On 17/06/2010 at approximately 11:30 am a white male wearing shorts and a T-shirt entered the Main Street Branch of the Newtown Savings Bank in Newtown, CT and demanded money from the teller. A note was passed to the teller that stated he had a gun. After obtaining an undisclosed amount of cash the suspect exited the bank. Newtown Police were called to the scene. A K9 was deployed to the scene to assist with locating the suspect who had apparently left the area. Investigation has led Police to believe the suspect to be Shane Parsons, age 36 formerly of Newtown. Parsons has an active warrant with Newtown on unrelated Burglary charges.
SAVANNAH, GA (WTOC) - Authorities responded in riot gear after juvenile inmates got out of control at the Savannah Regional Youth Detention Center overnight.
Officials said that just after midnight inmates barricaded themselves in a room and lit at least one trash can on fire inside the facility.
Authorities said 11 juveniles held nine others hostage and one of them was beaten and taken to a local hospital. The 11 inmates were taken to the Chatham County Jail overnight for security reasons but were are back to the detention center Thursday, according to authorities.
Savannah-Chatham Metro Police, Georgia State Patrol and the Chatham County Sheriff's Office's Correctional Emergency Response Team were all called in for back up. Southside firefighters also responded.
The CERT team entered the facility wearing full riot gear and the inmates surrendered after a few minutes.
According to Steve Hayes, spokesman for the Department of Juvenile Justice, a full investigation has been launched into what happened and why. He stated that all inmates involved were boys between the ages of 13 to 17.
The investigation could take several weeks, and it could be that long before any charges are filed against those resposible.
Corporate media report that two Algerians were chased by the police at the beach of Kineta, in Attica, near Athens. The two were had been suspect of carjacking. While the one of the two was arrested by the police, the second threw himself into the sea in order to escape – and drowned.
"The international day of action against prison system we have destroyed on the morning of June 18 the windows of two companies . Our objectives were:
1st: The station of SICHERHEIT NORD, in Berlin-Lichtenberg. Private security services are expanding element in the insurgency architecture. They will fight the coming revolt of the underclass substandard, where police presence is no longer sufficient. NORTH SAFETY supplies the judiciary with rioters and burglars.
2nd: ELECTRIC SERVICE KRUGER in Berlin-Kreuzberg. This company carries out the control of electrical devices from prisoners of the Berlin prisons. So they deserve the jail system, excessive pricing and damaged equipment are their trademark. KRUGER cracks the PIN of mobile phones seized from prisoners and supplies the obtained private data to the jail authoritys. Prisoners will be made of this "Service" with 150 Euros in accounting.
We salute
Seisidis, Seirinidis, Stratigopoulos, Bonanno, Masouras, Hajimihelakis, Karakatsani, Roupa, Gournas, Maziotis, Kortesis, Stathopoulos, Nikitopoulos, Georgiadis, Dimitrakis, Voutsis-Vogiatzis, Nikolaou in the Greek prisons. Their liberation and that of all other prisoners is our goal.
Three hooded robbers armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles yesterday took two women hostage during a raid on a branch of National Bank in Amfikleia, near Lamia in central Greece, which netted them 250,000 euros. The robbers, who had been wearing bulletproof vests, grabbed the women – a bank clerk and a customer – and used them as human shields to flee from the bank. They released the customer outside the bank and forced the clerk into a stolen Skoda in which they made their getaway before letting her out of the car two kilometers away. Neither of the women was hurt. The three perpetrators were still at large late last night.
Most of the vandalism is 'paint related' Around 1,700 signs enforcing Westminster Council's motorbike parking charges have been vandalised. Since 2008 motorcyclists have been charged £1 per day to park in the borough, leading to regular protests by the No To The Bike Parking Tax group. Referring to the signs, it said on its website: "Do not pay the parking tax if the bay is obliterated, the bay is non-enforceable and therefore free." Westminster said their signs provided "vital information". Now the authority is vowing to monitor "trouble spots" in an attempt to catch the culprits. Council officers say they have seen statements on the internet referring to the attacks as "liberating bays" and urging motorcyclists to "fight back now".
Hundreds of miners are killed or injured every year in Colombia [EPA]
At least 16 Colombian miners have been killed and dozens more are missing after an explosion in a coal mine in the northwest of the country, officials say.
Alvaro Uribe, the Colombian president, said initial indications were that an accumulation of methane gas caused the blast in the San Fernando mine in the province of Antioquia.
An estimated 70 to 80 workers were in the mine at the moment of the explosion late on Wednesday.
Luz Amanda Pulido, director of disaster prevention, said the hope
of finding survivors was "not much, almost nothing".
The explosion collapsed part of an access tunnel that is more
than a mile long and drops to a depth of 500 feet, John Rendon
the provincial disaster co-ordinator, said.
Two injured miners managed to escape from the mine, Rendon said.
"It's very sad news,'' Uribe said in a statement, saying that the
predicament of the trapped miners is "a very difficult fate.".
Alberto Mejia, an army commander, said a 22-man army special forces
rescue team was being dispatched to the mine to help.
At least 100 rescue workers were at the scene,
Beatriz Delgado from the Red Cross, said.
Hundreds are killed or injured every year while
prospecting for gold or coal in often makeshift
mines in Colombia, the world's fifth largest coal exporter.
Last year a methane gas explosion, also in Antioquia province,
killed eight workers and in 2007, 31 miners were
killed in an explosion in Norte de Santander in one of
BELGRADE — A group of six anarchists has been acquitted after being charged with throwing a Molotov cocktail at the Greek embassy last year.
The verdict came because of a lack of evidence against them, said the judges.
“The basis for the dropping of the charges is legal, not political. It was not proven that the indictees committed the crime,” stated Judge Dragomir Gerasimović.
The defendants Ratibor Trivunac (28), Tadej Kurepa (25), Ivan Vulović (25), Sanja Dojkić (20), Ivan Savić (26) and Nikola Mitrović (30) were initially charged with
A POLICE station was damaged and two cops injured in an angry protests against police violence in Fribourg, Switzerland.
20 Minutes Online reports that the authorities were 'astonished' when protesters set off smoke bombs and flares outside the city prison.
The police claim this is why they then fired rubber bullets at the demonstrators who had gathered under the rallying call of 'Justice for All - Against Police Violence'.
Anti-police rioting erupted during the evening and more than 40 people were arrested.
Explaining the background to the protest, Swiss Indymedia says that on Sunday 18 April, an 18 year old called Sebastien from Vaulx-en-Velin was killed by Swiss police.
After the theft of three vehicles, police organised an ambush and shot him dead at a roadblock.
A leaflet against 'social pacification' was handed out by protesters on the day.
Letter from Anarchist Giannis Dimitrakis, from Koridallos prison, Greece
On the afternoon of 16/1/06 an armed robbery took place at the national bank of Greece in the centre of Athens. After an exchange of fire with 2 cops from a special unit, one of the participators Yannis Dimitrakis, was seriously injured when shot by the cops 3 times at several parts of his body. The other 4 participators managed to get away from the scene with about 50,000 euro with one of them being slightly injured too. Yannis, who openly admitted that he is an anarchist, stayed in different hospitals for a few months till he recovered, then he was sent to Korydallos prison of Athens. In another parody of the Greek justice system Yannis was charged with 7 robberies! Also he was charged with numerous counts of attempted murder, topped with the anti-terror law! Its not the first time that a fixed charge is given towards anarchists in Greece. This is the letter he sent from prison on the 23rd of June where he explains a lot about what happened in the meantime and his personal position on the robbery.
Comrades,
This letter is my first attempt to communicate and comment on the events that took place and I experienced due to my participation in the bank robbery of the National Bank of Greece that took place in the centre of Athens on January 16th. Before I go on to enlarge upon the actual events, I’d like to say a few things in regards to my motives that lay behind my choice in taking such action and what it means to me.
For me, present-day society is a wagon following a pre-defined course that leads straight towards its complete dehumanization. The role of its passengers, its wheels and its horses- in other words of its driving force- is played out by ourselves, the people. The wagon’s driver has the cruel face of capitalism and its co-driver is a faceless and vague state. The path the wagon follows is of course not strewn with rose petals and flowers but with blood and human bodies. With individuals or groups of people that wanted to either resist and change its frantic course or to stand as an obstacle in front of it. The list of those is long: insubordinates, rebels, leftists, anti-authoritarians and anarchists fill many bloody pages in this journey’s storybook. Somewhere in between the last two groups is where I place myself.
So, to the degree of consciousness that my world-view and perception offers me, what I can easily discern is that present-day society relies only on violence, oppression and exploitation. A society which aims at the loss of human dignity in every way, by all means. This is something that is experienced and received by each and every one of us in their everyday life, either by being forced to deal with state institutions either at our work-place and from those who manage and profit from our work. Employment, work: words whose true meaning is wage slavery, enslavement. Work and its surplus-value are the pillars of today’s economic system while the individuals that carry it through and the circumstances under which this takes place confirms that people are treated as expendable goods, as modern slaves. We see workers that are rotting away from illnesses that are due to their long-term exposure to hazardous substances, that die either by fall or by explosion in the capitalist temples they are building, losing their urge, their liveliness, their spontaneity all that characterizes a would-be free person. Working exhausting hours and employed in two or three jobs simultaneously just for a few crumbs. When to cover their most basic needs a person is obliged to mortgage to those cold-hearted oppressors that are otherwise known as banks and under the burden of this financial responsibility start showing signs of subservience and submission whereas in the case that they cannot in the end cope and are led to bankruptcy and in the end commit suicide or are publicly ridiculed by the mass media as one more human wreckage, leads us to one conclusion.
The state and capital in order to continue existing manufacture modern-day helots who can easily be compared to the Spartan ones. A system which at the alter of profit sacrifices human lives inconsiderably and with audacity. As I’ve already mentioned one of the main partners in this crime are banks which are nothing less than legitimate loan-sharks and are partly to blame for the plundering that’s taking place at the expense of peoples’ work.
Taking all the above into consideration we can understand Maki in Brecht’s … When he asks ‘what is a bank robbery compared to the establishment of a bank?’ But also taking me into consideration who wanting to resist on a personal level- as on a mass level all that know me personally know that I have participated as much as I could- to my future yoke, to determine myself the conditions and quality of my life, to put in to practice my refusal to ‘work’ and also to play the role of yet another productive unit, of yet another wheel in the wagon, wanting to attack the monstrosity that is called a bank (however at the same time having no illusions that I’ll inflict any major blows to this economic institution), choosing to mark a course of dignity in my life I decided to rob a bank. An act which I consider, amongst many others, as revolutionary and which claims deservingly its own place as such.
In all honesty I must admit that the money I was going to acquire through the robbery was going to have me as the end-recipient. At the same time, however, as an anarchist and as a person who wishes to show their solidarity through deeds I’d be one of the first to actively and with joy help in contributing to monetary needs, which might come up in this scene which I belong. Finally, what I’d like to point out here is that all which I have mentioned up to now does not in any way mean that I support a notion that whoever is an anarchist should be a bank robber or that whoever works is enslaved.
Going on now to recount the chain of events that took place, I take as a starting point the scene where I’m lying on the ground seriously injured by the cops’ fire and I have to let myself be taken into the states’ ‘warm’ embrace. The welcoming is to, say the least, impressive as an image, as most people saw, but also exemplary towards anyone who is considering acting in a similar way: A pack of hunters in blue uniforms and me in the role of the injured game being surrounded and receiving ‘friendly’ kicks- which later I found out where part of the framework to disarm me- and comments like ‘we fucked you’ or ‘you’re not such a big shot now, you fucker?!’ amongst other brave words. Finally, being handcuffed from behind despite the fact that I couldn’t move or breathe having received bullets in my lungs, liver and elbow completes the picture. I refer to these events without the slightest trace of bitterness, complaining or disappointment, as I didn’t expect any better treatment from my enemies in the case that I did fall into their hands. In any case, a similar attitude has been displayed to less ‘dangerous’ villains and as a mere example I’ d like to remind you of images such as the arrest of protesters and immigrants or the pogroms at gypsy camps just to name a few. I do refer to these events, however, as, in a tragic and insane way, these are the people who at my trial will come forward as the ones who defend and honor human life and dignity, while I’ll have the role of the immoral, hardened, violent and heartless criminal.
For the time that I was kept at Athens General Hospital I literally experienced the violation of every human right as an arrestee and later as a prisoner. There were early signs regarding how I was going to be treated when at my parents first visit to see me at the ICU (Intensive Care Unit). While there are very strict rules about the number of visitors- even in the case of relatives- an armed to the teeth police officer barges in and places himself in a corner which as a consequence destroyed any concept of at least sharing a private moment with my family, as from the drug-treatment I was receiving I couldn’t even open my mouth, much less hold a conversation. Following this incident and at an unsuspected time, while in a hazy condition from the heavy drug treatment I was undertaking due to the pains I had from my wounds and swimming in a sea of tubes that were coming out of my body, I realized that a guard was now permanently positioned inside the room and right next to me. This situation really irritated me and didn’t allow me to rest and I made it known to him. Strangely enough he then left the room and instead stood right in front of it. Of course when the doctors and the head of the ICU came to examine me I reported this incident and truly astounded and irritated by the event they got rid of the cop, wondering who had let him in.
Here, a big thank you needs to be given from my behalf to all those people, from the doctors to the nurses, who paid me attention and who irrelevant of their own political beliefs took care of me as best as they could. Some of these people also resisted as much as they could to the different pressures put on them by the prosecuting authorities, either in regards to my guarding or my transport and exit from the ICU.
On the third or fourth day of my hospital treatment I was informed that prosecutor Diotis was coming to see me later that afternoon. I must confess that to start with I wasn’t sure whether in my condition I would be up to facing him. The head of the ICU, however, assured me that he would be by my side for the duration of the interrogation and made it known to me that due to my condition I had a right to stop the process at whatever moment, something that I was unaware of. So when Diotis arrived escorted by a security police chief and another person whose official role I can’t remember, but was probably the interrogator, and as soon as each of them had spoken to me to me for a couple of minutes I signaled to my doctor that I wanted them to leave. On his way out Diotis told me that in any case they were going to find who else was with me and that to talk now would just make it easier for me. Of course his words fell on deaf ears. The second time he came I was given a chance to understand who Diotis really is when in a lively exchange of words with the head of the ICU a very strange phrase slipped his mouth. Having finished his monologue and having delivered me the arrest warrant and the list of accusations I was facing he asks me to sign. My doctor immediately intervenes and explains to him that I am incapable of doing such a thing at the moment and asks him to leave as my strength was deserting me. Then Diotis, to both our surprise, answers: ‘ Of course I respect the boy’s condition and I don’t intend to give him a hard time, because if I did I could just pull on his tubes a little and put his pressure up to 50′. I realized at that moment what would have happened in that room if the doctors weren’t people with willpower and values but simply pawns. I would have, no doubt, discovered the ‘famous’ interrogation methods that prosecutor Diotis has used in the past.
After this incident the conditions of my detention really worsened. Two armed guards were permanently placed inside the ICU and pressures were put on the head of the department for me to be admitted out earlier, which was achieved. I was then transferred to an especially laid out room in the Eye Clinic with the excuse that they would be able to guard me more efficiently. In this new space in which I was placed I was sleeping with two undercover cops by my side. Another two cops were permanently stationed in front of the open door of the room while one character kept trooping in and out every half hour to check up on things, another 5-6 cops were in the waiting room and an unknown number of individuals in the corridor outside.
The result of all this was for me not to able to sleep for 3-4 days and to feel like a monkey in the zoo as every jumped-up cop came in looking at me up and down and discussing me on his mobile phone or with his collegues. I was at the end of my tether and so made a complaint to the head of security about it all who replied that I was a prisoner now and that they’ll be the ones to judge how I should be guarded and that they’re protecting me from myself meaning, if you can believe, that they were watching over me so I didn’t commit suicide. Other amazing scenes that took place included me, still bed-ridden, relieving myself in front of them while they watched undisturbed, or me being handcuffed to the bed inside the ICU, again with the excuse of preventing me from committing suicide and other such incidents. Like the attempt to kidnap me from the Eye Clinic and to transport me to the hospital at Korydallos prisons while I still had stitches in from the surgical incisions, falsely claiming that the doctors had given their permission and which in the end was, for the time being, avoided due to my parents notifying the doctors.
I believe the sole purpose of all this was to humiliate me, to make me lose all sense of self-respect and to generally make me realize the fact that I was a captive in their hands and I no longer had any rights. These situations drove me to think of the hospital and prisons at Korydallos as a haven of mental tranquility.
In the mean time, while I was waiting to be transferred to Korydallos prisons, we all saw an orchestrated attempt by the prosecuting authorities to manufacture culprits with their only indication being that they belonged to my friendly environment or to the anarchist scene. I am now sure that the taking in of people to be interrogated, the making public of names and the issuing of arrest warrants were triggered by the police finding some of my personal photos, calls to and from my mobile or whatever document proved I had a friendly relationship with these individuals. I want to express my solidarity to all of them.
According to the police and journalist scenarios we form an, unknown at least to me, ‘gang in black’ which consists of 10-15 individuals, anti-authoritarians and anarchists (which leaves open an option of the authorities involving other individuals) and this gang has committed another 6 bank robberies, goes on holidays in expensive resorts, has close ties to Passaris and so on. As far as the money that had been gathered by various comrades to cover needs of the anarchist scene and which I kept in a bank deposit box, it was labeled as the product of robberies.
As an outcome of all the above, I ended up defending myself in front of the interrogator for 7 bank robberies, for attempted homicide and for money laundering plus being put under the anti-terrorist law.
That the state and its underdogs have as a standard tactic for years now to tarnish peoples’ reputation, to inflate briefs, to manufacture culprits, to organize trials that are judicial parodies and generally in all kinds of ways to demonstrate their hate and vengefulness towards whoever resists is well known. One question however forms when taking into serious consideration all the above. What kind of treatment and what kind of methods will the state use in the case of the arrest or voluntary coming forward of the three comrades in order to get a confession out of them and to send them to trial but also how will a ‘fair trial’ be secured for whoever goes through with this procedure?
Finally I have one thing to say to all those who are planning our physical, ethical and political annihilation, once and for all: no matter what dirty and unethical means they use, no matter how much they hunt us down and imprison us they will never crush us and tame us. Because those who are just are those who revolt not those who snitch and bow their heads down.
I also want to say a big thank you to all those who have chosen, chose or will chose to give me their support and solidarity, by whatever means, even though the nature of my case is, I believe, very difficult.
In struggle
Giannis Dimitrakis
Korydallos Prisons, 5 June 2006
You can send mail to Giannis at:
Giannis Dimitrakis
dikastikes filakes neapolis kritis
72400
Neapoli Kritis
Greece
... The least we could do to show our opposition to the practice of the above was to attack the offices of the Greek National Tourism Organization (EOT) in the centre of Thessaloniki. There was no better time for this action than the start of the summer season. So Monday night 7 / 6, we set fire to the offices ... ... What it offers is hostile to us. Refusal automatically means revolution. Each strike is not just an attacking operation, a personal vendetta, or the culmination of a timely event. Each strike is an intensive practice of the anti authoritarian liberation struggle. The aim is to destroy all the material that builds the dominant authoritarian ethics, the relationship that sustains and creates a new more liberal relationship.
... Since we've got the detention and serious injury of another comrade : Simos Seisidis ... Free the prisoners accused of involvement in the organization "Conspiracy of Cells of Fire" (Panagiotis Masouras, Harris Chatzimichelakis, Konstantina Karakatsanis) Solidarity with the persecuted in the same case. Free the prisoners accused of involvement in the organization "Revolutionary Struggle" (Kostas Gourna, Nicos Maziotis, Paula rupees) and those arrested for the same case (Cortessis Christoforos, Sarantos Nikitopoulos, Evangelos Stathopoulos), Freedom to Seisidi Simos, Giannis Dimitrakis, Michal Pawlak (fellow prisoner in the prison of Korydallos by the events of 6/12/2009), Polycarpos Georgiadis, Christos Strategopoulos, Alfredo Bonanno, hlias nikolaou George Voutsis Vogiatzis, Aris Seirinidis.
Navel of the earth and centre of the universe, I kneel before thee and I ask from you to bow from the throne of your Sacred, Immaculate and Overgrown Ego to hearken your humble servant.
O guardian and unique initiate of the revolution, restless enemy of the ox-eyed petit-bourgeois plebeians (since we, the ultra-revolutionaries, have the eye of the lynx, full of grace, scherzo and nechayevian sauciness).
O indefatigable dark knight of the court of the negative, listen to your humble servant.
I request that you will not mention again my name in the delirious texts that you call political proclamations.
I wish you a long-life of revolutionary militarist illegalist amoralist anarcho-individualist nihilist terrorism and of other sonorous –isms (and cerebral seisms)
Your humble servant for now and forever and ever and ever,
DURBAN, South Africa — Armed riot police charged into hundreds of security stewards at a World Cup stadium, using tear gas and firing rubber bullets to break up a protest over low wages hours after Sunday’s match between Germany and Australia.
Police appeared to set off two percussive grenades, causing loud bangs, to drive the workers out of a parking lot under the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban after Germany’s 4-0 win in Group D.
Associated Press reporters saw about 30 riot police charge into the crowd to drive it out of the stadium. While calm quickly returned to the stadium, some of the security stewards, wearing orange and green jackets, continued milling around outside.
An AP photographer said police fired tear gas at protesters outside the stadium. A nearby street was littered with trash where the protesters were forced away. Concrete blocks had been pushed into a street.
About 100 police later surrounded a group of about 300 protesters on a street near the stadium and separated the men from the women. The protesters later left peacefully after discussions with police.
Lt. Colonel Leon Engelbrecht, a police spokesman assigned to the World Cup, confirmed that tear gas was used to help end the lengthy protest, but nobody was seriously injured.
A woman was hit by a rubber bullet but not badly hurt, he said.
Engelbrecht said the protest arose from a dispute between stadium workers and the security contractor over pay, and that disgruntled workers tried to stay in the venue after the match.
“It’s a concern that the security company didn’t have this settled before the tournament,” Engelbrecht said. “Dialogue will continue to ensure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again.
“It’s fortunate it was well after the game.”
Rich Mkhondo, head of communications for the local World Cup organizing committee, said the protest did not have any impact on security at the match or any spectators.
“Two hours after the end of the first match at the Durban stadium last night, there was an internal pay dispute between the principal security company employed by the organizing committee and some of the static security stewards employed by the company at the match,” Mkhondo said in a statement e-mailed to the AP. “Police were called on to disperse the protesting stewards.”
Mkhondo said later that World Cup organizers are meeting with stadium stewards and the security contractor, Stallion, to resolve the dispute but that “we don’t get involved on what an employer pays their employees.”
A FIFA spokesman had no immediate comment.
Protesters said they gathered at the venue to complain about their wages, claiming they’d been paid a fraction of what they were promised.
“We left our homes at seven in the morning and now it is nearly 1 o’clock (a.m.),” Vincent Mkize said. Before the tournament, “In the dry run, they didn’t want to tell us how much we would get.”
Another of the stewards, Fanak Falakhebuengu, told the AP he had heard they would be paid 1,500 rand ($195) a day but they were only getting 190 rand ($25).
“They were supposed to give us 1,500, that’s what FIFA told us, and they gave us 190. We are working from 12 o’clock until now,” said another man who asked not to be named. He ran from police before he could give his name.
Many of the protesters were waving small brown envelopes that had held their pay. One handed to a reporter had the figure 190 written on it under “amount payable.”
Others said they had been abandoned at the stadium after the match and would have to walk about four hours to get home. They said no transport was provided for them.
Renata Zelazna is a friend of ours and a vegan and anarchist who is now on remand over an unfortunate chain of events. She was arrested in April 2010 in Holland where she had moved to study, after an altercation with construction site workers which ended up with police threatening her in her own flat. She was holding a knife that she was chopping vegetables with – leading to charges of attempted murder!
She was subjected to abuse on her way to and in custody – being beaten, denied vegan food, drink and basic sanitary needs, and even clothes – she was transported to prison naked from the waste down. She has also had problems getting adequate vegan food while in prison and has lost a lot of weight.
She is facing up to 12 years in prison or a mental hospital, and is in need of our support.
Please write to her, she said that getting letters is really helping to keep up her morale:
Penitentiare Inrichting Ter Peel T.A.V. Renata Zelazna 7138606 cel 1/10 Paterstraat 4 5977 NM Evertsoord Netherlands
Raise money for her defence, and contact her support groups for more ideas of support:
UK: free.renata@ymail.com Holland: info@arrestantengroep.org, www.arrestantegroep.org and sign the online petition: http://www.petitiononline.com/Renata/petition.html
Getting more character statements is important right now. The police are trying to accuse Renata of having mental health problems and saying that she is a danger to the public. We'd like to remind friends, family, people that know her or have worked with her to send character reference letters about Renata. We will collect them to send onto her lawyer. Her court case is on the 20th July so please don't delay sending these letters to:
Free Renata Zelazna PO Box 74 Brighton East Sussex BN1 4ZQ free.renata@ymail.com
1. For some, the crisis did not start two years ago.
From the Structural Adjustment Programs in Africa and Latin America in the 1980s, to the neo-liberal looting in the countries of the former Soviet bloc in the 1990s, crisis and migration have been twin concepts. For three decades neo-liberalism has been engineering a weakened and destabilized workforce. Capital prefers migrants because they are powerless, unorganized, badly paid workers for whom there is no need for safety in the workplace, nor for health insurance and pensions. In other words, they are much cheaper and make no demands. It has been estimated that in 2009, 3% of the world population, 200 million people, lived outside the country they were born in.
2. Immigrants, the last vestige of the welfare state
Not only do immigrants offer cheap labor, they also have absolutely no participation in the creation of the present economic crisis in Greece. Quite the contrary: They are the social security system’s last gasp: The State uses the immigrants’ (obligatory) contributions in order to support its health insurance and pension funds. Most immigrants will never benefit from the pension funds they are helping rescue, since in Greece you do not get compensation for retirement unless you have worked for a minimum of 40 years. The vast majority of migrants are of productive age. If they weren’t here, the balance-of-payments deficit of insurance funds between those who work and those who retire would be even greater than it already is. Even the income from taxation would be drastically reduced, since, as State sources openly acknowledge, “immigrants are much more consistent than the Greeks in fulfilling their tax obligations.” Migrant women, in whose hands now lies the main responsibility for the care of children and the elderly, are saving the State millions of euros in public care services, such as daycare and childcare centres, public health institutions and old people’s homes.
The public health system further profits from the devalued labor of immigrants in the cleaning sector: Public and private buildings, ministries and hospitals, airports and trains, offices and homes are being cleaned largely by immigrant cleaners, who are subcontracted on utterly exploitative terms for the workers by intermediate private rent companies.
3. The money isn’t enough anymore, what’ll happen with those immigrants?
“The crisis is driving the immigrants away”, the media announce repeatedly. It is true that the first people affected by the crisis are the legal immigrants. The residence permit in Greece depends on the work permit, so legal immigrants are trapped in the legal vicious circle of blackmail – if you don’t have work, you cannot stay legally, yet if you have no residence permit, you cannot find work.
Unemployment is expected to skyrocket in a few months. Hundreds of thousands of migrants, especially from Albania, who experienced the brutality of “Greek hospitality” during the first years of working here, and gradually found themselves with children and certain consumer privileges in a state of semi-legality, are now confronted with a terrible dilemma. Those who have children are bound to stay. This is where the new citizenship bill comes in. The fee for applying for citizenship is 700 euro – multiply that by half a million legal immigrants… The strategic goal of Greek capital has been to keep hundreds of thousands of migrants in a state of semi-legality as cheap and easily manipulable labor. On the other hand, the illegal migrants, the sans-papiers, cannot leave. Lacking official documents, they are trapped both in the “country of first entry into the EU” according to the Dublin II convention, and also within the unofficial and undeclared labor market. The dogma of zero-tolerance further narrows margins for resistance – let us remember the sudden drastic devaluation of the Egyptian fishermen’s work, or the ongoing slave-labor conditions of Bangladeshi strawberry pickers in Manolada in the Peloponnese. Things can always get worse…
4. The crisis of solidarity (the summer of 2009 was only the beginning)
The level of workers’ rights is regressing to where it was decades ago… That’s plain to see. Yet wasn’t it already the acceptance, over the last years, of concentration camps for the victims of global order that turned the clock back to the fascist regimes of the interwar period? What crisis is greater than the moral degradation of society? And it doesn’t seem to pay off either: When you nod affirmatively to the bosses in their war against the weak, it doesn’t mean the boss owes you anything in return. We devalued refugees and migrant workers, believing this would never happen to us. Yet it is now a fact: As long as solidarity does not prevail, everyone’s rights will spiral downwards, towards the lowest common denominator…
“…exploiting the immigrants for twenty years now its your turn to taste some of their agony and fears…”
This communiqué, written by anarchists from Ferrara (northern Italy), exposes an appalling episode that occurred in Comacchio, a town in the province of Ferrara. Apparently just a provincial story, but one that reminds us of the unacceptable conditions imposed by this murderous system, a story that concerns all of us.
Psychiatry makes recourse to more and more terrible means to take away the freedom of those whom it considers deviant according to its biased vision of ‘normality’.
On May 28 2010, in a lively town in the province of Ferrara, where a reactionary rightwing mayor has just been elected, a 34-year-old man was subjected to the hideous activity of psychiatric doctors and of their best mates in uniform (police and carabinieri).
All started when police was alerted that a man had entered a church and started swearing during the mass. Eventually the man went outside a bar, where he exhibited in martial arts postures. This is what the local press reported, as it depicted the man as ‘a public danger, someone to be scared of’.
A couple of cops arrived at the bar to inform the man that he had to be submitted to a TSO (a compulsory psychiatric treatment), which had been authorized by his GP and by the mayor on the same morning. The man had already gone through a TSO in the past and had lost his job as beach-attendant for this reason. As he still had a vivid memory of the suffering endured during his experience in the hands of psychiatrists, he reacted angrily and started hitting the cops, causing a jaw injury to a female officer. The cops tried to immobilise him with some pepper spray but the man managed to escape and reached his house, where he barricaded himself for about 25 hours. The forces of order set up a siege around the house and the adjacent streets, with a massive deployment of military, fire brigade and Red Cross operators (all this because the man had entered a church swearing and had exhibited some karate postures outside a bar!). Water, gas and electricity supplies were cut off during the entire period of the siege.
As he realized that the man was about to surrender, the local carabinieri chief gave his special units the order to storm the house by smashing the door and by making use of teargas. The man was then immobilised, sedated, arrested and taken to a psychiatric institute, where he was administered psychotropic drugs and kept under strict surveillance for a few days, until a judge confirmed his arrest in the psychiatric institute.
As oriental swords were found in the man’s house, because of his passion for martial arts, the judge may charge him with ‘dangerous antisocial behaviour’, which will lead to him being locked up in a judicial psychiatric hospital. Moreover, the man was charged with assaulting the female police officer as he tried to escape arrest. Needless to say, no mention was made of the injuries he was inflicted by the cops when they stormed his house.
Various journalists servants of power have wondered, through their shit papers, why the man reacted so violently in front of the possibility of a compulsory sanitary treatment. We would like to remind them why.
The compulsory sanitary treatment (or TSO) is a perverse mechanism, which denies ‘patients’ all chances to refuse it. It is a unique case in the field of that science calledmedicine, where any kind of treatment should be administered with the patient’s consent and interrupted whenever the latter decides to do so. Such possibility is not valid for that pseudo-science called psychiatry, whose aim is not the well-being of ‘patients’ (imaginary patients) but the classification of behaviours and thoughts considered abnormal, bizarre, strange or simply odd. Hence the invention of a series of mental diseases, which have never been demonstrated, and which serve only to justify the intrusion ofpsychiatric prejudice in the individual sphere of people.
In other words, when psychiatrists consider you as ‘unable to understand and decide’ they take the right to harm you… for your well-being of course.
It is sufficient to visit whatever psychiatric structure, be it a hospital ward or other kinds of institutes, to get an idea of the ‘cure’ as intended by psychiatry: straitjackets, psychotropic drugs that turn people into zombies, injections of drugs whose effect can last for an entire month without the possibility to interrupt it owing to unpleasant side effects, rigid timetables, aseptic rooms where you can’t do absolutely anything, at times total reclusion and at other times a few hours outside the room under the escort of white uniform staff. The places of psychiatry are alienating and only serve to lock up people, the cure being only a pretext.
That’s why we are against psychiatry and are on the side of all those who try to defend themselves from it at all costs.
That’s why we are against journalists and their shit articles that present a man swearing in a church as a danger for the community, someone to be scared of, someone to be sedated quickly in order to restore a pacific life that resembles passive obedience to the judicial and moral laws of dominion.
That’s why we are against the State and against all governments, which in Italy have been considering for years the possibility to reform psychiatric departments by conceding their management to the private sector and by reintroducing practices such as electroshock (which is still being used in some institutes).
Psychiatry cannot be reformed. It must be destroyed from its base, i.e. this society, where one day whoever jumps on a crane or on the roof of a factory after being dismissed will be labelled as a mad, as will anyone who protests at the social injustices produced by this economic system, which will keep onpouring the consequences of its crisis on those who are inexorably exploited.
Anarchists from Ferrara
This communiqué, written by anarchists from Ferrara (northern Italy), exposes an appalling episode that occurred in Comacchio, a town in the province of Ferrara. Apparently just a provincial story, but one that reminds us of the unacceptable conditions imposed by this murderous system, a story that concerns all of us.
Comacchio (Ferrara): TSO [compulsory psychiatric treatment] and teargas
Psychiatry makes recourse to more and more terrible means to take away the freedom of those whom it considers deviant according to its biased vision of ‘normality’.
On May 28 2010, in a lively town in the province of Ferrara, where a reactionary rightwing mayor has just been elected, a 34-year-old man was subjected to the hideous activity of psychiatric doctors and of their best mates in uniform (police and carabinieri).
All started when police was alerted that a man had entered a church and started swearing during the mass. Eventually the man went outside a bar, where he exhibited in martial arts postures. This is what the local press reported, as it depicted the man as ‘a public danger, someone to be scared of’.
A couple of cops arrived at the bar to inform the man that he had to be submitted to a TSO (a compulsory psychiatric treatment), which had been authorized by his GP and by the mayor on the same morning. The man had already gone through a TSO in the past and had lost his job as beach-attendant for this reason. As he still had a vivid memory of the suffering endured during his experience in the hands of psychiatrists, he reacted angrily and started hitting the cops, causing a jaw injury to a female officer. The cops tried to immobilise him with some pepper spray but the man managed to escape and reached his house, where he barricaded himself for about 25 hours. The forces of order set up a siege around the house and the adjacent streets, with a massive deployment of military, fire brigade and Red Cross operators (all this because the man had entered a church swearing and had exhibited some karate postures outside a bar!). Water, gas and electricity supplies were cut off during the entire period of the siege.
As he realized that the man was about to surrender, the local carabinieri chief gave his special units the order to storm the house by smashing the door and by making use of teargas. The man was then immobilised, sedated, arrested and taken to a psychiatric institute, where he was administered psychotropic drugs and kept under strict surveillance for a few days, until a judge confirmed his arrest in the psychiatric institute.
As oriental swords were found in the man’s house, because of his passion for martial arts, the judge may charge him with ‘dangerous antisocial behaviour’, which will lead to him being locked up in a judicial psychiatric hospital. Moreover, the man was charged with assaulting the female police officer as he tried to escape arrest. Needless to say, no mention was made of the injuries he was inflicted by the cops when they stormed his house.
Various journalists servants of power have wondered, through their shit papers, why the man reacted so violently in front of the possibility of a compulsory sanitary treatment. We would like to remind them why.
The compulsory sanitary treatment (or TSO) is a perverse mechanism, which denies ‘patients’ all chances to refuse it. It is a unique case in the field of that science calledmedicine, where any kind of treatment should be administered with the patient’s consent and interrupted whenever the latter decides to do so. Such possibility is not valid for that pseudo-science called psychiatry, whose aim is not the well-being of ‘patients’ (imaginary patients) but the classification of behaviours and thoughts considered abnormal, bizarre, strange or simply odd. Hence the invention of a series of mental diseases, which have never been demonstrated, and which serve only to justify the intrusion ofpsychiatric prejudice in the individual sphere of people.
In other words, when psychiatrists consider you as ‘unable to understand and decide’ they take the right to harm you… for your well-being of course.
It is sufficient to visit whatever psychiatric structure, be it a hospital ward or other kinds of institutes, to get an idea of the ‘cure’ as intended by psychiatry: straitjackets, psychotropic drugs that turn people into zombies, injections of drugs whose effect can last for an entire month without the possibility to interrupt it owing to unpleasant side effects, rigid timetables, aseptic rooms where you can’t do absolutely anything, at times total reclusion and at other times a few hours outside the room under the escort of white uniform staff. The places of psychiatry are alienating and only serve to lock up people, the cure being only a pretext.
That’s why we are against psychiatry and are on the side of all those who try to defend themselves from it at all costs.
That’s why we are against journalists and their shit articles that present a man swearing in a church as a danger for the community, someone to be scared of, someone to be sedated quickly in order to restore a pacific life that resembles passive obedience to the judicial and moral laws of dominion.
That’s why we are against the State and against all governments, which in Italy have been considering for years the possibility to reform psychiatric departments by conceding their management to the private sector and by reintroducing practices such as electroshock (which is still being used in some institutes).
Psychiatry cannot be reformed. It must be destroyed from its base, i.e. this society, where one day whoever jumps on a crane or on the roof of a factory after being dismissed will be labelled as a mad, as will anyone who protests at the social injustices produced by this economic system, which will keep onpouring the consequences of its crisis on those who are inexorably exploited.
Solidarity Poster for Polykarpos Georgiadis and Vaggelis Chrisohoidis (greece)
POSTER SAYS:
did anyone speak of a
KIDNAPPING?
“…A handful of capitalists
have organized a criminal gang
and have kidnapped the proletarians,
demanding for ransom
their labor force,
merchandising their human activity,
their time(which is turned into money),
their own being itself…”
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
tovaggelis ChrisohoidisandPolykarpos Georgiadis
who the persecuting authorities, exactly because they denied to betray values and people,
accuse them as participators in the kidnapping of industrialist Milonas
anarchists from Serres from north-greece
Anarchists solidarity protest outside Korydallos prison, the main prison in Athens, at the time of the change of the year. This protest happens every New Year's Eve for the past six years. This year more than 400 people took part in the protest that interacted with the prisoners inside through shouting mutual slogans and fireworks. The main slogan was "The passion for freedom is stronger that your prisons".
A society that punishes/the condition of incarceration/the prison of the mind/the prison as punishment/the rage of the damned will sound on the ruins of prisons/those denying obedience and misery of our era even within its hellholes/will dance together on the ruins of every last prison/with the flame of rebellion avenging whatever creates prisons.
To the prisoners struggle already counting one dead and thousands in hunger strike across greece, we stand in solidarity and anger until the destruction of every last prison.
ARSON AND WILDFIRE FOR EVERY PRISON
SOLIDARITY TO ALL PRISONERS IN GREECE
VIDEO FROM THE COMRADES IN THE SUPERMARKET IN SALONIKI 15/6
About 30 anarchists with helmets and hoods went into the supermarketnear the university of Saloniki and destroyed the security system! They took the foodstuff from the shelves and also took the moneyfrom the cash desk and burnt it outside the supermarket!nobody arrested!!