Letter – Page 2

France: “I know that there, somewhere, other comrades continue the struggle.” Letter from Ivan, anarchist comrade arrested in Paris

Posted on 2022/08/30 - 2022/08/30 by darknights

“I know that there, somewhere, other comrades continue the struggle.”

Letter from Ivan, anarchist comrade arrested on June 11 on the outskirts of Paris

15 VI 22

My name is Ivan, I am an anarchist.

I was arrested by the Sous-diréction anti-térrorisme [SDAT] of the French police on Saturday, June 11, around 3:30 a.m., near my home (suburbs of Paris), on my way home.

I am accused of six vehicle fires, in Paris and Montreuil, between January and June, often in solidarity with anarchist prisoners (the last one, an embassy car, was set on fire in the 17th arrondissement of Paris on the night of my arrest).

The cops followed me for months, listened to my phone calls, installed a camera in the entrance of the building where I live, intercepted my mail (especially letters from imprisoned anarchists) and looked at my bank account.

Another person (we know each other only by sight, but to him all my esteem) has been followed, listened to, etc., but has not been challenged. Courage friend!

The SDAT investigation began in late February 2022 on the orders of prosecutor Louise-Anne Belanger of the Bobigny prosecutor’s office. They also pulled from their drawers another archived investigation, which had been done by other cops, into some 50 arson attacks against vehicles, all in and around Paris, between 2017 and 2021. SDAT “merged” the two investigations, but the judge (Stéphanie Labarge [?], of the Bobigny court) retained only the last six attacks. For the others, I am an “assisted witness” [the equivalent of “person informed about the facts”].

In addition to “destruction by dangerous means,” there is also the charge of endangering the lives of others, refusal to give my DNA, refusal to have my photograph taken, refusal to give fingerprints, refusal to give passwords to computers and phones.

Right now, I am in pre-trial detention at Villepinte Prison. I am fit, I am fine, although I miss my loved ones very much.

Normal, it’s prison, and you have to put it on the line when you are an enemy of this society.

Here, the hardest time is when we come back from the walk. The door closes and we stay here until the next day. But I turn to the window and look out. I know that there, somewhere, other comrades continue the struggle.

As soon as I get more information on this story, I will write more (I don’t have much else to do!).

My thoughts go out to the anarchists in prison everywhere in the world: to Damien (in prison in Draguignan), to Alfredo, to Anna, to Juan, to Toby, to Giannis Michailidis on hunger strike… to all/all of you out there!

Solidarity is the attack!

Long live anarchy!

Ivan

Source: Il Rovescio

UK: Letter for the International Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners August 23rd – 30th by Imprisoned Anarchist Toby Shone

Posted on 2022/08/03 - 2022/08/03 by darknights

Letter for the International Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners August 23rd – 30th by Imprisoned Anarchist Toby Shone, UK

“Does this rising generation know that those who inaugurated the 8 hour day were put to death at the command of Capital?”
Lucy Parsons, The Haymarket Martyrs, November 1926

“Although we are not reformists, the struggle to obtain improvements in one’s immediate situation (wages, housing, health, education, occupations etc) sees the anarchists present, but they do not see these struggles as ends in themselves. They push the exploited towards this form of struggle so that they can develop the elements of self-organisation and refusal of the delegate which are indispensable in order to develop direct action at all other levels.”
Alfredo M. Bonanno, What are Anarchists?

Despite being in prison, news occasionally reaches me of the many repressive operations and terrible circumstances that our comrades are confronting. That’s why I am in agreement with the proposal once again put forward by the Anarchist Black Cross for a week of solidarity at the end of August. This date is chosen to mark the State murder of anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. We cannot give in to resignation or become complacent in these times. It is more important than ever to explain and make accessible the anarchist analysis and to put it into practice immediately.

Anarchism is internationalism, self-management, mutual aid, solidarity, and direct action: incisive, voracious and alive. That’s why our spaces are raided and evicted, our publications seized, our communities hunted, beaten, imprisoned and killed around the world.

During my interrogations, the Counter-Terror cops at one point focussed on the International Week of Solidarity with anarchist prisoners, accusing this event of supporting terrorism, glorifying terrorism. That’s because part of their strategy is to try to illegalise the Anarchist Black Cross. Their aim is to destroy all solidarity and counter-information structures which spread information about and provide material support for the legal cases of anarchist comrades who are locked up. Continue reading “UK: Letter for the International Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners August 23rd – 30th by Imprisoned Anarchist Toby Shone” →

Greece: Giannis Michailidis – Rape after the murder of the concept of justice

Posted on 2022/07/17 by darknights

Giannis Michailidis: Rape after the murder of the concept of justice

For Greek “justice”, a rapist of a child (D. Lignadis) has been sufficiently rehabilitated and is not a danger to society after less than 1.5 years in prison. A racially motivated murderer (Ath. Hortarias), has been sufficiently rehabilitated and is also not a danger after 2 months in prison. The murderer of 15-year-old Alexandros (Ep. Korkoneas) does not deserve life imprisonment. Another rapist (P. Filippidis), earns his freedom prematurely as he is not considered dangerous because of his celebrity. This is the “epic” of crony Greek “justice”.

However, for Greek “justice” an anarchist bank robber and escapee, after almost 9 years in prison and 7 months, after completing the required 3/5 of the sentence, “risks committing new crimes as he has not spent sufficient time in prison”.

What I understand is that robbing a bank and escaping from prison is far worse than rape or murder. Especially if the rapist is a close friend of ministers or the killers kill troublesome kids or marginalised people. After all, isn’t the role of the state to protect capital? Also, it will obviously show more vindictiveness towards someone who has actively challenged the feared institution of prison, absolutely necessary for disciplining society.

And as for bank robberies, now that we’re impoverishing you, don’t get any ideas. If you want to rape a kid, a wink to a minister will do the trick! This is the clear message of Greek “justice”.

I received it. That’s why I started a hunger strike. To expose all those arbitrary acts against me, which I list at the beginning of the text. However, from what I can see they don’t need me. They have made their own judgments. Not even for appearances.

I think they are even using the hunger strike as an example now. They’ve set my appeal hearing for 7/25. On that day I will have done 64 days’ hunger strike. The aim is clear. To exhaust me. A possible permanent disability reinforces the message they are sending. Perhaps my eventual death, which becomes more likely with each passing day. Such a perversion of the concept of justice is unthinkable. Let them enjoy their “justice”. Enjoy your careers.

As for me, who do not have access to their villas with their lavish tables paid for with bribes, I can greet this world fasting, but with the spiritual fullness of total existential conflict with their rotten system.

15/7/2022,

On hunger strike from 23/5, Giannis Michailidis

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Source: athens.indymedia

Via & Translated by Act for freedom now!

Greece: A letter from the special cell of Lamia Hospital – Giannis Michailidis

Posted on 2022/07/12 - 2022/07/24 by darknights

The scorpion is an insect that differs little from its ancestral species, which were among the first animals to walk on land hundreds of millions of years ago. It has been observed that individuals of this species, when trapped among the flames with no visible escape route, do a remarkable thing: they turn their sting on themselves and commit suicide! A behavior that offers no evolutionary advantage, as on the slim chance that the fire would go out, the surviving animals could continue to reproduce. A behavior that contradicts the theory that insects are biological robots because they exhibit standardized behaviors.

The simplest way I can explain this behaviour is that the evolution of life does not build robots, but instead creates neural systems for information processing and decision making. Recurring patterns of behaviour emerge from the complex operation of self-organised neural circuits, which in most cases do indeed favour maximum reproductive potential. So then, these tiny nervous systems with several orders of magnitude fewer neural synapses than our brains produce a behaviour that betrays evidence of their internal functioning:

These animals experience pain, meaning pain as a stimulus that the animal tries to eliminate.
These animals experience fear, meaning fear as an internal mental projection of a future situation.
They have knowledge that they possess a murderous tool with which they kill their prey and defend themselves from their predators: the stinger.
They associate the feeling of pain with their body as they point the stinger at themselves.
The association of pain with self-consciousness, since pain is an elementary form of mental state, and consciousness is thought upon thought, constitutes a primitive form of consciousness. So pain is in a sense conscious.

Continue reading “Greece: A letter from the special cell of Lamia Hospital – Giannis Michailidis” →

UK: “Like Mercury” Open Letter for Dan Baker, aka Alishare – from Toby Shone

Posted on 2022/06/01 by darknights

Open Letter for Dan Baker, aka Alishare – from Toby Shone

Alishare, I heard your message of solidarity, thank you, it gave me strength. I would turn the energy with this open letter, and I hope to kick a brick from the walls. One more time. In a flurry of black feathers and lunar wisdom, a murder of crows delivered your statement and those wily crows told me about your situation in FCI Memphis.

I want to add on to this dialogue and talk about three anarchist comrades imprisoned in Italy. The first is Anna Beniamino who is serving a 17 year sentence for the Scripta Manent case in a high security regime in Rebibbia prison (Rome). The Scripta Manent case involved the arrest of 7 anarchists accused of subversive association with terrorist intent and a series of direct actions claimed by the Informal Anarchist Organization. An absurd farce with obscene conclusions. The second comrade I want to mention is Alfredo Cospito who has been locked up since 2012 for the Adinolfi case for which he was sentenced for nearly 11 years and is now waiting for the confirmation of another sentence of 20 years for the Scripta Manent case. Alfredo was recently struck with the legislature 41 bis, special security regime. Each month, he can only receive either one phone call (10 minutes) or one visit strictly with family members with glass and recorded; he can only walk in the yard with maximum 3 other prisoners previously approved by prison security; he cannot receive books, censorship is applied to his correspondence (number of letters per month is extremely limited), and he has a very limited amount of items which he can keep in his cell. Several international agencies have continuously condemned the 41bis prison regime as torture. The third comrade I want to mention is Juan Sorroche. On the date of the international day of with long-term anarchist prisoners, June the 11th , Juan will face a court hearing in Treviso. Juan is on trial accused of an attack against an office of the Lega Nord political party claimed by the “Cell Haris Hatzimihelakis/Black International (1881/2018)” that happened in August 2018. Juan who was already serving time for other judgements, is now facing a long sentence in this other political trial. Like all the imprisoned anarchists around the world, these three comrades deserve the support and solidarity that the international anarchist movement can give them. Continue reading “UK: “Like Mercury” Open Letter for Dan Baker, aka Alishare – from Toby Shone” →

Athens, Greece: Letter of Panos Kalaitzis from Korydallos Prison

Posted on 2022/02/20 - 2022/05/18 by darknights

Letter of Panos Kalaitzis

On Tuesday 08/02 at 19.00 I was arrested by the anti-terrorist squad outside my comrade’s house in Ano Polis. The reason for my indictment was the arrest that same morning of Thanos Xatziagkelou and Georgia Voulgari accused of placing an incendiary device in the Foundation for National and Religious Reflection. I was taken to the General Police Directorate of Thessaloniki, where hours later I was informed of my arrest on felony charges and membership of the Anarchist Action organization. I remained in custody for two days in the basements of the GADTH, on Friday 11/02 I passed through the interrogator and the prosecutor where I was notified of my pre-trial detention.

Being now in the throes of a comic process that is taking place against me, I declare myself unequivocally and categorically innocent of all the charges against me. I am currently in custody without a shred of evidence linking me to any participation in the charges against me, without a single mention of my name in the statements of the anti-terrorist police in connection with the activities of the organisation. The only attempted connection is through the house I rented next to the shop I ran with my associates as well as next to my comrade’s house (where I actually lived), which I reserved as a quarantine and recovery space from covid-19.

I am making an effort to stand up to this conspiracy that has been set up to deprive me of my freedom. I am trying to keep my mind alert and clear so that I can resist this injustice that wants to strangle me. I am trying to stand up to this arbitrariness that sees my life as a pawn on an invisible chessboard.

Against those who take human relationships and use them as they want and as it suits them to compose whatever puzzle they design.
I’m going to make it.

Solidarity to my friend, colleague and comrade Thanos Hatziangelou and to comrade Georgia whom I met a few days ago in the basements of the ΓΑΔΘ (Thessaloniki Police HQ cells)

Panos Kalaitzis
Korydallos Prison
15/02/2022

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Source: athens.indymedia.

Via & Translated by Act for freedom now!

Italy – Operation Scintilla: A Letter

Posted on 2021/08/24 - 2021/08/24 by darknights

Source: https://roundrobin.info

Via & Translated by Act For Freedom Now!

In February 2019 I signed the declaration that I submitted at a review trial for Operation Scintilla. My responsibility for writing the text is entirely my own. The piece in question presents numerous problems, the most serious certainly that linked to the refusal of the alleged indiscriminate nature of certain practices which unquestionably belong to the history of the anarchist movement. The phrase in question is: “the idea or the will to harm ‘an unspecified number of people’ such as could be office secretaries, employees or passers-by, does not belong to us in any way”.

At the time of elaboration of the text I firmly believed that I was capable of expressing myself, that I was able to take a stand about my life, accept or refuse the accusations and profiles constructed upon me by the prosecutor. I expressed what I thought sincerely, as if I could do that without any problem. As an anarchist individuality I don’t belong to any group or court category, I have my own way of thinking and, reasoning superficially, I said to myself: “why can’t I express it?”.

I got it all wrong. What I was strongly experiencing was just an incredible lack of lucidity, I had naively fallen into a trap. As soon as I was free again, the world, that world which had been my life for years and years, came crashing down on me in all its force.

The comrades who realized my absurd mistake blocked me immediately; thanks to them, and not without anger, I understood what had really happened. No one came and tapped me on the shoulder, certainly I was helped, but my life has drastically changed for the worst. The emotional impact was heavy, and if it might interest anyone, it has rightly catapulted me into deep torment. To take such positions in an inappropriate place, publicly, and in the absence of a fugitive co-accused, is a serious mistake, showing confusion and indecisiveness. Continue reading “Italy – Operation Scintilla: A Letter” →

Greece: Text, letter by Anarchist prisoner Dimitris Hatzivassiliadis

Posted on 2021/08/24 - 2021/08/24 by darknights

Informative announcement:

From October 2019, following my injury during the expropriation in a local store of a state casino in Holargos (Athens), I fled the nexus of preventive and criminal repressive control. The side effect of my injury was the discovery of a set of illegal tools of resistance and the revelation of my relationship with the guerrilla organization Revolutionary Self-Defence. Being an outlaw, I made public my political responsibility for the intended reconstruction of the guerrilla struggle, starting with the example of the Revolutionary Self-Defence Organization. Reversing the condition of political isolation of the one who escapes the blackmailing conventions which the state seeks and which serves it (wherever it comes from), I participated to the maximum in the public movement dialogue, with an eye to the evolution of the revolutionary class struggle. The period of exile was a transitional attempt to reposition myself in the global socio-political space of resistance in order to go forward. In the first year, the breaking of deep-rooted barriers was not achieved. I remained trapped in an isolation related to the collective impasses of the Greek movement.

On Monday, August 9, I attempted the expropriation of a bank fund in Pefka area, in Thessaloniki. As I was leaving the area, in a car and having previously ridden a motorcycle, I was stopped and taken prisoner by uniformed state mercenaries who had mobilized to locate and trap the perpetrator of the robbery. My capture is not in the slightest connected with my earlier search by the special anti-guerrilla mechanisms and, more broadly, by police and digital surveillance. Until I said my name, they did not know who they had arrested.

Initially, I was detained at the police headquarters in Thessaloniki (AMET), in the garbage detention centre, together with the other social prisoners. I am now in the underground wing of the women’s prison in Korydallos, which was built 2 decades ago specially for the political prisoners of the repressive operations against the 17N and the Revolutionary People’s Struggle and through which the captured guerrillas of the Revolutionary Struggle organization and the rest of the political prisoners of the most relevant court cases have passed. The political prisoners Dinos Giantzoglou, Christodoulos Xiros and Savvas Xiros are currently in the same wing. The serving of the sentence (16 years) of the expropriation court in Holargos and the case of the Revolutionary Self-Defence Org. has begun.

So far the new case file concerns only the expropriation of the bank and, with the exception of a point of dubious concept (accusation of “use of weapons”), attributes accusations which, according to the ideological codes of bourgeois law, first correspond to acts by which I undertook the expropriation of the bank, the showing of a weapon, the temporary and potentially compensated appropriation of 2 private vehicles as necessary means for the expropriation of the bank and the refusal to be photographed during the pre-investigative phase, as a refusal of consent to the persecuting regime. Although neither the tactical defeats with their serious personal consequences nor their collective and personal background can be hidden, and although I considered a public trial for this specific bank expropriation to be of little importance as a political battleground, I do not recognize the law of what they are historically: a rule of subjugation to idealized class domination. For the political defence of each of my actions and all of them in class and cultural terms, the comrades can refer to the hundreds of pages I have written in the past year and a half. I hope to be able to publish a political account of the latest developments soon.

With the proletarian uprising in the heart, anarchy in the mind, libertarian communism in practice and ecumenical socialist self-government in the program I confirm my presence where a new free world is being conceived.

Dimitris Hatzivassiliadis

16/8/2021

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Source: https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1613901/

Via & Translated by Act For Freedom Now!

Italy: Ethics wanted – or – a fairy tale at times anarchist

Posted on 2021/08/24 - 2021/08/24 by darknights

Almost two and a half years have passed since, after only 19 days’ prison – I’m telling you – 19 days, you decided to leave a declaration in a review trial, it was 26/2/19.

When I got to know of your decision at the time, sorrow and anger resurfaced as they did when the texts entitled “dotting i’s” and“I burabacio” made their appearance.

I ask myself and ask you: you declare you are anarchists and revolutionaries, you practice conflictuality in the neighbourhoods in daily life, you live in or frequent squatted places, you organize or take part in gatherings outside prisons, detention centres for migrants, benefits; but what do you talk about on those occasions?!

Empty talk, obviously, if you still haven’t understood when to keep quiet or what kind of declaration to make.

Everything seems as though you participate in order to have a clear conscience and to clock in.

Your declaration handed to a prosecutor is the umpteenth proof, even if some stupid anarchist hadn’t realized it, of the fact that it is we anarchists ourselves who give suggestions to prosecutors to create the famous differentiation between good and bad anarchists, between social and insurrectionalists. Continue reading “Italy: Ethics wanted – or – a fairy tale at times anarchist” →

Italy: Degenerations – Between pride and gender victimhood by Anna Beniamino

Posted on 2021/07/15 - 2021/07/15 by darknights

Degenerations – Between pride and gender victimhood
(An article Degenerazioni – Tra orgoglio e vittimismo di genere
Published in issue 3 of the anarchist paper Vetriolo)

I am anarchist, I am not feminist because I see feminism as a sectorial and victimist withdrawal, I have never made any gender discrimination although I don’t use gender-friendly linguistic conventions, on the contrary I often use dirty politically incorrect language. I think that the annulment of gender privilege and similar oppression is already contained in the search for anarchy, that is to say in the practice of antiauthoritarian relations, and should be cultivated there. Ah, I forgot, I loathe consciousness-raising in public meetings and I also consider assemblies to be blunt instruments. I understand and also have the will to meet. But I see how all too often the assembly degenerates into sterile self-representation.

You see nowadays you risk having to start off with such a preamble in order to enter the thicket of clichés on gender and feminism, disentangling yourself in the intricate incapacity to relate to the anarchist galaxy, with a range of behaviours going from hyper-emotiveness to the bureaucratic calculation of what stand (and degree of negotiable compromise) to take in a struggle. I don’t think that authoritarian and sexist behaviour can be fought by trying to spread new linguistic conventions or by cooking up shreds of mainstream indignant rhetoric (among which #nonunadimeno [enough is enough], the feminicide count on TV, pride, red shoes and rainbow ribbons) in an alternative sauce.

Rather these should be recognized as signs of yet another operation of the deconstruction of real meaning and recuperation in act. Convinced that one is opposing them, in actual fact one is adapting to the very behavioural and normative codes conceded by dominion as ways of releasing tension.

It’s nothing new that economic and political power is tending to swallow up and redigest everything, faster and faster; consider for example the pearls of anti-sexist, antiracist or whatever it might be neo-conservatism and conformism that are being dispensed by the media every day. Continue reading “Italy: Degenerations – Between pride and gender victimhood by Anna Beniamino” →