Letter – Page 3 – Dark Nights

“Conspiracy and Subversion”, a conversation of the Informal Anarchist Federation (2006) + Letter to the various realities of the informal FAI. A reflection by Gabriel Pombo da Silva (2007)

Posted on 2023/01/25 - 2023/01/25 by darknights

Note from InformantivoAnarquista

With regard to the hunger strike of the anarchist comrade Alfredo Cospito, it seems important to us to collect and value our anarchist history, to reread, reflect and sharpen our denials. Alfredo Cospito and Anna Beniamino today face a new labyrinth of the judicial inquisition, trying to impose the article of political massacre to bury stories, experiences, courage, bravery and desire for freedom with life sentences and long sentences.

16 years ago took place the clandestine conversation that we are spreading, we resort to the timelessness of the ideas and reflections that arise in the course of the fraternal dialogue, it also allows us to recognize the comrades as beings close to us, neither heroes nor perfect militants, nor guerrillas coming down from the plain… the revolt is contagious and exponentially reproducible, we can all contribute and recognize our absence.

“Conspiracy and Subversion”, a conversation of the Informal Anarchist Federation (2006)

Some of the comrades who belong to the original groups of the FAI Informal Anarchist Federation have decided to discuss a few points and to make the transcription of the discussion known. There are some omissions due to security reasons, but in the whole the transcription reflects the direct and informal tone of the conversation, which avoids all formalisms just as we do in our life…

These groups take part in the discussion: ‘Crafts and Fire Cooperative’, ‘July 20 Brigade’, ‘Cells against Capital, its Prisons, its Jailers and its Cells’, and ‘International Solidarity’.

QUI: I like Pippo’s idea to record and write down our conversation, Quo and Qua like it too. We think it is worthwhile even if we risk to be caught (touching wood). What counts is that Pippo takes off what doesn’t have to be written and destroys the recording.

PIPPO: My idea was to make some points known, points that normally we have never clarified and that make us angry sometimes…yes, when we hear or read comments about us…in other words we need to show to this fucking movement that we are not ghosts coming from nothing (laughers…’hey, did you see you?’). We need to show to them that we think it very carefully before carrying out an action and that we leave very little to chance. Our actions are not indiscriminate, on the contrary they are so controlled that we haven’t managed to do what we really want yet…(laughers). Then there’s nothing obscure or clandestine in our way of life. Most of us come from the movement. Live inside it and know that reality. Some even come from shit situations. let me tell you that Paperino. I don’t know how you can do…

PAPERINO: Forget it, it’s a long story…

PIPPO: Alright, I explain better. Sometimes it happens that I read or hear very horrible comments on our activity, for example that we are ‘provocateurs’ or ‘secret services’ not to mention their partial and blind general vision of what we do and say. If we write down the content of this encounter we might make some of our dynamics clearer…this is also for the comrades of other FAI groups that we don’t know.

NONNA PAPERA: I’m not sure about writing down this discussion. Maybe a self-interview would be better: each group answers questions decided by everybody. In this way we avoid a transcription that would be incorrect for security reasons.

PAPERINA: I don’t think so. The meeting written on paper is more spontaneous and clarifying. We will make some corrections, pass it to the other groups and then it will be ready to be spread in a couple of weeks.

Paperino and I will print and send it, you know, we’ve got a new PC …

QUI: Let’s see which points we need to discuss. This might help us to understand better and then I’m willing to communicate with the groups that followed us in the FAI. We can reach them in this way and they can communicate with the same method.

ARCHIMEDE: I think that a very good point of this experience is experimentation, that is to say I put in practice things that I only talked about before, yes, to join thought: and action and to avoid that schizophrenic dualism between what is said and what is done. Then there exists another form of schizophrenia. a deeper alienation: the fact that you can’t talk openly to the comrades who surround you and who are not part of our groups, you can’t say what you really think or you risk exposing yourself and putting the comrades in danger. In other words,this caution, the fact that I can’t shout what I would like, is killing me.

QUA: Well, I feel the same but I don’t suffer out of that. To come back to the document….how are we going to spread it? There’s not much anarchist press and those who are willing to publish certain documents are very few…and then it is not fair to turn the comrades into targets for repression, as it often happens. Not to mention those who faint as soon as they read certain things or run to the cops…

Internet is a problem for us. we are not IT experts. And then, after the lndymedia server was searched because they published our claim of the bombs to the EU, it is very difficult that someone wants to publish our writing… Continue reading ““Conspiracy and Subversion”, a conversation of the Informal Anarchist Federation (2006) + Letter to the various realities of the informal FAI. A reflection by Gabriel Pombo da Silva (2007)” →

France: Updates on anarchist comrade Ivan Alocco

Posted on 2022/11/25 - 2022/11/25 by darknights

Hello to all and everyone,
I am writing these few lines to give you some news.

I am continuing the hunger strike I started on October 27, in solidarity with Alfredo Cospito’s struggle to get out of 41 bis. I am doing well. I feel tired and sometimes dizzy, but my determination remains intact.

This is the first time since June, since I’ve been locked up here, that I feel like I’m doing something worthwhile, instead of simply surviving and watching time go by. Two weeks ago, the head warden threatened to transfer me to solitary confinement if I continue with the hunger strike (” for my own good, to be better looked after in case I have a sudden health problem “), but so far he has not put his blackmail into practice.

My mail is blocked again. They gave me letters on October 24, then nothing more. Likewise, the letters I have written to my family since mid-October have still not arrived.

On Thursday, Nov. 24, at 1:30 p.m., I will appear before the investigating judge (Anne Grandjean), at the Bobigny courthouse, for questioning.

Finally, I was able to start reading the files of the inquiry. Right from the beginning, a little surprise: the SDAT explains that they began to tail me and the other comrade (quickly exonerated) starting last January. This was because of ” confidential information ” (one judge writes ” anonymous information “) telling them that we would be the authors of the arson attacks against some diplomatic or big business vehicles, claimed by the anarchists.

All my solidarity to Alfredo, Anna and Juan, on hunger strike.
A thought to the revolutionary prisoners and prisoners across the world.
Freedom for all and everyone !

Ivan

To write to him::
Ivan Alocco
n. d’écrou: 46355
M. A. de Villepinte
40, avenue Vauban
93420 – Villepinte
France

Source: Inferno Urbano

Germany: Letter from anarchist prisoner Thomas Meyer-Falk

Posted on 2022/10/01 by darknights

To give space to the nameless, faceless and voiceless!

Horror, sadness, rage, anger and a feeling of helplessness, of powerlessness. Short-term flaring up of affects and stirring emotions here, long-lasting, persistent feelings there, and all this before what we call mood, it colors our experience background, it is, so to speak, the primordial layer, the ground of feeling.

It is the global warming, what is called “climate crisis”, as if it would be a temporally manageable crisis and not a generation-spreading world change, before whose foil all further conflicts must be read, because a world-spreading cooperation, a togetherness is demanded.

Instead, horrible wars are raging, the one that touches us in Central Europe for very different reasons in the area of Ukraine, but also in Kurdistan, in Syria, in Yemen, in many regions of Africa. Conflicts in South America, in Asia – basically there is no region of the world where military conflicts are not being waged, which in turn lead to even more horror, grief, anger and rage.

Not to forget the economic antagonisms. Just as trivial as existential: Rich against poor! More and more super-rich against more and more super-poor. More and more exploiters against exploited.

The prisons are full also because of this. People are imprisoned if they don’t want to belong to the super poor anymore. Or if people go beyond the very narrow corridor that government systems keep open for protests to articulate their fear, but also their anger about the existing conditions, they are also locked up. When people express dissenting opinions, as is currently the case in Russia, for example, they can end up in camps. People who can no longer endure the brutal present without being stunned, who take various substances to escape into a colorful world of illusion, are also imprisoned. Depending on the country, even the death penalty is imposed. And people who flee from starvation or an otherwise hopeless living situation, they are also locked up in jails, if not killed, or inhumane border regimes are set up, resulting in the death of countless people.

Solidarity Weeks like this one in August 2022 are an encouragement for those held in prisons as well as for those who are threatened with imprisonment. Because it is a work against forgetting. As a rule, interest in people wanes when their criminal trial is over. But Soli Weeks bring the names, the faces and the voices of those concerned back into the focus of attention.

This is a Sisyphean task, because the number of prisoners is increasing rather than decreasing, and all this happens against the background of existential conflicts and disputes, which in turn attract all attention.

All the more beautiful that there are people outside the walls who fill this week of solidarity in August with life and keep it alive.

With heartfelt greetings

Thomas Meyer-Falk
currently JVA(SV)
Hermann-Herder-Str.8
D-79104 Freiburg

http://freedom-for-thomas.de

Source: solidarity.international

France: A letter from Ivan, from Villepinte Prison

Posted on 2022/09/28 by darknights

Below is a text by anarchist Ivan Alocco, who was arrested on June 11 and is currently imprisoned in Villepinte Prison, France.
Break the isolation! For immediate revolutionary solidarity with Ivan and all imprisoned anarchists!

–

I am writing to share some thoughts and give some news.
I would like to begin with something that illustrates well the methods of the judicial system.
A few days after my arrest, the judge who instructed the investigation, Stéphanie Lahaye, sent two cops from SDAT [the Anti-Terrorism Sub-Directorate of the Judicial Police] (including the judicial police officer “RIO 1237232” – like machines, they have numbers instead of names) to interrogate my daughter and her mother. Obeying his orders, the procedures of state justice, they tried to pressure a 12-year-old girl. After making her wait in the courtyard of the local gendarmerie barracks during her mother’s interrogation, they allegedly wanted to interrogate her alone. Evidently, her mother refused to leave her.
An ordinary, mundane procedure, a necessary act to establish the truth, according to judges and cops. A way, in my opinion, of trying to spread fear. A warning to my loved ones and to everyone, because, in the inquisitive logic of Justice, people who stay or stand by an anarchist accused of direct action are suspect and must be bothered.

This is somewhat the same logic that was used against me. When the same judicial police officer, during interrogations while I was under arrest, asked me, she reproached me for bringing my support to imprisoned anarchists, in France and in other countries. Of writing to them and occasionally sending them some money. Of course, I often wrote to numerous imprisoned compas and did my best to express my solidarity with them. Because they are anarchists and also because I am convinced of the rightness and necessity of the actions some of them are accused of.
I think solidarity, by any means necessary, with compas affected by repression is fundamental. To avoid openly solidarizing with them, for fear that repression will spread, would be to enter the game of Justice, to accept its logic. A logic that would make us retreat further and further, until we abandon, or almost abandon, the imprisoned revolutionaries. Continue reading “France: A letter from Ivan, from Villepinte Prison” →

From Coast to Coast: Open Letter by Anarchist Prisoner Toby Shone

Posted on 2022/09/11 by darknights

I’ve previously written about the need to recreate an Atlantic bridge, based on international revolutionary solidarity and reciprocal knowledge, that moves towards affinity and direct action in support of our imprisoned comrades. Since then, I was recently visited by a comrade from Anarchist Black Cross Philadelphia here at the G4S facility in which I’m held. G4S is originally an American company, Wackenhut, which has pioneered the private prison and security industry all over the world. As part of our discussion between the comrade from ABC Philadelphia and myself, we spoke of the need to prevent our groups and commons becoming inward-looking and closing in on themselves in microscopic scenes and myopia. The anglophone world is particularly susceptible to this trend, although it is not solely confined to English-speaking territories. How can we translate rhetoric into practical activity? Words and deeds must coincide, and that is what?

For too long, a kind of one-way discourse has been in effect, breached by too few valiant individuals and groups. We can speak of a loss of solidarity flowing across the Atlantic between north and south, east and west. Without wanting to advocate any kind of anarcho-tourism or the colonial approach of the wholesale export-import political programs of the activist left, I’m in favor of strengthening our international networks in the face of an increased technocratic authoritarianism. To remain locked up in our local areas without considering the struggles elsewhere is self-defeating, as repressive operations seek to confine us and stem our anarchic contagion specifically to promote sterility. Can we renew an Atlantic bridge that connects our tendencies, that connects the uprisings in the North American metropolises to those in Europe, Latin America and Asia? Can we join together the struggles of the long-term COINTELPRO prisoners with those elsewhere in the global prison industrial complex? Continue reading “From Coast to Coast: Open Letter by Anarchist Prisoner Toby Shone” →

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

————————–

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” →