Thessaloniki 4 Solidarity: Trial Starts 14 January

http://london.indymedia.org/videos/6861
June 2003 - EU Summit
The EU summit in Thessaloniki, Greece, sees huge mobilisations from anti-globalisation movements around the world. Aggressive police repression leads to over a hundred arrests, of which 29 are charged. Countless more protestors are badly injured, many hospitalised, by rubber bullets and baton charges. Out of 29 activists charged, most are released on bail in the days following the protests. The remaining 7 prisoners are remanded awaiting trial.

October 2003 - Solidarity with the Hunger Strikers
The prisoners begin hunger strikes demanding to be released from remand. Solidarity campaigns form around the world, against prisons and in support of the Thessaloniki 7. Literally hundreds of actions take place. The hunger strike continues until the 27th November when they are released on bail awaiting trial. Some of the remanded have at this point been refusing food for as long as 63 days.
February 2004 - Charges Dropped
In 2004 all charges are dropped in view of the overwhelming evidence in support of the defendants. Those who are not from Greece are finally allowed to leave the country.
Autumn 2005 - Charges Reinstated
The prosecutor of Thessaloniki appeals against the earlier decision to the drop the charges. Legal arguments continue for more than two years, and a trial date is finally set.
January 2008 - First Trial
The first trial takes place and finds the defendants guilty and passes sentences of between four and eight and a half years for charges including distinguished and repeated rebellion, possession of explosives, resisting arrest, and causing explosions.

September 2010 - Second Trial Adjourned
The second trial is adjourned until January 2011.
14 January 2011 - Second Trial Will Start
Out of the original Thessaloniki 7, 3 have so far had their cases resolved with sentences ranging from 4 to more than 8 years. The remaining four defendants are:
Simon Chapman, Britain
Suleiman "Kastro" Dakdouk, Syrian origin
Michaelis Triakapis, Greece
Fernando Perez Gorraiz, Spain

Rioting inmates caused heavy damage to a low-security prison on Saturday, smashing windows and setting fires london U.K.

Rioting inmates caused heavy damage to a low-security prison on Saturday, smashing windows and setting fires that engulfed buildings and spewed clouds of black smoke. Mark Freeman, deputy general secretary of the Prison Officers Association, said the riot started after some prisoners refused to take breath tests. At the time, only two prison officers and four support staff were on duty, he said.Freeman said a large amount of alcohol had been found at the prison and spoke of "how dangerous even open condition prisoners can be." "My understanding is that staff on the night suspected that some of the prisoners had been drinking alcohol and wished to, according to the policy here, to breathalise them. The prisoners refused and the other prisoners joined in that act of indiscipline and prison officers were then threatened and they had to remove themselves to a place of safety," he said. Officials said about 40 inmates at Ford Open Prison near Arundel, 60 miles (95 kilometres) south of London, began the disturbance at around midnight New Year's Eve. By midday, two buildings were still ablaze, though fires had been extinguished at several other buildings, which were heavily damaged. The prison's staff retreated and specialist officers were called in to handle the riot, the Ministry of Justice said. There were no immediate reports of injuries to staff or inmates. The prison houses up to 500 offenders with less than two years remaining on their sentences to prepare them for release. . . .

For Riotous Assemblies not Reasonable Dissent

  FROM UK INDYMEDIA


The atmosphere of UK State repression and 'queen's peace' was definitively broken on the 10th November 2010, when the Millbank Tower, Conservative Party HQ, was stormed by a mob of malcontents, during a demonstration against student fees

The roof-top scenes of occupation and property destruction dispelled the long-held belief that the cops have the upper hand on the streets of the United Kingdom, and especially in the open-CCTV-prison of London. Something much more occurred that day than the complete trashing of the ruling political party's headquarters in the capital city - an aching festive class violence was openly expressed and transmitted everywhere via global media, to all others in resistance around the world.

Again this incredible force was experienced on 9 December, and it still only felt like the beginning.

The opportunity of this moment is the opportunity for mass social rebellion. And within this is the necessity for those that consider themselves already a 'politically conscious' and 'active' class to know when to keep silent, when to step aside and to recognise that the opportunity being presented to them is to divest themselves of their own redundant, prescriptive and obstructive attachment to their own models of theory and action.

Numerous 'interactions' ('direct action skillshares/trainings', 'meetings', calls for a centralising 'Network'/Platform) have popped up over the past couple of weeks during the student uprisings. There is certainly value in telling people to mask up in demos, for example, or what to do when arrested, but is there really a value in 'teaching' rebellion, aside from the need of those teaching it to assert their own ego and present themselves as experts in struggle? In the recent riots, the crowd didn't need to be trained or incited to attack police vehicles and occupy or destroy buildings, it occurs anywhere the people feel confident enough to resist openly en masse.

The anti-capitalist 'struggle' in the UK has, in the last ten years, largely produced nothing worthwhile aside from myriad activist quangoes and some nice careers. If we need to fill any holes in our political identities, let's fill them with curiosity. No sooner does authentic fury explode in the streets, then activist initiatives spring up seeking to manage it, to democratise it, to control it: the beauty of the unknown is at once crushed into the machinery of the leftist bureaucrats. Rolling out the decades failing interminable script, - action medics, people's kitchens, workshops, email lists, ad nauseam – and calling upon the controllables – climate camp, social activist groups, federations, reformist single-issue campaigns; all the tranquilising themes – so that the social managers can attempt to make it palatable and compliant to their careerist manipulations, as frightened of the uncontrollable as the state.

In the last five years, very few of the 'conscious political' class - the activists - have succeeded in getting out of a kettle nor finding their projects developing into one of attack. Because - as the young people and the angry know - to get out of a kettle requires a project of chaos and attack. And that is precisely what the activist cannot and will not engage in, beyond the symbolic.

Why? Because the activist project is not about rebellion nor about chaos. It is primarily a project of reigning in, of taming the unruly desire to break out of all constraints, to specialise it, professionalise it and rationalise it.

The activist project is the maintenance of a self-aggrandising, elitist and fictitious movement. It is a policed theatre of diversion and deference organised by social managers and leftist incompetents. It is an easily infiltrated and repressed illusion full of substitute activities for the well-meaning to waste their time with. How useful for the State to have open umbrella organisations of activism which can pressure people into certain types of conforming and exploitable democratic behaviour, all under the double-speak banner of 'inclusivity', 'consensus' and 'diversity of tactics'. Activism is 'political' thought and 'political' engagement as an impediment to real struggle.

It is the very experience of embedding oneself in a 'politically-conscious' scene and the rules that are built up within it that can lead to paralysis and counter-revolution. In the moment when you need to defend yourself, pick up and throw stones or set fire to a target or barricade, those already entrenched in a morass of theories, debates and dubious ideas of alliance and affinity, many of those who imagine themselves holding some kind of blueprint for social change or revolution and feeling the need for 'intervention', pause, and back off from the clash.

We will not attend any “anti-cuts” activist gatherings nor will we send 'delegates' as if we were some organisational department or cheap NGO. We are not for continuing any of the structures or concepts given to us by democracy.

Those who would 'intervene' must take some time to ask themselves whether they simply wish to constrain within their own limits of thought, understanding and action, an emerging rebellion. Let the young people create new, unpredicted pathways. Let us break our own patterns, and then destroy that most insidious police force – that within us which wields batons of ideology, and which hides it's own impotence, historical inefficacy and fear behind crash barriers of 'necessary infrastructure' and 'organisation'. We want the time to see what comes out of real chaos. Out of rebellion into freedom.

Formalising a struggle too early leads to the death of that conflictual tension; without formalisation there is only social force, which cannot be repressed through its representations, it spreads and detonates social conditions through existing class conflicts and rage. It eventually finds fluid form in informal groupings of affinity through which we can communicate as equals, rather than as stereo-types. Self-management of our struggle, not our everyday drudgery, begins through organising attacks; it is in the highly charged space of the attack – the experience of freedom - that the individual and collective mind, realising in an instant its volition, power, self-determination and willful vitality, can escape dated concepts and forms.

We are not suggesting that we'll not engage in the student uprisings - or any other uprising - but we'll do so with the aim of meeting others with whom we might share a theoretical and tactical affinity for the purpose of social revolution.

We know who we are, what we think and what we desire. We'll continue acting as we always have, alongside and within the coming storm. Understanding these parameters of our own consciousness and practice of engagement, what we plan for is to ride this new social energy, to enable it to give more power to the attacks that we anyway make, and hope that by contributing alongside the new rebel class - not by intervening in its development, we can broaden the struggle without imprisoning its potentiality within the usual cage of reasonable dissent, activism and identity politics. We wish to leave space for others to do the same. It will not be the case that if we attended a meeting of students, we would succeed in persuading them all to our vision of rebellion or of an alternative future world. Nor is there any possibility that at such a meeting, we would be persuaded suddenly to a position of reform or non-violence. As far as we are concerned, the system can only be fought through widespread violent means at street-level, blockading and sabotaging the flow of the economy, spreading the distribution of resources to the social majority and halting wage slavery through mass force.

As we are seeing, the anger is encompassing those people who are not part of the student movement, but have every reason to hate the police and the system.

No more will we remain concealed, once again we can draw a clear line between ourselves and the enemy, the exploiter class.

We call on all those who have made a decision to attack to develop our efforts and interlinked struggles at the base. Let's forge an aggressive push against the global system and it's representations.

For the spread of the riots.

Some uncontrollables                                                                  GREEK 
TRANSLATION:        http://rioter.info/2010/12/16/forriotousassemblies/

Solidarity with Alfie Meadows attack by the cops in london in 9 december

Alfie Meadows was attacked by cops at the student demo in London on the 9th December, he suffered internal bleeding on the brain which almost cost him his life. The nearest hospital had agreed to police orders to only treat injured police officers and not ordinary people coming from the demo. Only after an ambulance driver argued with the hospital officials was Alfie admitted, saving his life. Get well soon Alfie.
 

17th DEcember ANTIFA Poland Benefit Night @ Arsenal Squat LOndon 8pm u.k.

The battle against the far right in Poland is becoming more and more
intense . During the last few years Anti-fascist movement in Poland have
achieved big progress and managed to become something more than just
simply a street force opposing fascist scum in Polish cities. We
organise gigs, meetings, demonstrations, we publish a paper and print
tons of Anti-fascist propaganda like stickers and posters. Unfortunately
our enemies don't sleep. In certain cities level of nazi activity is
growing and its in turn resisted hard by commited local Anti-fascist
groups. Due to our successes militants face increasing level of state
repression as police is finally catching up with our progress and doing
it often with great enthusiasm.
For years we managed to be successful largely due to big international
support from our comrades around the world. We continuously need help in
order to carry on our struggle against often overwhelming odds. Every
penny we get helps to improve our effectiveness by enabling us to spread
our message wide with printed materials, strike fascist scum even harder
and provide good legal help for all comrades facing repression as a
result of their actions.

If you think you can help, contact us at: barbarians@riseup.net

Our Rules of Engagement:

- fighting fascism under any disguise and in every part of life: point
that is sef-explanatory. Doesn't matter if they are nazi skinheads,
"elite" from blood&honour, Polish fascists such as NOP or ONR, pagan
shitheads from Niklot or other kind of right wing, homophobic and racist
scum they are all our enemy and a target.

- against any sort of discrimination: while fighting groups representing
those ideas, discrimination should be also confronted in our own
circles.

- ideological and physical confrontation: it means fighting on two
levels. Fascists can never win control over streets, thats why physical
confrontation is inevitable and neccessary, but its a mistake to
concentrate only on this, forgetting about ideological struggle.
Fascisms breeds often where no body gave better alternatives for the
people and thats why they turned towards far right ideology. Countering
their propaganda is as important as physical struggle.

- ABSOLUTELY NO CO-OPERATION police and secret services: this
institutions are always our enemy and we cannot be fooled when they are
arresting nazis, because next day it can be us. 100% ACAB!

- No co-operation with political parties: for them anti-fascism is only
a fashionable slogan, bandwagon on which they can jump to get more
influence. When shit hits the fan, they are nowhere around.

- Authoritarian left is not an ally: all sorts of Lenin followers,
communists and pro-state socialists never were and never will be on our
side. For them anti-fascism is a disguise in struggle for power and from
the history we can learn how communist's allies end up when they are no
longer needed.

- no activity of fascists can stay without reaction: you will leave them
once, they will keep coming... - every group acts in full autonomy,
without structures from above: there is no central committee, every
antifa group acts as it sees fit, following only general rules.

- defense of our own people from the repression: militant anti-fascism
is not a game. Lots of our activities might break the law and you should
bear in mind legal consequences. Every person taking part in actions
must know, that he/she has all sort of help and unconditional solidarity
guaranteed.

protesters attack royal couple yes! and yes! British students riot in London

 


09.12.10

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall have been attacked by protesters as tuition fees demonstrations descended into vandalism and violence.



Charles and Camilla were unharmed after their car was struck and daubed in paint as they made their way to the Royal Variety Performance in central London.



When the royal couple arrived at the London Palladium they appeared relaxed and smiled - though their Rolls-Royce limousine had clear signs of damage.



The passenger-side rear window was badly cracked and the car was spattered with paint thrown in the Regent Street attack



Prime Minister David Cameron said it was "shocking and regrettable" that the royal couple's car had been attacked.



It came amid several hours of violence which saw a number of police and protesters taken to hospital following a series of running battles in the Westminster area after MPs voted to hike tuition fees to up to £9,000.



Protesters attacked a number of Government buildings near the House of Commons, smashing windows at the Treasury and the Supreme Court, vandalising statues in Parliament Square, including that of Winston Churchill, and damaging shops on Oxford Street.