Polykarpos (Polys) Georgiadis (on the left in the photo) is a comrade currently found in Korydallos’ prison, for allegedly participating in a kidnap organized by V. Paleokostas, a Greek outlaw, probably known for his escaping twice from Korydallos prison with a helicopter. Polys is also active in the revolutionary movement, publicing a zine in Greek called “Asymmetrical Threat”, and other publications concerning mainly the matters of working class history, the question of work, illegalism and urban sabotage. There will be an effort to translate some of his works in english sometime in the near future, on this site. Vaggelis H. (on the right in the photo) is another comrade also accused under the same allegations and kept in pre-trial imprisonment. Here we are going to provide some information mainly on Polys, since it is Vaggelis’ choice not to be part of a discussion in any media.
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Following is a brief report on our comrades’ case fro ABC Salonica:
On 20th of august 4 people got arrested in Greece on the accusation kidnapping with a large ransom being paid. The people arrested are Polikarpos Georgiadis, Vasilis Palaiokostas, Vagelis Hrisohoides and one other, of whom the rest of the group has taken distance from because of his behaviour. On the 21st 4 other people got arrested for also playing a smaller role in the kidnapping. The person being kidnapped some months ago concerns the president of the union for heavy industry owners (employers syndicate) Georgos Mylonas, who not long ago caused some fuss over his sayings about working harder and longer in the factories. He was released after sum of 10 million euro’s was paid, arranged by his wife. Media and police claim this money was meant for freeing Vasilis’ brother from prison; Nikos Palaiokostas. Pictures in the bourgeois press show the large variety of ammunition, Kalashnikovs, an RPG, explosive devices, bulletproof vests and fire brigade uniforms that were found at the arrest. Stories of the amount of money being found back change every day. Police says that a big part of the coupons were marked and at about 150 different places they found them back.
The history and traditions of Vagelis, Vasilis and Polikarpos in this case, but also of many other strikes against the exploitation and slavery of people, is important for the context of this kidnapping and social rebellion in general reality. Polikarpos and Vagelis are dear comrades in the anarchist scene since many years and have been very active. Polikarpos was sent to prison before on the 16th of April 2004, accused for attempted arson with an ignitable device against the vehicle of a private security company. The police tried to charge him with attempted arson and the possession of explosive devices, but could not proof anything. He stayed in pre-detention for one year and was found guilty anyway. He got out for having served already the one year prison sentence he finally got. During his time in prison he got to know Vasilis Palaiokostas. The bourgeois media accused him a the time of being a bank robber as well, and from this point of view it fits them well to claim these days that Vasilis had “selected Polikarpos for a conspiracy in setting his brother, Nikos, free from prison”. These two brothers are well known “legends” in the country for decades.
Since the fall of the Ottoman empire in 1821 Greece knows a very popular and great tradition of social and class robberies, as a respond to poverty and exploitation. These people would take back the money of the rich, the authorities, the exploiters, and usually hide in villages, with the help of the people; they would refuse to help the police and protect them from the authorities. The rebels always had strong connections with the people and provided for their communities for instance in forms of financial support for education, medication and protection on their turn from the police. In this reality, the two brothers Vasilis and Nikos, and still many others, who grew up in a very poor family, couldn’t take any longer the exploitation and slavery of themselves as well as of the people around them in this society, and thus have been living their lives as social rebels for the last 30 years. They made tens of bank robberies, car thefts and escapes from prison, but never had fancy clothes, drove expensive cars or lived in luxury houses. Indeed have once thrown the money back on the floor of the bank, because that little amount wasn’t what they needed. Everything was always send to where it was needed and shared with the people who protected them, hided them and still won’t say a word to the police about their comrades. During all these years they’ve been underground, while being traced by the police from time to time as well, either resulting in a successful escape by stolen cars, or unfortunate prison time. Always escaped from it however, with the loving and spectacular help of the other brother.
Throughout the 80’s they did many robberies, until Nikos ended up in prison in 1988, but was released from it by his brother only a few days later, by throwing a rope over the wall of the prison outside. Two years later, in February 1990 he was arrested again. One month later Vasilis was unluckily caught with a friend, while trying to rescue his brother. This was supposedly the first time they were both in prison at the same time. In December 1990 though, Nikos escapes from Korydallos prison in Athens after a huge uprising in the prison, cops have then been looking for him for the next 16 years, until they caught him by accident when he was in a car crash in 2006. He has not been out ever since. In 1991 Vasilis manages to escape from Halkida prison. In 1992 he robs a bank. In 1995 they rob a bank together in Athens. In December 1995 they’re being accused of having kidnapped the president of a “halvas” factory, Haitoglou. They supposedly let him go after four days and 750.000 euro’s ransom. The minister of public order send out a warrant, on tv, radio and posters, with their picture and a reward of also exactly 750.000 euro’s. In 1996 Vasilis was traced by the cops in Korfu, but managed to escape from them by taking a car. Two years later the same situation appeared in Yanitsa, and again in May 1999. In 2003 Nikos makes a spectacular escape with a helicopter. In 2006 Nikos robbed a bank in Veria by bicycle and got away because the masses of police out there were completely preoccupied with the protection president visiting the streets of Veria at that very moment. In September of that year he had the car accident and got locked up again after many years of living on the run and in hiding.
The police found out about the identity and whereabouts of the group because the fourth men, was spending large sums of cash money on luxury cars in Crete. Also because Georgos Mylonas had stated to the police that during his kidnapping he had heard airplanes flying over very frequently. With the arrest of the man in Crete they found out he rented a house in Souroti, a quiet area near Thessaloniki, close to the airport. Police claims that with 14 special force cops, and 10 civil cops (it’s very likely there were way more), they surrounded the house in Souroti. Both Vasilis and Polikarpos were arrested there, where they had also kept Mylonas and the artillery.
On the 22nd of August they’ve all been brought to the prosecutor, who gave them 3 days to prepare the defense, and will decide over the continuing of their pre-trial detention. they face 9 charges (3 felonies, 6 misdemeanors). After the trial he was dragged by two big elite troop cops to the press, eager to take a picture of Greece’s most wanted, and proudly showed them what they caught; the nightmare of every system that imposes law, control and punishment on the people.
Today on the 25th of august Vasilis Palaiokostas was brought to pre-trial court, where where was decided he will go to prison indeed until the real trial.
About 25 solidarious people had gathered around the court house between 9:30 and 10:00 to show their warm feelings to Palaiokostas and their anger against the system he has been sabotaging so fierce and rebellious for the last decades, but has now captured him for to burry in their rotten dungeons.
He defended himself, even though a lawyer was there for him, but not present in the courtroom.
after about 3 hours he was taken out through the back entrance, with lost of ‘Ekami’ (special elite forces) around him and bourgeois press jumping on him. The people in solidarity couldn’t come any closer then about 200 m. due to an aggressive line up from different kinds of police, but shouted many slogans, which he certainly must have heard.
Someof these slogans (translated):
-”Cops, Pigs, Murderers!”
-”The passion for freedom is stronger then all prisons!”
-”Politicians, Industrialists, Kapitalistst; Hangings and kidnaps are coming!”
-”Hate, Hate, Hate, Class-hate,
Kicks and punches to every employer!”
Until now, nothing is known what was said in the court by either Palaiokostas, or the judges.
We will be back tomorrow morning for the trial of Vagelis and Polikarpos.
-Freedom lives when the state dies-
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1st letter from Polys:
DID ANYBODY TALK ABOUT KIDNAPPING?
“The proletariat of the industrial countries has completely lost the affirmation of its autonomous perspective and also, in the last analysis, its illusions, but not its being. It has not been suppressed. It remains irreducibly in existence within the intensified alienation of modern capitalism: it is the immense majority of workers who have lost all power over the use of their lives and who,once they know this,redefine themselves as the proletariat, as negation at work within this society”.
Guy Debord
Since the nineties different people who’ve expressed themselves about postmodern typology wearing a different mask every time (sometimes of the neo-liberal, sometimes of the “middle political scene”, sometimes of the social democrats, sometimes of the ideologists of tepidity and confused multi cultural neo-leftism that mixes everything up, and sometimes the mask of the “anti authoritarian” new-hippie lifestyle ) ruminate/brag about the ideology of the end of history: there is no more proletariat, there is no class war, we can at last without fear head towards the Paradise of Market, where honey and milk flow abundantly. And hamburgers and ketchup too…
Unfortunately for the apologists of legality, the facts are stubborn: a handful of capitalists has organized a criminal gang and kidnapped proletarians demanding for ransoms, their working power, the commercialization of human activity, their time (that transforms into money), even their whole existence. Wage slavery is a permanent crime against human dignity. It’s not just because of the usual ‘casualties’ of work “accidents” of class war. It’s not just because of the dead, wounded and amputated people of the work “accidents”, but also because of the diseases related to the working environment and space. It’s not just because of the strawberry fields, that show us we’ve never escaped the time of slavery. It’s not just because of the sacrificed workers (locals and immigrants, “expensive and cheap” labor hands) at the altar of every “American dream” or “Greek miracle”.
It is the existence itself of waged work that constitutes the permanent crime! And the criminals, the kidnappers and the blackmailers are all the Mylonas. Even if the rats of the media present the leader of thieves Mylonas (the boss of the gang for common thieves of the Federation of Industries of Northern Greece) as an “innocent” victim, as a misunderstood neo-liberal Christian child, as a pain resistant worker, who efforts night and day for the common good.
As for the illusionist tricks that different vampires like Mylonas invent to show their “human face” (for example green capitalism, socialised industry, etc.), only one thing can be said:
SATIRE HAS ITS LIMITS…
Mylonas is no more than the brain of a gang of exploiters. Like all capitalists he too is a parasite: a weight on earth and an obstacle for winds.
So the Mylonas couple should stop pretending raped virgins .
“O gentlemen, the time of life is short! …
And if we live, we live to tread on kings”
W. Shakespeare
The first duty of the proletariat is the conscienceness of itself, of its position and its role. The conscience of being a prostitute in the hands of a capitalist, of producing wealth for the bosses and misery for itself.
The conscienceness on the other hand that produces the whole material life of society. That it is nothing but CAN BE EVERYTHING.
The second duty of the proletariat is the denial of its imposed role, the denial of work, the denial of alienation.
The third duty of the proletariat which arises naturally from the first duties, is the revolutionary action for it’s own suppression.
Only the subjects can ignite the objective conditions and cause the revolutionary explosion for the destruction of the authoritarian/class society.
From: ‘The art of war’, 6th issue of “Asymmetric threat” (under publication…)
Unfortunately in the wild west of capitalism the proletarians lullaby with trash eating over consumerism. Life has involved into a necrophilic survival between cages of cement, cars, billboards, surveillance cameras and cops. The route of survival is assigned: from one concentration camp to another. From school to university, from army to wage slavery. And there the proletarian crosses the same streets of alienation as the night walker: work, home, shopping mall, work. From production to consumption…
Behind the iron curtain of virtual prosperity and spectacular misery lies an unadmitted truth: the miracle of the west walks over corpses. Not only of those in the third world (either way this constant exploitation is the most gigantic crime of human history), but also of those in the third world on the west.
Behind a glance of being high on consumption hides the rot of a slaughtering civilization. But from inside this rot one possibility springs up. A possibility that not even the think tanks of the existent system, not even the bureaucratic certainties of Bolshevism, not even the paleolithic determinism of ideologies can repress: the social entropy, the revolution, the constant struggle for the destruction of the state, of private property and of waged work.
Comrades! Life is short. If we live, we live to step on the heads of bosses and their slaves.
For anarchy and communism!
P.S.1 As in the past also now, in my public speech I will not speak about issues of the penal code. Moreover “innocence” and “guiltiness” are fake distinctions that concern only the legal armory of the state.
The only thing that I want to say about the case, is that I was and I am in solidarity, as anarchist as well as a friend, to an illegal and haunted man, Vasilis Paleokostas. From there on, my speech will be a continuity of my pre-arrest placement and not a whine for “innocence”.
P.S.2 Economical and legal support is good. So are wishes for freedom, but the strongest form of solidarity is the continuation of revolutionary action.
Freedom to the comrades G. Dimitrakis, G. Voutsis-Vougiatsis and V. Botzatzis.
Freedom for the revolutionaries of the revolutionary organisation 17th of November.
Solidarity to the 6 wanted comrades.
-Revolution first and always-
Polikarpos Georgiadis,
Prisons of Ioannina,
01/09/2008
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2nd letter from Polys:
Public declaration of repentance. Before the venerable Minister of Justice
“Therefore repent; or else I am coming to thee quickly, and I will make war upon them with the sword of My mouth”
Apocalypse of John
“and where the market-place beginneth, there beginneth also the noise of the great actors and the buzzing of the poison-flies”
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche
Your Illustrious Highness
Watching at the Holiest Temple of Television the magestic Hymns and psalmodies of the Spectacle (also known to the untutored mob as “commercials”), at long last as a new apostle of the 21rst century Saul, I was touched by the divine afflatus of the Market’s Holy spirit! A mirthful light encamped the threshold of my soul and dissolved the darkness of Evil (it is no coincidence Satan is a red devil. He is just a commie!)
Amen I tell thee, I gazed at the Truth ecstatically and cried out loud: It’s a miracle! and it’s a Progress! It’s two in one!
And the vision of the Spectacle was revealed upon me! Blessed be the one reading and listening to the Logos of the Holly Merchandise: The cows may herd joyously to provide us their milk. The pigs cheerful may become nutritious hamburgers. The chicken blessed and laughing take part in the sacrament of baptism, and their name be Mimikos* . Bankers and loanees embraces in ecstacy one another and walk as brothers towards the kingdom of Heavens and the Holly Casserole. Industrialists, ship-owners, corporation buisnessmen with their bodies meagre of their ascetic lives, compete in who will first save the nature, the animals, the forest, the environment. Sparkling water showers the children of Africa. Now they are thirsty only for knowledge! Thank you, O company!
I thrill of emotion in the face of this emulation spirit. I cry whan facing the winged menstrual pad working arduously for a happy womens period. It moves me to tears when I see my favorite soft drink offering me a harem for my sexual consumption. What a brave lawful (and consequently moral) world. I cry with tearful cries that I got wrong all these tireless men of burden (that’s because of burden O minister, don’t let my virtuous intentions be misunderstood…) to worry for the good of us and our fellow humans. So, profit and social responsibility come together as our decent and humble** primeminister said, and also all these simple-hearted activists of neo-liberalism as Daskalopoulos and Mylonas***.
Thus I, my precious Minister, from now on negate in detestation the Anarcho-communist-bankrobber-gangsterism and all its ramifications as holding back Progress. So, I deliver my tin-cans to the situs authorities and I pledge allegiance to our blessed Authority, our kind State and the priesthood of the Holly Merchandise and sacred Labor. I repent bitterly and whip myself with my favorite telemarketing product, in order to purify my poor carcass. And feel now ready to serve Capitalism and our lovely little God, as a simple and humble monk.
For this reason, I claim the exceptional honor to adress Your Excellency and pray eagerly, that it would be within your pleasure to transfer me to the holy monastery of Vatopedi****, to serve as a servant of God the rest of my time. And I shall pray night and day for You and the salvation of your soul:
“Honor and patience to all Authority, even the wrong Authority. This is what a quiet sleep requires…I will always believe the better shephard is the one leading his sheep to the greenest fields: This is what suits best a quiet sleep”
I beg Your Excellency and fiercely wish for health and longevity in the glorious Right of the Lord. May Jahve, Agoraeus Hermes, and Panagia Deksia*****, illume you and your voters. Your slave and servant, now and forever till the end of time.
Polykarpos Georgiadis
Ioannina Prisons
September 2008
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Translator’s notes:
* Mimikos is a greek poultry and frozen food company
** The primeminister K. Karamanlis often describes his government in these words
*** G. Mylonas is the president of Alumil industries and Northern Greece’s Industrialists ex-president. His industry seems to be proud to be funding a NGO promoting a green-capitalist culture, such as Al Gore’s work. G. Mylonas was kidnapped with a large ransom during the summer, and the police seized our comrade Polys Georgiadis, Vassilis Paleokostas (a convicted bank-robber, long term prisoner in struggle, prison escapee, fugitive, etc), Vaggelis Hrisohoidis, also a radical from Thessaloniki, and Giorgos Haralambidis, a long term prisoner for bank robberies, accused for taking part in the kidnap.
**** Latest TV reports repeat what most people in Greece know, that Vatopedi as most monasteries is an intermediate for real estate business, claiming public land or small properties to sell it later to real estate or constructions companies…
***** Hermes is the ancient Greek God of Commerce, Agoraeus was a common epithet meaning the protector of the marketplace. Panagia Deksia is a well known church to “Holy Mary the Right” in Thessaloniki.
Hundreds of thousands of communist insurgents after the Greek Civil War were threatened to sing declarations of repentance, so some things mentioned (as the tin-can, wich the right-wing accused the insurgents they killed many of their enemies with such) refer to these incidents.
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Many solidarity activity has been done, including attacks against a police station in Thessaloniki and an Alumil (Mylonas corporation) office, and also lots of spray paintings and posters appeared questioning the issue of what the “real kidnap” is, and what is at last the major crime in this society, though we select to remind here an action from London, UK:
The following claim appeared on Athens IMC:
Last week we engaged in a range of joyful vandalism against bank ATMs, a jobcentre and two luxurious cars around SW London, UK. We dedicate them and hope they were enough to bring a smile to our proletarian brother Polys Georgiades in front of his jury in Thessaloniki, Greece, on April the 3rd, for attempted arson against a private security vehicle, few years earlier. The sad news of his recent arrest, for allegedly participating in kidnapping the president of Northern Greece’s industrialists, in the same time excited us with the remembrance of an offensive tactic of our class, almost forgotten after its last emergence during the European proletarian uprising of the 70es: The kidnapping of bosses, once again employed by workers in two different cases in France this last week, seems to be a mighty weapon of the working class in its struggle against poverty and exploitation. This applies of course as part of the workplace struggle, in our class’s disadvantageous bargain of its working force: “This action is our only currency” said after all the daring French workers of Pithiviers…
Do you remember Nietzsche? “It’s better not to pay at all, if not with a currency that bears our face”. We couldn’t agree more. Kidnapping can also be a tactic of certain delinquent elements of our class to avoid work or to hold a personal war against the ruling class. Their actions, even if they are not directly connected with the working class movement, contribute to the class’s collective power by attacking its enemies [no proletarian could ever be afraid of being kidnapped of course, since the only realistic kidnapping he suffers is his everyday worktime for the bosses' wealth] where and when they are not prepared for, breaking down their normaly conducted assault. We have also seen in past insurrectionary situations these delinquent elements to provide the most valuable comrades of the proletarian movement against capitalism. We care to see again our class embrace these “lost children” it is taught to slander and hate.
Eventually, “…to unite this world into a single invincible and all-destroying force, it is the purpose of our organization, our conspiracy and our task.”
For proletarian power!
For Communism!
Sovjet of the Streets
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!!