of doggedness of differentiated regimes: prisons where continual solitary confinement and the overcrowding of the common sections are the two faces of a system aimed at annihilating the individual. Prisons where massacres, real ones, have occurred and continue to occur: in the suppression of the 2020 uprisings, in the incessant suicides, in the treatment of the poorest and most fragile of prisoners as ‘residual material’ of the dominant techno-capitalist society.
If anything happens to Alfredo Cospito, any individual doted with critical thought will understand who the instigators and executors of his physical annihilation are, having failed to make the political and ideal one. I am aware that I am hostage of a system that is hiding its political, economic, social and environmental collapse behind the fetish of ‘security’ and ‘terrorism’.
It is necessary to oppose this. You can destroy people’s lives, you will not succeed in extinguishing anti-authoritarian thinking and practices. You will not succeed in breaking revolutionary tension, you will not succeed in extinguishing anarchy.
Alfredo Cospito’s declaration read out at the appeal trial for the recalculation of the sentences related to the “Scripta Manent” trial (Turin, Italy, December 5, 2022)
I will only say a few lines. Before disappearing into the oblivion of the 41 bis regime for good let me say a few things and then I’ll keep quiet forever. The judiciary of the Italian republic decided that I, too subversive, should no longer have the chance to see the stars, freedom. Buried for good with life imprisonment without appeal, which I have no doubt you will give me on the absurd charge of having committed a “political massacre” for two demonstrative attacks in the middle of the night, in deserted places, that were not intended to and could not have injured or killed anyone and in fact did not injure or kill anyone.
Not satisfied, as well as a life sentence without appeal, given that I continued writing and collaborating with the anarchist press from the prison, it was decided to clamp my mouth for ever with the medieval gag 41 bis, condemning me to an endless limbo awaiting death. I will not stand for it and I will not surrender, and will continue my hunger strike for the abolition of 41 bis and life sentence without appeal until my last breath to let the world know about these two repressive abominations in this country.
There are 750 of us in this regime and I am also fighting for that. By my side my anarchist and revolutionary brothers and sisters. I am accustomed to the censorship and smoke screens of the media, whose sole aim is to monstrify any radical and revolutionary opponent.
Abolition of the 41 bis regime.
Abolition of life sentence without appeal.
Solidarity to all the anarchist, communist and revolutionary prisoners in the world.
Always for anarchy.
In the night from first to second December 2022 we set fire to a car of G4S. This was an act of solidarity for the anarchist prisoners Alfredo, Anna, Juan, Toby and Ivan.
G4S is actively profiting from prisons and runs prisons in United Kingdom, Australia and South Africa.
Claim of sabotage against the TAV railway line in the Turin – Chivasso section in solidarity with the imprisoned anarchists on hunger strike (Piedmont, Dec. 1, 2022)
On the night of 30.11 to 1.12 sabotaged the Tav line in the Turin-Chivasso section, burning some cables, in response to the international appeal for Alfredo Cospito. Alfredo out of 41 bis! Alongside Juan, Anna and Ivan. Less words more unpredictable and incisive actions, striking where it hurts most with direct actions in the darkness of the night.
This night we set fire to pigs’ cars in front of a police station in Berlin.
We dedicate our action to Alfredo, Anna, Juan and Ivan. they are all on hunger strike against the brutal repression by the Italian state.
In the night before Alfredo’s court hearing to review the 41-bis measures against him, we send a message of solidarity. We, your friends and accomplices around the world, walk next to you on the path of refusal and attack.
With the sentence, the italian state wants to silence Alfredo and prevent him from spreading the anarchist idea of total liberation, subversion and autonomy. but they forget that there are many of us and we are everywhere .
41-bis is used as an instrument of control against our comrades. the number of criminal acts punishable by imprisonment is increasing, as is the severity of the punishments. but you will not silence us, you will not suffocate our rebellion.
Our targets are all the repressive instruments of the nation states, like police, prisons, solitary confinement, §129a, 41-bis. There is no difference between Italy and Germany, there is no difference between all these so called “democracies”. Our enemy is the cruel system we live in and all those who want to maintain it.
These flames are also an expression of the flame of rage that burns under our skin after the racist murders committed by the pigs in the last months. Those who were involved in the murder of Mouhamed Lamine Dramé and defend the murderers: feel our hatred and wait for us, ready to strike in revenge, breathing down your necks.
With this action we also show our solidarity with our comrades and the Community of the Squatted Prosfygika in Athens, and we make it clear that we will not accept any attack on our structures without resistance.
LIBERTÀ PER ALFREDO, ANNA, IVAN E JUAN! LIBERTÀ PER TUTTI E TUTTE!
