★ GREECE ALERT: TWO ANARCHISTS MEMBERS OF ROUVIKONAS THREATENED WITH A LIFE SENTENCE!

Via Anarchists of London

Alert and call for support before the trial on October 13 2021!

SUPPORT FOR GIORGOS KALAITZIDIS AND NIKOS MATARAGKAS FROM THE ANARCHIST COLLECTIVE – ROUVIKONAS.

A Kafkaesque trial awaits Giorgos and Nikos on October 13th, based on false accusations. This attempted criminalisation of the social movement might result in life imprisonment for these two political activists. Their exemplary group has obviously become too disturbing for the state. A new international mobilisation is necessary.

The facts : On 7 June, 2016, a drug dealer is executed in Athens, in the district of Exarcheia. This execution is claimed by a self-defense collective named “Militia of the People Armed”, which declared that the drug dealer had behaved with threats and violence in Exarcheia, not just towards anarchist members of the social movements, but also towards other inhabitants of the district.#

Three years passed. No member of Rouvikonas is targeted by the investigation. In July 2019, Kyriakos Mitsotakis comes into power and pledges, among other things, to end “by all means” Rouvikonas, renowned all over the country for its actions of solidarity and its resistance clearly unrelated to this kind of action. Eight months later, in march 2020, an investigating judge takes over the case and charges two Rouvikonas activists : Nikos Mataragkas and Giorgos Kalaitzidis, with homicide and  incitement to murder.

But in June 2020, after their hearing at the prosecution, they are both released without bail and the lawsuits are dropped.

In April 2021, although the file against the members of Rouvikonas is empty, the State and its mechanisms of abruptly decide to charge Giorgos and Nikos, based on false accusations and their trial is rescheduled on October 13 2021!

The goal is to also harm the image of Rouvikonas and to criminalise the social movement in Greece – just as the Colonels in power did fifty years ago.

We give our full support to Giorgos Kalaitzidis and Nikos Mataragkas and we demand the immediate termination of the proceedings.

Let’s not let anyone among us be the isolated prey of power.

International Committee of support to Giorgos Kalaitzidis and Nikos Mataragkas

We are calling to reinforce the International Committee of Support: soutien@rouvikfrancophone.net (send your first and last name, and join the signatories).

We also invite people to support them and Rouvikonas financially, as proceedings are not limited to this trial: the group is frequently the subject of legal action (in total and for for now to the next coming months, the legal expenses are expected to amount to over €10,000): https://fr.gofundme.com/f/soutien-giorgos-et-nikos-athnes

Soutien à Giorgos et Nikos à Athènes organisée par Philippe Guillard

POINT INFO LE 23/09/2021. Nous venons de dépasser les 1500 euros !… Philippe Guillard a besoin de votre soutien pour Soutien à Giorgos et Nikos à Athènes

We are at last calling, for those who can, for a rally of support on the day of the trial: Wednesday, October 13th at 9:00 A.M, at the Efeteio Courthouse, 4 Degleri, Athens. Pictures of long-distance actions of support are also welcome.

Acting Locally, Thinking Globally With Rouvikonas Anarchist Collective

[CC: English, Greek, French] Unicorn Riot sat down with Thanos, a member of Rouvikonas (Greek: Ρουβίκωνας) who works as a server for a living.Since 2013, the…

Reflections on the passing of the D of E.

D of E mid left, her maj the Q sixth from left, King of the jungle (deceased) foreground.

What can one say about an old man that died? Lifelong family man and public* servant, went to war, dedicated to the nation – ah, that old manifestation of class antagonisms. Nothing to speak of, nothing that couldn’t be said of countless unknown Working Class folk, many of whom will have died on the battlefield or perished in prison and poverty inflicted by the British ruling class, unsung and un-celebrated. No cannon fired for these – not yet.

* The word ‘public’ as in -interest, -property, -safety, -ownership, etc, means nothing more than ‘state’; and the state doesn’t represent any people, just a mode of production.

That he was so casually racist he was blissfully unaware of it, that when he used his influence he pushed downwards and backwards, that he was habitually miserable to animals and foreigners despite being one himself. Of course, when you’re a member of a European dynasty, descendant of the Romanov tyrants, grandson of the Prince Of Battenberg, cousin of the British Queen and heir to the Greek and Danish thrones, place of birth doesn’t count, borders are only for plebs*.

* In case you needed reminding, borders are there to maintain differentials in prices and wages, which boost the mark-up on manufacturing.

The nation that rejoices in drowning refugees sent a warship for the Greek royal family then under the Truman doctrine hired a gang of Nazi war criminals to wipe out its victorious wartime resistance and keep its people in check. Not a peep out of the blunt-speaking Phillip as his people became the underdogs of Europe, playthings of the C.I.A. and international capital. The self-described “refugee” likewise had nothing to say about the latter day asylum-seekers deported from his homeland in defiance of international law. You can’t credibly claim to be apolitical when laws are enacted, parliament convened and wars declared in the name of your ol’ lady.

A conservationist who shot a tiger, along with a crocodile and six mountain sheep on holiday in India and allegedly accounted for over thirty thousand peasants. I’m no vegan, but could a chap eat thirty thousand pheasants in a lifetime? That’s getting on for one a day.

Now don’t mistake me for someone who gives a shit, we will see his like again, and again. I’m only driven to comment by the shameless hypocrisy. His long awaited demise couldn’t have come at a better time for the executive with its institutions universally discredited. Pfeffle’s long-winded grandstanding, even to the extent of celebrating the Duke’s verbal gaffes, surpassed only by his own, is a exercise in bad taste. Career brown-nose Keir Starmer will struggle to get his head out of there before they bury the old codger, and even Sinn Fein queued dutifully to kiss the royal sphincter.

The Duke is a poster boy for the ruling class’ fascist revival: ultra-conservative, obedient, grateful, backward-looking and dedicated to the fiction of national interest. Keep your place, one step behind, take what you can get, never complain and never do anything worth mentioning.

– Mal Content.

EN/ES/DE/FR – ‘On the tightrope: Contributions and considerations from and for the anarchic combat’ – Letter by imprisoned anarchist comrade Francisco Solar

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On July 24, 2020, the anarchist comrades Monica Caballero and Francisco Solar were arrested. Francisco is accused of sending package bombs against the 54th police station and against the former Minister of the Interior, Rodrigo Hinzpeter, in July 2019, in an action claimed by “Seditious Accomplices/Fraction for Revenge“. While both are also accused of the double explosive attack against the Tánica building in the wealthy neighborhood of Vitacura on February 27, 2020, during the middle of the uprising in Chile, which was an action claimed by “Armed Affinities in Revolt“.

Both comrades are known not only for this case of repression, they have faced different repressive operations in Chile and Spain previously, but they are also known in the different environments of struggle, being active in publications, demonstrations, radio programs and initiatives against power.

On the tightrope: Contributions and considerations from and for the anarchic combat.

This text aims to contribute to the development and deepening of the informal anarchic combat, taking into consideration the increasingly specialized technological advances of control and surveillance of the population in general and, specially, of those who venture to rebel against what is established.

It arises from the need to bash the power harder and constantly in order to create cracks that can keep on growing.

It comes as no surprise to anyone

Read more

#Corona Capitalism: six ways capitalism spreads the crisis

Corporate watch

Are people sunbathing in parks the real villains of the corona crisis? What about the corporations pushing industrial agriculture, Big Pharma companies locking up drug research, or the investment funds draining health services? What about the bosses refusing their workers paid leave, media barons spreading fear for ad-clicks, or governments using a pandemic as cover for power grabs?

This article looks at a few ways the economic system we call capitalism has been fundamental in spreading the virus – and in fostering a wider crisis of panic, repression, and looming poverty. And this is by no means a complete list. The general point is that capitalism, based on prioritising profits over people’s lives, is incapable of serving our health and well-being. To care for each other now and in the future, can we use our anger to fight for change?

Feature image above: occupation of Deutsche Bank owned building to create a mutual aid hub in Chicago, US

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COMMON STATEMENT OF APO and DAF AGAINST WAR, FASCISM AND RACISM, SOLIDARITY WITH THE REFUGEES AND IMMIGRANTS!

Anarsist Faaliyet    English version reproduced in full.

War and fascism are the only “response” the system can give to its own deep and total crisis, to its own contradictions that result from its basic principle – the oppression and exploitation of one human being by another.

At a global level, the political and economic bosses are attempting an unconditional attack against the people of the capitalist periphery through war, military operations, subversion of regimes and enforcement of new ones, aiming to control whole areas, sources of wealth, even whole populations. This is a condition in which millions of people are condemned to poverty, sickness and forced immigration as a prerequisite for ensuring the over-accumulation of wealth in the hands of global financial elites and for the rearrangement of geopolitical balance of power in the context of international competitions between global, regional and local powers.

The thousands of refugees and immigrants arriving the last few days in the Greek-Turkish borders with the hope of escaping war and misery, in search of a better life, are coming against the murderous and racist politics of the EU and the Greek State. Military and police forces and parastatal groups have blocked their way. They do not hesitate to use even live ammunition to prevent their passage to the interior of Fortress-Europe.

For the Greek State, adopting the role of the border guard and imposing a modern apartheid in its interior with thousands of refugees and immigrants being trapped in concentration camps, is another statement of its commitment to the policies of European Union and NATO’s war machine, being an integral part of it, participating actively in the war conflicts by sending military forces, warships and missile systems.

For the state of Turkey that continues the war operations, aiming to the extermination of the Kurdish people, and escalates the military intervention and occupation of Northern Syria with the support of Islamist groups, the entrapment of millions of refugees and immigrants in its territory – as a result of the Turkey-EU agreement- and the promotion of thousands of them in the borders of Evros is another tool to serve its political agenda in the wider region of the Middle East.

Both the states of Greece and Turkey are promoting nationalism, intolerance and the rhetoric of hatred within the context of their increasing rivalry. Their target is to spread fear within society, to convince the social majority, which is plundered and brutally exploited by the state and the bosses, that they share common interests with the political and economic ruling elites.

Fascists in Greece are causing the massacre of the immigrants who manage to reach the islands on the Aegean Sea, by preventing them from stepping off the boats on the shore; with the support of the Greek police they are torturing the immigrants at the border line along the Evros river and are sending the immigrants who crossed the river back to the Turkish side of the border. In the same manner, fascists in Turkey are attacking immigrants from Syria who have taken refuge to Turkey, in the neighborhoods, torturing them and threatening to send them to Europe by destroying their homes and shops.

As anarchists from both sides of the Aegean Sea, we believe that the prospect of war societies, of poverty and impoverishment, the resurgence of nationalism and social fascistization will have devastating results to humanity. We are convinced that class and internationalist solidarity between the people, the organized counterattack of the exploited and the overturn of the world of state and capitalism at a global level can set the terms for the creation of a society of prosperity, equality, peace and justice without exploitation, wars and disorienting rivalries.

FREE MOVEMENT AND DECENT LIVING CONDITIONS FOR IMMIGRANTS AND REFUGEES

THE STATES THAT FIGHT AGAINST THE PEOPLE WILL BE DEFEATED

SOLIDARITY WITHOUT BORDERS!

Devrimci Anarşist Faaliyet (DAF) / Turkey

Anarchist Political Organization-Federation of Collectives (ΑPO) / Greece

Greece: Anarchist Kostas Sakkas starts hunger strike

Originally published by Blog YY. Translated by Enough 14.

Deprived of several of his fundamental rights for six months in the Korydallos prison, including the possibility of studying, Kostas sakkas wrote this open letter yesterday (December 16, 2019, Enough 14):

“Over the past six months in Korydallos prison, I have been imposed an informal exceptional regime, depriving me of the right for benefits, excluding me from educational programmes, forbidding me to carry out any activity within the prison and anything that could help me to support and improve my situation.

As of today, December 16, I start a hunger strike in order to put an end to the exceptional regime that I am subjected to, as for all the other prisoners and comrades in struggle.

Kostas SAKKAS, December 16, 2019
Korydallos prison, Athens.”

Autonomy Film show in Bridport 17th November 2019: Unsense Me!

Solidarity with Exarcheia! | Statement

Reproduced in full from Organise Magazine

On Monday the 26th of August, the Greek police launched a large operation in Exarcheia, the famous rebel district in the centre of Athens. This is a unique place in Europe for its high concentration of squats and other self-organised spaces, but also for its resistance against repression and solidarity with migrants and the precariat.

Early in the morning, the squats of Spirou Trikoupi 17, Gare, Rosa de Fon and Transito were surrounded by huge police forces: anti-riot police, anti-terrorism police and secret police. The police then launched a large repression operation, leading to over 100 arrests. Migrants have been sent to camps known for inhuman living conditions. More than 15 kids that grew up in Athens and had their life there were deported. The security forces are now walling up the buildings that used to be home to so many.

This operation aimed to directly attack the incredible solidarity efforts that were developed by a network of people, many of them anarchists, to cope with the austerity measures the Greek state and the EU implemented.

It aimed to destroy a neighbourhood that has invented a new world where it has been possible to exist and live regardless of your economical, social or cultural background.

It aimed to keep Exarcheia under the control of a violent state that, like the rest of Europe, is ready to put humans in camps, simply because they were born on the other side of a border.

Exarcheia has many other squats, around 20, but the newly elected Greek prime minister promised a complete “cleaning”. More battles are to come.

The Anarchist Federation is expressing its full support to everyone in Exarcheia.

For a future without state, police or borders. ■

Solidarity! αλληλεγγύη!

Anarchist Federation

Additional from the Editor:-

Since this morning when the evictions took place Spirou Trikoupi 17 put out the call for people to gather and have taken a stand.

” Here, in Spirou Trikoupi 17 we have lived more than 2.000 people, coming from more than 10 different countries, and that we have crossed, at least, 3 borders till here. This wall that the state is building to seal the entrance will never be able to stop us!

See you at 6pm the solidarity assembly towards the squats in Notara 26 “

Since the evictions police have rounded up immigrants who will be dragged through the system and government workers have bricked up the doorways to peoples homes.

As night has fallen the police have taken a aggressive stance against the locals and tooled up with riot gear have taken to the streets for what is sure to be yet another night of horrific state violence.

Follow them & the AF for updates.
Spirou Trikoupi17
Anarchist Federation

External reports on what is happening from the ground.
Enough is Enough
Squat.net

Solidarity with Rouvikonas!

Anarchist Communist Group.

The ACG recently received the following communication from the Greek Anarchist Federation concerning state repression against members of the Rouvikonas (Rubicon) group.

Solidarity with Rouvikonas (group-member of Anarchist Federation – Greece)

STATEMENT AGAINST REPRESSION OF RESISTANCE IN GREECE

After being identified following the attack of the Parliament on May 21st – An action in support of Dimitris Koufontinas, a comrade imprisoned for life on a hunger strike – two activists must collect 60,000 euros before 14 June, otherwise they will spend until 10 years in jail.Links to the financial support below.

The Prime Minister and Ministry of Justice are once and for all trying to put away Giorgos Kalaïtzidis, co-founder of ROUVIKONAS and Niko, both members of the same group and famous Greek resistance fighters. In fact, both are prosecuted not for a civil offense, but this time for a crime. By utilising an old law on the protection of historic monuments of great value – a law almost never used, intended for the likes of the Acropolis or Delphi – the state has found a way to trap our comrades who until now were always careful not to cross this legal boundary into committing criminal offenses.

As a result, Giorgos and Nikos face 10-years in prison and are being asked to pay a gigantic security deposit of 30,000 euros each (60,000 euros in total) by the 14th of June2, that is, three weeks before the legislative elections. The will to use the law to quickly to lock up several well-known members of the group and to offer a resounding media show is clear. The hardening of the repression against the group (whose last sentence in April amounted to 3,000 euros or ten times less) is one of the aspects of the state manipulating public opinion right now. As a part of the European and local elections, Tsipras,- the Greek Prime Minister – has just initiated early parliamentary elections and will play his role on the 7th of July as an outsider facing the right. The right center of the electoral spectrum hates Exarchaia (a district of Athens well known for art and resistance), the Anarchists and other revolutionaries, and is preparing to enable Mitsotakis -the leader of the right – to “evacuate Exarcheia in a month” and to “imprison the red and black bandits”

For the past two months, Tsipras has been striking with all the horrors on the right and flexing his position of authority: six refugee squats have been evacuated, the Exarcheia district daily harassed by the police, a TV show about the district which announces its near end, the political prisoner Koufontinas brutally deprived of his supervised exit permits to see his son, and now members of Rouvikonas about to go to jail.

This attack on the resistance movement in Greece is probably the hardest since Tsipras came to power. No group has resisted so much in recent years as Rouvikonas: daily, like an elixir the against resignation that Tsipras is trying to provoke. Almost every day, we have heard about Anarchy and resistance in the news and in the press. Almost every day, more and more people said that nothing is finished. Because our solidarity is as unbreakable as is our will to fight.We will stand and support our comrades everywhere, by all means, as we struggle.

Support Giorgos, Nikos and all members of ROUVIKONAS!

Call for solidarity actions everywhere outside Greece! – as just happened two nights ago in front of the Greek Embassy in Paris. Please inform us for every solidarity action in Anarchist Federation’s mail: (anarchist-federation@riseup.net)

Call for financial support! If you are unable to donate, please share.
Even if we do not succeed in preventing the imprisonment of Giorgos and Nikos, other members of the group will at least be able to escape other less severe sanctions and continue the struggle.

1. To participate in the call for financial support (before June 14th), Le Pot Commun with all the information is here.

To send cash directly, ROUVIKONAS will soon be on tour in Italy, Switzerland, France and Belgium, from 1 to 9 June. Spiros will take care of it with us. All details of the tour here.

To proceed by transfer, contact : rouvikonas@espiv.net

To proceed by paypal, contact : rouvikonasfrancophone@riseup.net

And if you come to Athens before June 14th:
See you at K*Vox every day, starting at 16:00 (Exarcheia Place).

2. Presentation of Rouvikonas (10 minutes):

International May Day roundup

Anarchist Communist Group

In France there were many large demonstrations in cities and towns, In Paris, there was a march of some 2,000 anarchists on the morning of May 1st. This was followed by the main march with a turnout from the usual unions and left parties, but with also the turnout of both feminists and Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) who are increasingly radicalising. This was met with a massive police presence, who attacked demonstrators with batons and gas.

 Two thousand demonstrated in the centre of Rennes. Several thousands demonstrated at Toulouse, where again demonstrators were attacked with many tear gas grenades by police. There were two thousand demonstrators at Orleans, and between nine to eleven thousand demonstrators at Lyon, with a large anarchist bloc. There was a very large anarchist contingent on the demonstration at Dijon, where two thousand turned out for May Day. A few gas canisters fired by the cops. Two thousand at Cherbourg with an anarchist bloc, ten thousand at Bordeaux and a thousand at Aubenas. On all of these demonstrations, there were turnouts from feminists, climate change campaigners and Gilets Jaunes.

In Colombia, there was a large anarchist presence on the May Day demo in Bogota.

In Chile there were brutal attacks by the police on demonstrators.

In El Salvador, there was a large anarchist bloc on the demo in San Salvador.

There was an anarchist presence on the demonstration in Helsinki, Finland.

In Bangladesh the Anarchosyndicalist Federation organised a large event.

In Sweden twenty anarchists protesting against the government’s plans to clamp down on strikes were brutally arrested.

In Turkey, despite the severe repression there, large numbers of anarchists under red and black flags turned out.

In Bandung in Indonesia, police arrested six hundred anarchists, out of an anarchist bloc of one thousand, stripped them to their underwear and shaved their heads. Elsewhere in Indonesia, police tried to block a large anarchist bloc marching to join the main demonstration, leading to clashes.

In Germany in Berlin, police attacked a demonstration of twenty thousand, who chanted “The streets are ours” and “anticapitalism”.

In Italy, police attacked a demonstration against a transalpine high speed train tunnel.

In Greece there was a 24 hour strike of transport workers, including ferry, tram, train and bus workers.