Skip to content

"In the Dark Nights there is always the warmth of the fire!"

  • Contact
  • Distro
  • Direct Action
  • PGP Key
  • Financial Solidarity

Tag: Text

Italy: Statement of Juan Sorroche in front of the court of Treviso and against the telematization of the democratic inquisition.

Posted on 2022/06/18 - 2022/06/18 by darknights

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.” →

Posted in Prison StruggleTagged 'indiscriminate massacre', Anarchist Prisoners, AS2 (High Security 2), Cell Haris Hatzimihelakis/Black International, Covid-19, DNA Sample, Italy, Juan Sorroche, Terni prison, Text, Videoconference

Greece: Georgia Volugari and Thanos Xatziagkelou start hunger strike in solidarity with the anarchist comrade Giannis Michailidis.

Posted on 2022/06/18 - 2022/06/18 by darknights

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 Volugari and Thanos Xatziagkelou start hunger strike in solidarity with the anarchist comrade Giannis Michailidis.” →

Posted in Prison StruggleTagged Anarchist Prisoners, Claudio Lavazza, George Ibrahim Abdallah, Georgia Voulgari, Giannis Michailidis, Greece, Hunger Strike, Korydallos prison, Organization Anarchist Action, Text, Thanos Chatziaggelou

Athens, Greece: Political text by Anarchist Georgia Voulgari, a prisoner in the women’s prison of Korydallos

Posted on 2022/05/23 - 2022/05/23 by darknights

Political text by Georgia Voulgari, a prisoner in the women’s prison of Korydallos.

We are in a daily war, a war with the status quo, with every form of power that eats away at our lives, and in this war I realized where I belong. In a world where patriarchy rapes and kills us, where capitalism crushes us, impoverishing what we call life, in this world where humanity itself dominates nature and animals, perpetuating anthropocentric thinking and speciesism. So I chose sides. For the power complex will not destroy itself, no social change will come about unless our action transcends reformist logics, having a will to believe and a commitment to our ideas, putting theory into practice.

I proudly declare myself anarchist, proud that in this rotten society, the society of submission and spectacle, I did not bow my head before exploitation and power and chose to stand next to comrades who, by supporting the multiform struggle, also wrote their own page in the revolutionary historical memory. So far, living my new life next to them, in squats, through their common struggles for freedom, I learned what solidarity and comradeship is, what it means to give everything for what you believe in even if you are going to lose your freedom. I take the political responsibility that is due to me for my complicity in the incendiary attack that took place on 8/2 at the Foundation for National and Religious Reflection. A fragmentary action, which was not carried out by an organisation, namely the Anarchist Action organisation of which I am accused as a member, but was motivated by the desires and anger of two people against religious obscurantism, patriarchy and state power. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Political text by Anarchist Georgia Voulgari, a prisoner in the women’s prison of Korydallos” →

Posted in Social ControlTagged 187A, Anarchist Prisoners, Athens, Georgia Voulgari, Greece, IETF (Foundation for National and Religious Reflection), Incendiary Attack, Korydallos prison, Korydallos womens prison, Organization Anarchist Action, Panos Kalaitzis, Text, Thanos Chatziaggelou

UK: Contribution from anarchist comrade Toby Shone for a postponed prison abolition event hosted by Bristol Anti-Repression Campaign

Posted on 2022/05/21 - 2022/05/21 by darknights

This statement from Toby Shone on prison abolition was recorded and transcribed from HM Prison Parc in Bridgend, Wales, UK. It was his contribution to a prison abolition event due to be hosted by Bristol Anti-Repression Campaign on 8 May 2022 but which was postponed until a later date yet to be decided.

Hello Everyone

This is Toby Shone. I’m an imprisoned anarchist held in G4S Parc. It’s a slave labour camp holding 1,800 men in South Wales run by the security multinational on a government contract providing dirt cheap labour for private companies.

I was captured by the anti-terrorist unit during Operation Adream in November 2020. First I want to thank you for listening and also the opportunity provided by Bristol Anti-Repression Coalition. Moments like this break the isolation we feel as prisoners and they also give us a chance to participate and to speak out. There are many reasons to oppose prisons and the current judicial system and as an anarchist I can’t separate the anti-prison struggle from the struggle against the State and civilisation and I’m going to return to this later. But now I’ll briefly give an account of some of the joint struggles inside prison.

I’ve never sought to hide my perspectives while I’ve been here and I’ve been subject to a lot of State intimidation and scrutiny because of that and I’ve never backed down. The prisons in the UK are mostly filthy and overcrowded, lacking basic resources, degrading and decaying.

In London I was held in the prison within the prison alongside Jihadis, Russian-Italian-Ukrainian mafia, postcode war gang members, high level money launderers and so on. Overall we all got on well with each other, even with high levels of violence and on average one death or suicide each month. There we had a laundry room where we could meet, play cards, and talk. We’d exchange books and ideas as well as our hopes and fears. And because of this social area, the administration moved to shut down our laundry and move it off wing. So we had a small struggle to keep it open, spreading a unity between all the groups, collecting 200 signatures for our petition and also it was almost every man that signed it there on H block. It might seem a minor struggle but in prison everything small becomes of a huge significance because you have almost nothing but your dignity and only you can give that away. And it’s important for our decency to have clean clothes and bedsheets, pillowcases and so on. And if the laundry was moved off wing this couldn’t be guaranteed and nobody wanted to have their clothes stolen or damaged and it’s almost impossible to get any more. And it would also mean that we would have to suffer the inability to wash our clothes more than once a week and that’s even if the scheme ran correctly. In practice, in prison, nothing works as it should and it’s intended to be that way, to make life as difficult as possible. Suffice to say, our petition was completely ignored by the authorities and the imprisoned fellow in charge of running the laundry lost his job and was moved prison as a kind of punishment because he was blamed for stirring up trouble. In prisons, the administrations are very scared of anything even slightly challenging to their power. We have to consider these intermediate struggles very well, but we must never give up our stances. Continue reading “UK: Contribution from anarchist comrade Toby Shone for a postponed prison abolition event hosted by Bristol Anti-Repression Campaign” →

Posted in Prison StruggleTagged Anarchist Prisoners, Anti-Prison, Brigend, Bristol, Bristol Anti-Repression Campaign, HMP Parc, Operation Adream, Prison, Prison Abolition, SCPO (Serious Crime Prevention Orders), Text, Toby Shone, UK, Wales

Greece: Thanos Chatziaggelou – During a witch hunt, pride is hidden in the fire beam

Posted on 2022/04/23 - 2022/05/18 by darknights

Thanos Chatziaggelou – During a witch hunt, pride is hidden in the fire beam

Since the first day of my arrest, I have consciously chosen to keep a consistent position and refused to cooperate with the prosecution and interrogation authorities. Every time I spoke, I did it to claim certain historical and political responsibilities. Responsibilities towards my individual and collective path in the acts of revolutionary violence, as well as towards two of my comrades, on whose names from the very first moment the anti-terrorist unit tries to personify the lost pieces of the puzzle of the so-called deracination of Anarchist Action.

In this case, beyond what is objectively true and what is a lie, the greatest danger lies behind the political goals of the anti-terrorist unit. So, what are the shocking pieces of evidence of the service, infamous for its methodical lies: A ridiculous anonymous phone call that names me personally as the one responsible for a set of arson attacks in the region of Thessaloniki (a phone call whose number I assume is going to be missed in the trial by the hackers of the service), surveillance of ambiguous quality and origin taken from my personal daily life, my arrest together with my companion Georgia Voulgari in the house of Panos Kalaitzis, where I had in my possession a set of confiscated items that are named as “arsenal” and two clear political statements: the common responsibility claim of one and only arson attack at the FNRC from me and my companion and my personal responsibility claim of being a member of the Anarchist Action. Continue reading “Greece: Thanos Chatziaggelou – During a witch hunt, pride is hidden in the fire beam” →

Posted in Social ControlTagged Georgia Voulgari, Greece, IETF (Foundation for National and Religious Reflection), Korydallos prison, Organization Anarchist Action, Panagiotis Kalaitzis, Repression, Text, Thanos Chatziaggelou

Athens, Greece: Text of two imprisoned comrades Fotis D. and Iasonas R.

Posted on 2022/04/14 by darknights

Athens, Greece: Text of two imprisoned comrades

Comrades, we are writing to you from the penitentiary hellholes of Korydallos and Avloras, two more detention centres, both of which aim at our physical confinement and remorse of our political conscience. By making our case public, we would like the reason for our detention and evidence of the practices of the EΛ.ΑΣ National Police used against us to come out.

In the early hours of 14 November 2021 we didn’t stop during a check carried out by a DIAS cops bikes team in the area of New Faliro. Immediately a chase was launched against us by a civilian vehicle that did not bear the characteristics of the service. As white people, we did not receive a plethora of bullets, but in the area of Moschato, the car rammed us while we were moving and threw us on the road (with a high risk of being fatally injured). Our arrest was linked to an attack on the Piraeus traffic police earlier that night, which took place more than three kilometers from the checkpoint (the checkpoint was being controlled by fixed units outside the stinking Skye channel). We were taken to the ΓΑΔΑ, (Athens Police HQ) where we refused to give fingerprints, which, as well as genetic material, were ordered to be compulsorily taken a day before we went before an interrogator in an attempt to identify us with the evidence found in the attack and with previous cases. With invalid evidence against us, it was decided to remand us in custody on the pretext of identical clothing, as shown by video footage from the department.

This case is a fiasco and a desperate attempt by the police to win a major victory and legitimize the new criminal code in the eyes of the public. A decisive role in this is played by the state disinformation media, which first ran to prejudge us, using against us evidence with no legal basis – they talked about a yafka house(safe-house), an explosives manufacturing plant and spread false news about the first Molotov cocktail detention in Greece, thus exaggerating the work of the police and the necessity of the changes in the criminal code. The changes to article 272 and how they relate to the changes to 264 and 270 are intended to spread terror in the anarchist/anti-racist movement, to anyone who resists or questions the sovereignty of the state and its partners. As anarchists we are not surprised by this case and how it has developed so far, we do not believe in bourgeois justice and have no illusions about who it serves. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Text of two imprisoned comrades Fotis D. and Iasonas R.” →

Posted in Social ControlTagged Anarchist Prisoners, Athens, Avlona prison, DIAS, Fotis D., Greece, Iasona R, Korydallos prison, Text

Reclaim Your Mind : Manifesto – An Urgent Message for all those who have or are in danger of being labelled mentally ill

Posted on 2022/04/08 - 2022/04/08 by darknights

Above: Chilean uncontrollables clash with riot police in Santiago, Chile, during widespread rioting on July 14, 2011.

“There they were, the voracious youth again, destroying everything, erecting barricades, clashing with police, nothing could stop them… There is fire and passion in their hearts, love and hatred on their insides, courage and decision. The beauty of chaos has returned to grace the streets, it is not only fire that adorns the asphalt, it is also the energy of the youth, the abolition of the sexes, everyone in the struggle… Will this struggle bear fruit? To want to study just to be someone in life? The individual who goes searching for real happiness, does not stop at so little, she knows that she can educate herself, and although that path is longer, that doesn’t make it less interesting, because everything else is interminable…” (Circulo Individualista Aves del Fuego)

Download: PDF zine version by Dark Matter Publications.

+ Spanish translation: Cover & Contents.

Urgent message for all those who have or are in danger of being labelled mentally ill

Selling cures for the problems they created
It is well known that depression has been on a steady rise in the past few decades. This increase apparently isn’t about to stop since the World Health Organization (WHO) recently predicted that, by 2020, depression would be the second most prevalent health problem in the world, just below heart disease, and offered as an explanation that this was due to a previous underestimation of the number of people suffering from this “illness”.

Couldn’t the increasing feeling of emptiness and worthlessness characteristic of depression be related to the society we live in, at a time when people lose themselves in consumption and mass entertainment to avoid thinking about their miserable life, their economic survival or the ongoing destruction of the planet? While the “experts” paid by pharmacology corporations will invariably answer that depression is a brain disorder due to a “chemical imbalance”, the result of some faulty genes they have yet to identity, we cannot help to wonder how this could not be environmental considering there was no such thing as depression in Africa before colonization?

Depression has widely been touted as endemic to the 20-something generation. Severe depression is 10 times more prevalent today than it was 50 years ago, and it strikes a full decade earlier in life on average than it did a generation ago. Such feelings and behaviours testify to frustration and despair that have nowhere to go when the social landscape is so frozen. Disaffection or even opposition are quickly marketed into sellable style images; alienation as fashion. Meanwhile suicide, perhaps the ultimate regression, has been on a steady rise for several decades.
– John Zerzan

Continue reading “Reclaim Your Mind : Manifesto – An Urgent Message for all those who have or are in danger of being labelled mentally ill” →

Posted in Cognitive Liberty, LibraryTagged 325, Anti-Psychiatry, Dark Matter Publications, Reclaim Your Mind : Manifesto, Text, War on Kids, Zine

UK: Against their war, against their peace, for insurrection, freedom and anarchy

Posted on 2022/03/02 - 2022/03/02 by darknights

A3 pdf

A4 pdf

AGAINST THEIR WAR- AGAINST THEIR PEACE!

Under our noses the imperialist armies are massing in Ukraine, make no mistake, they are preparing, yet again, for a generalised slaughter. The British Army are already deploying troops and ‘high tech’ weapons, including missile systems to be installed along the Ukrainian coast. The Russian Army are similarly massing thousands of troops along the border, preparing for all out war.

Ukraine is of ‘strategic’ interest in the ongoing energy crisis engulfing Europe. One set of oligarchs want to place a new pipeline carrying world-poisoning fuel from Russia to the west. Another set want to frustrate these attempts to profit their own national bourgeousie. In addition to this, the U.S. and the U.K. want to bring Ukraine into ‘Nato’, their gangster-imperialist international formation which dreams only of endless war and plunder, especially now Afghanistan has been looted for all its worth, of fossil fuels as well as its opium (which continues to flood the western cities, the spoils of war!). Russia also has brutal imperialist ambitions, the only way their disgusting government of tin-pot autocrats, thieves and murderers can perpetuate itself is to redraw the class tension in Russian society into a nationalistic clash between Russia and ‘the west’.

Accordingly, this provides excellent cover for their sponsorship of real state terror, rather than the laughable antics which the british media focusses on, of providing assistance at every level to the grey beuraucrat manikins, all basically interchangable, who run Belarus and Kazakhstan, enriching themselves and those who can bribe them, while using their police to stamp on any sign of courageous upheaval.

Continue reading “UK: Against their war, against their peace, for insurrection, freedom and anarchy” →

Posted in LibraryTagged AGAINST THEIR WAR- AGAINST THEIR PEACE!, Anarchists, Anarchy, Insurrection, NATO, PDF, Russia Ukraine War, Text, UK

Spoleto, Italy: NOI NON CI ARRUOLIAMO – WE DO NOT ENLIST IT/EN

Posted on 2022/03/02 - 2022/03/06 by darknights

NOI NON CI ARRUOLIAMO

Alla fine la guerra è arrivata. Dopo due anni di preparazione alla guerra, di canti, bandiere, disciplinamento, quel «siamo in guerra» annunciato a partire dalla primavera del 2020 è infine realtà. Le tragiche notizie che vengono dall’Ucraina sono la miccia che si andava cercando per la militarizzazione definitiva della nostra società.

Le guerre sono sempre un bagno di sangue per gli sfruttati e un ricco affare per i padroni. Non ci interessano le contrapposte ragioni della propaganda dei belligeranti. Gli sfruttati in Russia come in Ucraina, in Italia come negli Stati Uniti sono i nostri fratelli, il loro sangue è il nostro sangue. I governi, i generali, gli industriali, i finanzieri sono i nostri nemici, i nostri carnefici, i nostri affamatori.

L’arrogante e insaziabile espansione trentennale della NATO e la crisi interna della Russia sono state la miscela per la situazione esplosiva nella quale ci troviamo gettati. Da una parte, una lunga serie di precedenti imperialistici come i bombardamenti in Serbia, le guerre in Afghanistan e in Iraq, il sostegno a bande criminali come quelle che governano l’Ucraina, dove i sindacalisti vengono bruciati vivi; dall’altra, dei regimi, come quelli di Putin e Lukašenko, che si tengono in piedi con la colla della paranoia da accerchiamento e le nostalgie imperiali, dove gli anarchici e gli oppositori vengono arrestati e torturati. Di fronte a tutto questo schifo nessun fronte è il nostro. I nostri nemici non sono gli sfruttati dall’altra parte del fronte, ma i governanti tutti, a partire da quelli di casa nostra. Continue reading “Spoleto, Italy: NOI NON CI ARRUOLIAMO – WE DO NOT ENLIST IT/EN” →

Posted in LibraryTagged Anarchists, Anti-Militarist, Italy, NATO, PDF, Russia Ukraine War, Spoleto, Text

Rome, Italy: Texts and materials distributed during the initiative of 26/11/21 at Bencivenga + Contributions of Alfredo Cospito and Juan Sorroche

Posted on 2022/02/20 by darknights

We receive and publish a series of texts and materials distributed during the initiative in solidarity with the Chilean prisoners, held at the Bencivenga Occupato on November 26, 2021. Two booklets: one on the hunger strike conducted by prisoners in Chile, the other is a collection of texts, many translated from the magazine Kalinov Most, which were intended to better focus the topics of the debate: the specific reality of Chilean prisons, solidarity, fight against prison. There are also two contributions of Juan and Alfredo for the initiative, which they asked to be disseminated.

UNTIL THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PRISON-SOCIETY

(leaflet of introduction to the debate distributed during the initiative)

This initiative was born with the need to send, in our own small way, a gesture of solidarity to the comrades prisoners in Chile who in the first months of this year have undertaken two hard hunger strikes. We want to support them, also through the translations contained in the pamphlets prepared for this meeting, by spreading the determination with which they have carried out their struggle inside the prison, with the aim of feeling it closer to us who are outside those walls and far from those territories. Although at the end of their mobilization the prisoners did not get all that they demanded, it still allowed them to build and establish bonds of complicity, both inside and outside the prison. Ties that have made this struggle transcend barriers and borders and that, since it has clearly positioned itself against all forms of coercion and domination, have made it recognizable and vindicable by refractory people all over the world.

But it is not for simple voyeurism towards distant rebellions that we are here today. With this initiative we also intend to underline our complicity with our comrades who today are prisoners of the State, so that they know that they are not alone. Also in this part of the world we have anarchist prisoners who have recently conducted several struggles inside the prison. Struggles conducted individually or collectively, strikes and mass uprisings such as those of March 2020 against pandemic management inside prisons. Struggles whose quality, to take up a concept expressed with emphasis in the contribution that Juan, a prisoner in the Terni prison, wrote for this initiative, is closely related to the relationships that exist between inside and outside the prison. These relationships are the same on which prisoners and Chilean comrades have repeatedly insisted, stating that “the prison is part of the options of the struggle, it is part of it and therefore, instead of being a parenthesis or a pause, it is configured as one more scenario in which to carry out the clash” and that it is necessary to understand “the prisoner as an active comrade, in struggle, who is in this particular condition as a result of a chosen path that does not end within [those] four walls”. Relationships in which it is necessary to invest if we want to recognize a prisoner as our comrade, as a complicit in the struggle against all power, especially at this time when these relationships are under attack. The latest repressive operations in Italy have in fact, among others, the purpose of hitting the communication between the world outside and inside the prison, putting pressure on the epistolary communication through which prisoners continue to be part of the anarchist debate and struggle, providing reflections, contributions, proposals for action and stimuli for action. Now more than ever it is therefore the time to increase efforts in the direction of greater communication and complicity with the prisoners, having as its objective not mere support in the charitable way, but rather the reinforcement of our offensive capacity against this system of domination and exploitation. Continue reading “Rome, Italy: Texts and materials distributed during the initiative of 26/11/21 at Bencivenga + Contributions of Alfredo Cospito and Juan Sorroche” →

Posted in Prison StruggleTagged Alfredo Cospito, Anarchist Prisoners, Bencivenga Occupato, Black International, Chile, Francisco Solar Domínguez, Hunger Strike, International Solidarity, Italy, Juan Sorroche, Monica Caballero Sepulveda, Rome, Terni prison, Text

Posts navigation

Older posts

Event updates for the hunger strike of anarchist comrade Giannis Michailidis

Categories

  • Anti-Fascism
  • Autonomy
  • Cognitive Liberty
  • Direct Action
  • Eco Struggle
  • General
  • Interviews
  • Library
  • Prison Struggle
  • Social Control
Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: micro, developed by DevriX.