DISCUSSION IN SOLIDARITY WITH ANARCHIST PRISONER GIANNIS MICHAILIDIS ON HUNGER STRIKE SINCE 23/5/22
South London: 6PM WEDNESDAY 13TH OF JULY 2022
At The Field, 385 Queens Road SE14 5HD
Anarchists in solidarity
Source: Act for freedom now!
DISCUSSION IN SOLIDARITY WITH ANARCHIST PRISONER GIANNIS MICHAILIDIS ON HUNGER STRIKE SINCE 23/5/22
South London: 6PM WEDNESDAY 13TH OF JULY 2022
At The Field, 385 Queens Road SE14 5HD
Anarchists in solidarity
Source: Act for freedom now!
PDF (EN)
PDF (FR)
There are no isolated arsonists
An anarchist companion, Ivan, was arrested in the Paris region on June 11, 2022. He is suspected of several car arsons: cars with diplomatic plates, cars of the rich, of Enedis, and of others. We consider the arson and sabotage of cars, cell towers, electricity pylons and corporate targets as a strategy of the international anarchist struggle.
The omnipresence of our enemies makes them vulnerable. Some targets seem unreachable, yet all their tentacles are Achilles’ heels. If a company’s headquarters is difficult to access, we can torch one of its many cars, its branches and its power supply. We find joy in severing these tentacles, alone or in groups, with or without claims, with the means at hand or with more sophisticated techniques. In this way, we attack specific structures of domination.
These attacks take place everywhere, all the time, because they are reproducible and the targets are on every street corner. We attack because we do not accept the horror of this world, because it is a way to show our solidarity, because we want to put a grain of sand in the gears of power. For all these reasons, these attacks bring us joy.
Solidarity with anarchist prisoners!
Freedom for all!
To the attack!
Some anarchists, July 2022
Via & Translated by Act for freedom now!
Source: Indymedia lille
LET FEAR CHANGE SIDES
The Direct Action Cells undertook the incendiary attacks on the homes of the Secretary General of the Greek Police Officers’ Union Evangelos Mantziorou on June 2 in Peristeri and the SKAI journalist Aris Portosalte on June 14 in Vrilissia. Our attacks were carried out in the context of our strategy expressed through the slogan “Fear must change sides”. For the last 1.5 years we have been trying with all our forces to target people who, from their position, staff the Greek capitalist formation. High-ranking police officers, big journalists, government officials, technocrats who plan government policy, judges, have been targeted. At the same time we have carried out incendiary actions against financial and political targets. Our action is aimed at sending a clear message to these puppet masters. Those who from their position participate in the savage attack that capitalism has unleashed on all aspects of our lives are in the crosshairs of the Direct Action Cells.
Their apologetic statements, the terror with which they jump out of bed when they hear the explosions of the devices we place in their homes, the condemnatory statements of the parties and the media, show that we are on the right track. The encouraging comments from our people, our class people, are our strength to carry on. Through our actions we are trying to keep alive the tradition and practice of direct action. To make it clear that our enemies have names and addresses. To prove that our momentum is greater when we become unpredictable and to call on other militants to follow our example.
The choice of the far-right neoliberal university student and his targeting was not the result of a victimhood and a source of disgust caused by his public presence. Aris Portosalte as a persona encapsulates the most extreme aspects of neoliberal discourse in the country and with his shrill voice he challenges and seduces the sympathetic ears of the neoliberal audience. His daily rants are not the opinion of a journalist, as he and those who deplored the attack on his house want to peddle, but the outgrowth of the political footprint of New Democracy in Greece at the cutting edge of its thought and speech production, the media. Like another harlequin, he has taken a leading role in the forefront of far-right propaganda and is doing the dirty work that the ruling party’s political cadres often avoid. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for incendiary attacks on the Secretary General of the Greek Police Officers’ Union and SKAI journalist Aris Portosalte by ‘Direct Action Cells’”
We take responsibility for the placement of 2 powerful incendiary devices on the facade of the bank ALPHA BANK- ABC FACTORS at 48 Michalakopoulou Street, which is located in the same building as AXA Insurance, late on Friday night, July 1. We chose such a central point of the city attempting to send a strong signal of solidarity to Giannis Michailidis who is on hunger strike since 23/5.
In addition, we cannot but comment on the occasion of this action a well orchestrated plan to cover up the solidarity movements in the face of the striker, with the essence of this cover-up being at the very core of Michailidis’ strike. The state administration has kept the strike and many of the actions that accompany it ‘secret’, apparently aiming to de-politicise and end it in terms of defeat and retreat. We stand by the comrade’s side for his release at a time when his health is getting worse by the day. The attack at this moment is a one-way street.
THEIR JUSTICE IS A MISGUIDED DECEPTION
The historical examples of judicial decisions that throw their own children – the whole shipowning dog pack, the ecclesiastical mob, the political establishment and its most prominent straw men – into the mud are numerous. Some do not get the publicity they deserve, others are de-nominated in an attempt to disorientate public opinion and others are simply headlines, infuriating the average person with their neutral texture. Unfortunately, in recent days their judicial time has been very dense and we cannot let it go unattended. All the more so when at the same time the anarchist prisoner Michailidis is fighting at the risk of his own life and claiming the release that – again, according to their own laws – he is entitled to, making his judicial hostage-taking even more challenging. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Incendiary attack of an Alpha Bank branch in Michalakopoulou by ‘Militant Solidarity’”
Imprisoned Anarchist Toby Shone who is being held at the private G4S prison HMP/YOI Parc in Bridgend, South Wales, is now unable to communicate by phone with his solidarity group and closest loved ones after the Security Team at Parc, headed by Daniel Hayman, removed these contacts from his permitted phone pin numbers list on Friday 24th June 2022 at 6pm. This together with interference with his post and emails is an attempt to hold him incommunicado in the jail.
He was formally notified of this decision on Saturday 25th June with the following reasons given: giving interviews over the phone, giving detailed information about staff at the prison which has then been published online, and hate speech against some prison staff.
Neither Toby nor his comrades are surprised by this action and Toby remains strong and defiant. The weak and pitiful lackeys that work in the prison camps of capital, locking other human beings up in exchange for a little piece of silver and a small dimension of power over others, are no match at all for the revolutionary spirit and they know it. Neither Toby nor any of us will ever shut up.
Write to the prison to complain and show your solidarity by contacting the Director of HMP Parc:
Janet Wallsgrove
HM Prison Parc
Heol Hobcyn John
Coity, Bridgend, CF35 6AP
South Wales.
Tel: 01656 300200
General Fax: 01656 300316
Email: janet.wallsgrove@uk.g4s.com
or send your messages of solidarity to Toby:
Toby Shone
A7645EP
HM Prison Parc
Heol Hobcyn John
Coity, Bridgend, CF35 6AP
South Wales.
[please be aware that his mail is being interfered with and the prison may not allow him you communication but they WILL know the strength of the solidarity we can show him.]
Down with the prisons, down with capital.
The anarchist hunger striker Giannis Michailidis is on his 33rd day of hunger strike and is being treated in Lamia hospital with his health condition being extremely poor.
The state, exhausting its vindictiveness, is pushing the hunger striker into a life-or-death struggle, a struggle for freedom or submission. The games played by the Ministry of Propaganda and the Amfissa Judicial Council, which for the umpteenth time rejected the comrade’s request for temporary release, clearly demonstrate that their “correction” against the declared enemies of the state and capital is extermination and torture.
We, for our part, stand on the side of dignity and freedom in the face of the world of oppression, imprisonment and power. We take responsibility as a minimal sign of solidarity with the struggle of our comrade and in the context of the international day of action for the arson of a Eurobank ATM in Agios Pavlos Thessaloniki in the early hours of Friday 24/6.
LIBERATION TO ANARCHIST HUNGER STRIKER GIANNIS MICHAILIDIS
NO ONE ALONE IN THE HANDS OF THE STATE
Anarchists
Source: athens.indymedia
Today 20/6, the Judicial Council of Amfissa rejected the request for the release of fellow hunger striker Giannis Michailidis. The Judicial Council of Amfissa and its judges signed with their dirty hands the attempted extermination of our comrade. Next to their name, the word executioner will carry with it the stigma that must accompany them for the rest of their miserable lives.
The Amfissa Judicial Council has carried out part of a wider repressive plan to deal with our comrade’s hunger strike. Systematic silencing by the mainstream media, bureaucratic delay of the response in order to damage and exhaust the striker, rejection of the application at a time when he is in a critical condition in the Lamia hospital.
As we speak, after a month of hunger strike, Giannis has reached 57.5 kg, has lost more than 21% of his body weight and his life is in danger. He is locked up in a squalid cell in the Lamia hospital, without even a television to keep him informed, which he is deprived of by the ridiculous argument of the cops that “there is a fear of suicide from the TV cables”. Visits with his companion are refused, and she is not given an official update on his medical condition.
We denounce the vindictive treatment of the hunger striker and call on the mass bodies and the doctors’ trade unions to take a public stand against these outrages. Hunger strikers are not suicidal, they are putting their lives on the line and fighting for life itself to triumph.
Dead hunger strikers do not commit suicide, they are murdered by capitalist states, imperialism, fascism. This is how it is done in Turkey, this is how it has been done in Germany, Northern Ireland and elsewhere. We warn for the last time those responsible, the executives and deputies of the New Democracy, the appellants of Lamia who will examine the appeal of the hunger striker, those willing servants of the state apparatus who give any kind of cover to the plan of extermination of our comrade: Those of you who put your hand on our comrade’s extermination, those of you who become part of the repressive tactics against him, those of you who do not separate your position while it is still early, we will make sure that nothing goes unanswered.
We call upon the solidarity movement, as well as every progressive person who recognizes in Giannis a selfless fighter who fights with his life against state arbitrariness and vengefulness, to unite his voice, to join the solidarity demonstration on Friday 24/6 at 18.00 at the Propylaea. To do everything in his power to set up the roadblock that will prevent the extermination of our comrade.
Assembly of solidarity with the anarchist Giannis Michailidis today 20/6 at 18:00 at the ASOEE.
VICTORY IN THE HUNGER STRIKE OF GIANNIS MICHAILIDIS
ALL IN THE STREETS
Assembly of solidarity with the anarchist hunger striker Giannis Michailidis
Source: athens.indymedia
The anarchist prisoner Giannis Michailidis is being treated in Lamia hospital, being on hunger strike since 23/5 demanding the obvious. His release from prison, which the Council of Amfissa is vengefully denying him.
We take responsibility for the arson of 8 luxury vehicles in the area of Kaisariani in the morning of 18/6.
We make it clear to all those responsible for the torture of our comrade that for every day that passes and his health deteriorates , we will make sure with all our efforts to disrupt the normal functioning of the metropolis. In the person of Giannis, the judicial mafia is taking revenge for consistency and commitment to the anarchist struggle, trying to terrorize each and every person who dares to fight.
We call on every comrade, every grouping and individuality to organize their own attacks with simple means and imagination. To multiply the dynamic actions and to stand as a barrier to the plans to eliminate the striker.
John’s struggle for his liberation is a struggle of all of us.
IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF GIANNIS MICHAILIDIS
solidarity shadows
Source: athens.indymedia
In this umpteenth hearing in videoconference and after many requests, all denied, to appear and attend in person and not in absence to all the hearings of the trial that sees me charged, for the heavy and infamous accusation of massacre, I have to face the issue of videoconferencing, which enters, or to be more precise, was entering, in the infamous logic of the differentiation of the penitentiary circuits, in which the individual prisoner and accused is demonized and dehumanized by the said “considerable social dangerousness”. And I said that I was entering, because the videoconference, the trial in absentia, has been extended to all the prisoners in Italian prisons, who have been left without a real defense and with the marginalization that all this implies for all the defendants who suffer this imposition, through a liberticidal dynamic of the umpteenth emergency, this time for the Covid-19 emergency, which then became law. It is known, it is already evident and unmasked – and I am not only talking about the contradiction of this problem especially, or of one law or another – how the specific problem of the videoconference has reduced the defense to be a farce, annulling in fact the defendant within the trial.
This court will probably say that this has nothing to do with the trial taking place today.
But I believe it does, and what is more, I believe it is a fundamental issue. I am talking about the contradiction that the States possess by their own systemic nature, the fundamental problem is the disintegration and degeneration that dresses itself as emergentialism, and has the objective of breaking and directing the consolidated and ordinary legality at will, transforming it into another legality. We see it with the same dynamics of the perpetual emergency, and the specific plan of the videoconference is only an example of how the systemic authoritarianism liberticidal system expands in a capillary way. It is the exception, the emergency of today, that forges the law of tomorrow, reducing it more and more. The trials by videoconference, that is, in absentia, have been established by the continuous emergencies within the said social dangerousness, which is already the norm, such as the trial by videoconference for all the prisoners in Italian prisons. And it is not that this does not have repercussions on the real conditions of the entire trial, since it hinders the management of a real defense of the accused, creating a contradiction with what your own democratic and bourgeois law argues. Continue reading “Italy: Statement of Juan Sorroche in front of the court of Treviso and against the telematization of the democratic inquisition.”
The dictatorship of confinement is the mirror of democracy. It is the morbid representation of a tyranny that is not content with its military victories. It wants to see those it subjugates bend, sink into deprivation and decadence. To see in the faces of the captives that laughter disappears and misery takes its place. Power builds mass graves of souls to bury in concrete the voices of the invisible.
And yet some continue to shout. They shout loudly about injustice, inequality, arbitrariness. They shout for freedom and their voices break the concrete, cut the wires and travel free as birds in the sky. They contemplate the meanness of this world and from their proud height they fall like thunderbolts on the heads of the lords.
Comrade Giannis Michailidis belongs to these voices. A disobedient fighter both outside and inside the walls. Intransigent with the demand for encirclement to this day. Humble as a personality as much as a sworn enemy of exploitation, our comrade condenses in his journey the meanings that today we are called to defend collectively. Revolutionary consciousness against subjugation, abnegation against self-interest, the sharpening of the struggle against disarmament and generalized resignation.
In the face of the general decadence that prevails around us, there are people who, with their faith and dedication to revolutionary ideals, have left their own special mark in the militant struggle for total liberation. The lives of these people, whom we are honored to call comrades, weigh like mountains. Therefore, the struggles they wage are the struggles of all of us. Giannis placed a stake on his body to defend the collective current of those who chose to march, from the first to the last day, on the paths of intolerance through the walls. Continue reading “Greece: Georgia Voulgari and Thanos Xatziagkelou start hunger strike in solidarity with the anarchist comrade Giannis Michailidis.”