Recordings from the university marches in Athens & Thessaloniki with the participation of thousands of students against the bill for private universities, on Thursday 18 January 2024.
Recordings from the university marches in Athens & Thessaloniki with the participation of thousands of students against the bill for private universities, on Thursday 18 January 2024.
On Thursday 16/11 we chose to attack the platoon of the notorious OPKE group (Crime Prevention and Suppression Groups, Ομάδες Πρόληψης και Καταστολής Εγκλήματος) at the junction of Navarino and Charilaou Trikoupis streets. The result of the attack was the burning of the vehicle and the injury of some of them. Our attack is both a small crack in the enforced blockade of the area of the annexes by the uniformed scum of the Democracy, and a small reminder that nothing will go unanswered.
50 years after the Polytechnic uprising, 15 years after December ’08, which erupted after the murder of the anarchist student Alexandros Grigoropoulos, the states and the capitalists have launched an attack of unprecedented intensity on the conquests won through blood and struggle. The intensity of the attack is experienced by the most impoverished sections of society who are subject to daily exploitation. The murders in the workplaces and work sites, at the borders, in prisons and police checkpoints are dubbed ‘industrial accidents’, ‘isolated incidents’, ‘shootings’ and occupy a single column in the margin of a newspaper. But they are clearly state and capitalist killings in an environment where our lives are devalued and expendable. In a neoliberal environment where the bosses, whose sole criteria is to increase their profitability, aim the guns of the cops at the disposable, poor, outcasts and petty criminals. The forces of repression have always been the murderous assault battalions of bourgeois democracy. The uniformed murderers have stained their hands with blood, blood that has not yet dried after the recent cold-blooded murder of the Roma Christos Michalopoulos in Voiotia, the murder of Kostas Manioudakis, the attempted murder of the 16-year-old girl B. in Neo Heraklion and the countless beatings of demonstrators, strikers, etc. The natural perpetrators and instigators of the above incidents were men of the OPKE, a gang of murderers and torturers. To remind that no state murder will go unanswered, that the lives of the Roma count, that the blood flows and calls for revolt, interventions like these are an organic duty of every movement, organization, social process that has reference to the cause of social revolution. They are an organic task for the formation of a revolutionary movement so that the projections of social and class self-defence are not empty and heavy-handed declarations but positions of battle that actively challenge the monopoly of state/capitalist violence.
We send militant greetings to the antifascist comrades who have confronted the state and the fascists in the run-up to November 1, striking blows against the common front of cops and fascists, promoting solidarity and comradeship which remain our most powerful weapons.
Good Freedom to the guerrilla and member of the Revolutionary Struggle Pola Roupa and to comrade Kostas Dimalexis.
Solidarity to comrade Polykarpos Georgiadis (trial 13/12) and to those accused of the state frame-up called “comrades”.
Strength to the comrades D.S. and R.Z. accused of attempted explosion in Thessaloniki.
Freedom for Palestine.
Nothing is over, everything continues.
Michalis Kaltezas* Cell
Source: athens.indymedia
DN Note
*Michalis Kaltezas, the murder took place during demonstrations on the anniversary of the Polytechnic uprising in 1985. The cop Athanasios Melistas shot the 15-year-old student Michalis Kaltezas in the back of the head from a distance of twenty metres as he was running with other demonstrators towards Exarchia Square. Immediately after the death of Kaltezas, anarchists occupied the old Chemistry building on Solonos and the Polytechnic in protest. On the morning of 18 November, the University Asylum Committee, chaired by the rector Michael Stathopoulos, gave permission for the police to enter the Chemistry building. The invasion was carried out with the use of tear gas, for the first time since 1976 and the police arrested 37 people and beat them severly, while a few managed to escape and reach the occupation of the Polytechnic through the sewers. This was the first lifting of the asylum since its official establishment in 1982. The riots in Athens continued in the following days. The cop murderer was sentenced to two years imprisonment, but he appealed and was declared innocent. Revolutionary organization 17 November attacked a police van to revenge the death of Kaltezas; the attack resulted in the death of a police officer.
We are at a juncture where, in the space of just a few months, we have counted two mass state capitalist murders, in Tempe and Pylos, which demonstrate in the most deafening way the very essence of capitalism. We are under no illusions and we know very well that in the face of the deadlock and bankruptcy of the state-capitalist system, the only answer that the state and capital have to propose is, on the one hand, to create new hotbeds of imperialist conflict and intervention in the capitalist regions, thus creating new hundreds of dead, both on the battlefields and in the debris left behind by war and the overexploitation of resources, and on the heavily guarded border lines, which have resulted in the Mediterranean becoming a vast graveyard of refugees.
On the other hand, in the capitalist centres of the West, capital and the state are looking for new areas of profitability through further class devaluation, impoverishment and death politics, which in turn create modern metropolitan guarded sweatshops in which we are forced to survive in conditions of misery with meagre wages as a result of the overvaluation of our labour power, with one worker murder after another, with the coverage of our basic material needs becoming more and more difficult, and the deterioration of the structures that cover basic social needs of transportation, health, education, etc. and with a state that is further entrenching itself by militarising its metropolises and increasing military budgets.
So at the same time as the state is generously spreading death, oppression, exploitation and destruction, it is inviting us to participate in the carnival of elections to choose which party will “save” us and which party will provide the best opposition. It invites us to entrust the management of our lives to saviours great and small, and once we have chosen we can proudly return to normality, where people are murdered at the borders, in police stations, on the streets, in the workers’ sweatshops. We can return to the normalcy of “passports” and starvation wages, of snitch journalists and exhausted and unpaid overtime, of evictions and home foreclosures. The normalcy we legitimize by voting consent and submission. In the face of their normalcy there is disobedience, resistance and rebellion. Against the vote of delegation there is collectivity, self-organization, faith in our strengths and in the potential of all the oppressed and exploited. The belief that this world will be changed by us, through collective struggles we will stand on our feet and attack the state, capital and their praetorian guard. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for the attack on a police patrol at Strefi Hill on 15/6”
As the struggle between the classes becomes wilder and the ideologies of development pave the way for the plundering of human and natural resources, turning the seas, the trees, the air we breathe into fields of profit at any cost, the upper classes become stronger and increase their wealth. As long as the lives of those from below are nothing but numbers to be managed and percentages of losses, such as the hundreds of dead displaced off Pylos, the passengers and workers on the trains of Tempi and the murdered workers in the sweatshops of the big bosses, capital is contentedly entrenching itself and preparing for new rounds of accumulation, deepening the terms of the devaluation of our lives.
The proclamation of the centre of Athens and especially of Exarchia, as a new field of profitability to which small and big businessmen are turning, is well known. Tourism and consumption have turned every hole into an opportunity. Numerous apartments are being converted into Airbnb, pushing up the remaining rents even higher, displacing poorer residents. Every public and open space, from the Strefi and Exarchia Square, to the May Day Square and the Museum, has been fenced off and included in plans to redevelop it and turn it into a supervised space for tourists and consumers. The police terrorism, the evacuation of squats and political spaces, the bullying and harassment of passers-by and residents by the ELAS men, the sealing of the Polytechnic, the increasing placement of cameras, are central repressive moves and reveal the political sign of this aggressive epicism.
In other words, for the business of white and black capital to flourish in our regions, the resistance that has taken root over the years must be silenced. The blockades of those from above that have been happening over time in the region, with the intolerable presence of politicians, exploiters and bigwigs of all kinds, must stop. To stop the precepts of solidarity among the oppressed, self-organization and opposition to the skinners of our lives and dreams.
But what they all forget is that these neighborhoods are still ours. That their well-polished storefronts can come crashing down on their heads with a bang, no matter how well they are guarded by their all manner of cops. Our small contribution to this reminder was our recent trip to Pharaoh’s on Solomou. On Friday 9 June, in broad daylight and under the nose of the anchored forces of repression at arm’s length, we interfered with the restaurant, damaging its interior and destroying their cellar of very expensive wines.
This shop, borrowing its concept from various other examples in western metropolises, jumped on the chariot of gentrification, selling alternativeism in an expensive wrapper. Pharaoh’s four entrepreneurs, Maidan columnists, TV chefs, troubadour foodies and others, gave rise to the arrival of socialites of all kinds in the area. Amidst the homeless and pissed-up sidewalks, with their expensive cars often guarded by their inflatable escorts, mob bosses, businessmen, and half the government’s cabinet have dined at this establishment. We should note here, of course, that Mitsotakis’ recent visit to this place was not as carefree as he expected, thanks to some angry residents. The clientele of this shop, therefore, validates by their presence the predestined targeting of the rotten world they represent. The opening of the field of profitability of local and foreign capital around the axis of Patision and the repression of anyone who resists it.
The war they have declared against us is sharpening and so must our struggles. Through dynamic responses and persistence, we can impose significant costs on all these would-be entrepreneurs, raising mounds to the touristization of everything and the conversion of our neighborhoods into commodities.
So that ministers, prime ministers, mayors and greasy mafiosi have no illusions that they will dine undisturbed in our parts.
To put smaller and larger cracks in their well-polished windows.
To move from questioning to conflict.
POVERTY, EXPLOITATION AND EXCLUSION
THAT’S WHAT GENTRIFICATION MEANS
SOLIDARITY WITH REFUGEES AND MIGRANTS
Comrades, Anarchists
Source: athens.indymedia
In a virgin forest, a wild mountain, a quiet clean sea, a beautiful neighbourhood, the capitalist sees a “fillet”, a new field of investment and profitability. There is nothing in the world we live in, in the world of state power and the capitalist organization of the economy, that does not have a certain exchange value, that is not valued in money. Such is the nature of capital that it is driven to perpetual expansion as a condition of its survival and reproduction. Everything in nature and society is a target and a field for exploitation. In a miniature version of this process, the neighbourhood of Exarchia has recently been subjected to one of the strongest attacks in recent decades by the State and Capital. Like many other neighbourhoods in the centre of Athens, Exarcheia is still an ‘unexploited’ field for various kinds of big investors. A neighbourhood in the centre of the city, in the midst of its facade, that has been “left behind” in terms of infrastructure, big investments and profit supply to the capitalist machine.
But it is also a special neighborhood. It is different from the other – several other – downtown neighbourhoods that remain ‘underdeveloped’ and undeveloped and for which the same future of ‘development’ is foreseen. It is the neighbourhood of movements, of struggles, of politicised youth, of radicalism, of anarchists. The state has every reason to allocate many of its forces and resources to subjugate, refine, clean up, normalize Exarcheia and offer it, under its auspices, as a pawn to investors. The state knows that, traditionally, Exarcheia is the reference point of radical movements, the “headquarters” of the internal enemy. In recent years, and with particular intensity during the New Democracy government, the state has been attempting to fight what it imagines to be the final battle for the neighbourhood.
This is not, of course, a choice detached from the big picture of state policy. At the juncture of the last few years, the state seems to have considered – and, moreover, proclaimed – that it is the historically and socially appropriate moment to end the deep-rooted domestic revolutionary tradition, political radicalism, anarchists, movements, what its right-wing managers call the “ideological hegemony of the left”. In the era of economic crisis, high inflation and the coming recession, war and geopolitical upheavals, the Greek state is being shielded in the face of an unstable future. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for attacks on Airbnb, hotels and cameras in Exarcheia”
The Hill of Strefis is under police occupation.
The works carried out in the last six months are destroying the flora and fauna of the hill, while the operation of its regeneration seeks to isolate it from the movements of the area and the neighbourhood in general, aiming to make it a tourist attraction.All this with the cooperation of the Municipality and the real estate and investment company PRODEA, which through the regeneration of the hill seeks to expand its capital in the neighbourhood.
So in an effort to put obstacles to the projects that are being carried out on the hill we have taken the following actions of sabotage:
1. cutting the industrial power cables that feed the construction site,
2. disconnecting and destroying floodlights installed on the hill under the pretext of site security,
3. drilling and cutting pipes through which the perimeter lighting and camera system will be installed on the hill.
AGAINST THE PILLAGE OF NATURE, THE STRUGGLE FOR LAND AND FREEDOM
Anarchists
Source: athens.indymedia
On Wednesday night 14/12 we carried out an incendiary attack on a Hertz van which was parked in the area of Exarcheia.
This company, known for its investments on the one hand and as an important cog in the capitalist world on the other, is a political opponent for us.
The area of Exarcheia, and not only, is not safe for these vehicles and everything connected with this world. Exarcheia was, is and will be an area that gave birth to and still nurtures political consciousnesses that dream of the destruction of this world.
This attack was a reflexive move in response to the events of the last few days; the arrests of the December 6 march, the arrests of the march for Kostas Fragoulis, the blockade of our comrades in law; the days of Alexis and the blood that never ceases to seek revenge, when fourteen Decembers later the State and its armed trash arm, shoot and kill.
The attack is dedicated to the memory of Kostas Fragoulis, killed by a cop’s bullet.
LONG LIVE ANARCHY
THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES
——–
Source: athens.indymedia
Via & translated by Act for freedom now!
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.
Thessaloniki 5/12/22
Source: Act For Freedom Now!
Taking responsibility – Against the war industry
In the days of commemoration of the Polytechnic, we must not forget the anti-militarist implications of the uprising. In the midst of military dictatorship, one of the central slogans of the occupied Polytechnic in ’73 was “Out with NATO”. Picking up this thread, anarchy today must find a way of direct action against those who profit and gain from these wars.
While we try to develop anarchist considerations and analyses of every interstate war conflict, one of the most important aspects of the multifaceted anti-military struggle is often ignored: sabotaging the death machine on the ground we are on.
Since we are in NATO’s territory of influence, we have a duty to sabotage everything used by the armed forces of the Greek state and its allies, the arms industry, the financiers and those who give orders and make decisions.
Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Taking responsibility – Against the war industry by Anarchists”
…And life became the biggest lie
There is no police brutality
There are only bloodthirsty protesters in a brutal fury
with the breakneck speed of desperation
the com-mat-asfalites1, the chemical tear gas, the shields.
the helmets, the incubating cages
the snake eggs of the fascist crawling society….
George Tsingos and the Black Circles
Watching the domestic news of the last few months, one will see that despite the social reactions that have developed, the isolation and suppression of the antagonistic movement as well as the imposition of unprecedented social control measures remains a key objective of the Greek state. The gentrification of Exarcheia includes the construction of a metro station in the square, the redevelopment-privatisation of the Strefi Hill and the blocking of access to the Polytechnic and aims to uproot the revolutionary tradition of the area. Similarly, the installation of MAT platoons and all kinds of cops inside the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki aims to sterilize the university premises from any voice of opposition to the bosses. But beyond hitting the movements, the hiring of thousands of new cops, the millions given to equip the police and their constant presence in the public arena on every occasion set the tone of the new social contract. And all this at a time when society is being impoverished anew, with precision pushing those from below to the limits of survival. In a nutshell as Petsas arrogantly informed us adaptation (to capitalist and state dictates) or death.
The effort by the current government to restructure the education system and especially the universities begins the very next day after its election with the abolition of the university asylum. Their pretext was to crack down on lawlessness and instil a sense of security. This was followed by the passing of Law 4777 in the midst of quarantine to avoid major social reactions. The response to those that were manifested was a display of fierceness and brutality. Just a few examples:
Continue reading “Thessaloniki, Greece: Responsibility claim for a raid on a riot squad of MAT”