Repression – Page 33

Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for the attack at the metro station Syngrou/Fix

Posted on 2022/10/15 by darknights

In recent times we have seen the intensification of state repression which no doubt aims at the abolition of previous social and class gains. This intensification can be reflected in the violent repression of workers’ strikes, in the entry of police forces into universities, and in the expansion of the attack and repression on any form of social and class resistance (from the repeated police attacks on marches and gatherings to the recent attack on a concert in a university in Thessaloniki*). Amongst the above, another of the main peaks of this attack is taking place in Exarcheia, under the pretext of the metro stop and the redevelopment of the Strefi Hill, the state has launched an unprecedented attack in its attempt to change the political and social correlations within the neighbourhood. The constant presence of MAT riot police and the OPKE (armed SWAT style cop unit) playing the role of an occupying army in order to further territorialise the totalitarian doctrine of order and security within the neighbourhood is the most striking sign of this new strategy and the new reality that the state wants to impose.

However, what is happening in Exarcheia also has a very specific economic and class dimension, since both the metro stop and the redevelopment of the hill of Strefi are included within the more general plans of capital and the state for the reconfiguration of the urban fabric through the processes of redevelopment and gentrification, which have the sole purpose of creating new fields of profitability on the backs of the working class. The airbnb, alternative bars etc. that are popping up one after the other, in combination with the metro and the redevelopment of the Strefi and the army of occupation that is trying to suppress any form of resistance create the necessary conditions for the methodical transformation of the neighbourhood into a politically sterile alternative centre of consumption. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for the attack at the metro station Syngrou/Fix” →

Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for an incendiary attack on a MAT riot police truck in Kaisariani by ‘Incendiary Committee’

Posted on 2022/10/15 - 2022/10/15 by darknights

On Thursday 6 October 2022 we carried out an incendiary attack with Molotov cocktails on a passing MAT (riot police) convoy in Kaisariani. In his panic to escape, the cop driving it drove into bystander cars on the road.

We live in the era of constant and generalized war. Every declaration of war is accompanied by a corresponding invocation of the Crisis. Financial, fiscal, health, energy, food, climate… This spectacular ritual of the state apparatus is the prologue to every old and modern war manual: every war operation presupposes the imposition of discipline and rallying at the rear through the spread of fear towards the enemies of the day. A state of permanent emergency to which we tend to become addicted.

In a collapsing world, the Dominion holds on to its monopoly of producing mass insecurity by tooth and nail. If the dangers and threats invoked by those above are increasing in numbers, the orders and commands directed downwards show a clear geometric progression. This is the balance of the violent restructuring of our life, the new social contract of modern totalitarianism. Or in the words of Petsas1 “adaptation or death”. Social experience can translate these words without equivocation. Memorandum or bankruptcy. Mass incarceration or collapse of the ΕΣΥ (National Health Service). Graveyard silence or beatings and fines. Compulsory vaccinations or redundancies. Preventative power cuts or general black outs. And the list may soon stretch to the light bulb switch or supermarket receipt.

The realm of fear and insecurity is the baptism font of the new form of the State and its Violence. The modern capitalist world breeds only police. Police of thought and attitudes, police of norms and culture, police overt and covert, police with shields and automatic weapons, police of crowd management and police of surgical operations, police in the suburbs and in the city centres, police who demand identity cards, passports and health certificates, police who beat, charge and execute, police who sometimes resemble an ideological army and sometimes a fascist battalion. Police of every kind, in every place, in every spot on the map, with multiple jurisdictions and no barriers. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for an incendiary attack on a MAT riot police truck in Kaisariani by ‘Incendiary Committee’” →

Belarus: Hunger strike of Ihar Alinevich – what is known now

Posted on 2022/10/12 - 2022/10/12 by darknights

Ihar Alinevich , an anarcho-partisan sentenced to 20 years for participating in the Belarusian uprising, went on hunger strike. Members of the Anarchist Black Cross collected the latest information about Igor from the Facebook of his mother Valentina Alinevich and from his close friends. Here’s what we were able to find out.

On October 5, Ihar’s lawyer tried to get to him, but did not. He will try to get to him next week. According to unconfirmed reports, Ihar is still in the penal cell, where he was visited by the prosecutor. It is very difficult to get any information about Ihar. Even his mother has not been able to see her son for years; there is no way to get in touch with him by phone; all letters are censored and often do not reach him at all. It may be difficult for foreigners to understand this, but if the country is “out of touch with the laws,” then information can be quite scarce.

Ihar’s hunger strike and demands

Ihar began his hunger strike on September 19. The exact demands are not known for certain, but apparently the last straw was a report on his placement in a punishment cell. Prior to that, he had sent complaints to higher authorities about the arbitrariness of the prison administration, but received no response. Therefore, Ihar suggests that these complaints did not leave the prison at all.

Transfer to prison regime

From the camp where Ihar was serving his sentence, he was transferred to a prison regime. Under what pretext is not known, but he had assumed it would happen. This is a mass phenomenon among Belarus political prisoners. If a person has dignity and will, this is a necessary consequence. Continue reading “Belarus: Hunger strike of Ihar Alinevich – what is known now” →

Italy: Techno-sharia, morality police and psychopolice

Posted on 2022/10/12 - 2022/10/12 by darknights

Adorno defined fascism in his time as “technically equipped barbarism.” While that definition stood out as one of the most precise, it nevertheless left the concept of barbarism in vagueness and ambivalence. Think, in the Marxist sphere, of the successful slogan “socialism or barbarism!”; loaded more and more with positivism and the ideology of a progressive advance toward classless society, Bordiga contrasted it with a resolute and outrageous “communism or civilization!” Not only does industrial and technological development not give birth to communism, it does not in itself “democratize” either customs or social relations.

More than a century ahead of those debates, the very young Leopardi had already centered the issue in one of the first thoughts of his Zibaldone: “Reason is a lamp: nature wants to be illuminated by reason not set on fire.” From this dazzling insight descends the reflection on the oppositional pair civilization-barbarie that runs throughout Leopardi’s work. Barbarie, for the poet-philosopher, is both that which precedes that light and the epoch of the overt and manifest fire, the triumph of a “geometrical reason” that is a “most false system of most true parts,” that is, “reasoned villainy,” the artificialization of lives and passions: in short, excess of civilization.

As the sequel showed, this was not merely a linguistic problem. The world still struggles, and more and more ruefully, with that ambivalence, although it changes its historical forms. Is not “technically equipped barbarism” Islam 4.0 under construction in Iran, a system that merges Sharia, social credit and facial recognition? We read, “Under the new hijab and chastity law enacted in Iran on Aug. 15, women who post their headscarfless photos on the Internet will suffer the temporary loss of certain social rights for a period of six months to a year. In addition, women deemed non-compliant will be barred from entering government offices, banks or traveling on public transportation. Government employees will be fired if their images on social media do not comply with what the Islamic laws dictate. Numerous women have been arrested for not complying with the dress code and forced to confess.” And again, “The Iranian government plans to use facial recognition technology on public transportation. The announcement comes directly from the secretary of Iran’s Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, Mohammad Saleh Hashemi Golpayegani.” Continue reading “Italy: Techno-sharia, morality police and psychopolice” →

France: An update on the situation of anarchist Ivan Alocco

Posted on 2022/10/12 by darknights

On October 5, anarchist comrade Ivan, arrested on June 11 and accused of six arson attacks against vehicles, was brought before the judge of freedoms at the Bobigny courthouse. Vice-president Claire Vettier, the same one who had ratified his imprisonment on June 13, renewed the comrade’s preventive detention for four more months.

In the meantime, his correspondence seems to have unblocked. Although old letters continue to gather dust in the examining magistrate’s office, the comrade received two postcards and a letter, sent in the last few days. They gave him great pleasure and he thanks those who thought of him.

Let us not forget the imprisoned revolutionaries.
Solidarity is the attack!

The address of the comrade:

Ivan Alocco
N. d’ecrou 46355
Maison d’Arrêt de Villepinte
40, Avenue Vauban
93420 Villepinte
France

Source: fuoridallariserva

Greece: 41 BIS is torture – Strength and solidarity with the unrepentant anarchist of praxis Alfredo Cospito EN/GR

Posted on 2022/10/12 - 2022/10/12 by darknights

41 BIS is torture – Strength and solidarity with the unrepentant anarchist of praxis Alfredo Cospito

Anarchist prisoner Alfredo Cospito has been in Italian prisons since September 2012. He has claimed responsibility for the shooting in the legs of Ansaldo Nucleare CEO Roberto Adinolfi by the Olga Cell of the Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI-IRF).

From the very first moment of his detention, the Italian state has exercised all kinds of repressive experiments against the comrade. New prosecutions, new exhausting sentences, disciplinary sanctions, repressive operations against his political comrades. The comrade was sentenced to 9 years of imprisonment for the action against Adinolfi, while in prison he was sentenced to an additional 20 years of imprisonment (which is appreciable in total, an equivalent sentence in Greece would be 2 times life) after the prosecutions brought against him within the framework of the repressive operation Scripta Manet. In essence, the comrade was convicted as an instigator for all the actions of the FAI, since he was accused as its founder and leader, in a case that deserves special mention as it is a monument to arbitrary interpretations and vindictiveness.

The Italian state is a hybrid state when it comes to issues of anti-terrorist policy. It is a model state for its brutality and rigour in these matters, having been called upon to manage low-intensity civil war conditions during the period when armed revolutionary movements flourished in the 1960s and 1980s. The Greek state has followed the Italian example on many occasions, one need only recall the similarities between the ‘Marini case’ in Italy and the ‘Conspiracy of Cells of Fire case’ in Greece. Continue reading “Greece: 41 BIS is torture – Strength and solidarity with the unrepentant anarchist of praxis Alfredo Cospito EN/GR” →

Italy: The only viable path. Manifesto in solidarity with the anarchist Alfredo Cospito EN/IT

Posted on 2022/10/12 - 2022/10/12 by darknights

THE ONLY VIABLE PATH

Since May 5, our comrade Alfredo Cospito has been imprisoned under the 41 bis regime. This measure was ordered after months of censorship on correspondence and after the repressive operation Sibilla in November 2021, for which he received a warrant for his arrest in prison. Behind this repressive tightening of Alfredo’s prison condition is the state’s blatant desire to shut the mouth of a comrade who, during these years of imprisonment, has contributed much, through articles and interventions, to the anarchist debate.

The 41 bis is a hard prison regime, created to isolate, silence and annihilate the prisoner, trying to bring him to cooperation with Justice. Established in the late 1980s, it was initially applied in exceptional cases of riots or serious emergencies within prison institutions. In 1992, after the Capaci massacre, it was extended to Mafia convicts. Since 2002 it has also been applied to those convicted of terrorism and subversion, thus as an instrument of political repression. Also currently in this regime are some prisoners belonging to the communist BR-PCC organization. Originally established as a detention regime of a temporary nature, from emergency to emergency, this exceptionality has become the norm. This mechanism is now bread and butter for the majority of the population since the proclamation of the so-called pandemic. It is now evident: established an emergency measure, there is never a return.

Alfredo’s transfer to 41 bis, like the recent convictions of Juan, sentenced to 28 years for an explosive attack on a Lega headquarters, and Anna, convicted along with Alfredo for political massacre, are a real warning from the state: those who spread anarchist and revolutionary practices and ideas are buried alive. The anti-anarchist operations of recent years are also an example of the repressive tightening we are experiencing. In the face of this, we cannot be reduced to cashing in as best we can on the blows the state gives us, waiting for better times.

It is urgent that we lay the groundwork for a revolutionary, international solidarity that is concrete.

The only antibodies to confront the catastrophe to which the state and bosses are leading us day by day are propaganda and action that know how to go to the root, expressing the innermost meaning of our struggle: the destruction of the existent without any mediation.

OUT ALFREDO FROM 41 BIS. ALL FREE, ALL FREE
DEATH TO THE STATE, LONG LIVE ANARCHY!

anarchists

[Received by e-mail]

Continue reading “Italy: The only viable path. Manifesto in solidarity with the anarchist Alfredo Cospito EN/IT” →

Rome, Italy: Report of the initiative at the DNAA, ‘National Anti-Mafia and Anti-Terrorism Directorate’ (September 30, 2022)

Posted on 2022/10/12 by darknights

On Friday, September 30, the announced mobilization took place near the Direzione Nazionale Antimafia e Antiterrorismo (‘National Anti-Mafia and Anti-Terrorism Directorate’, DNAA) in Rome. We were in the square, and we will be there again, to shout our opposition to the current repressive turn, which hits the anarchist movement with particular vehemence. A tightening that has become explicit in recent months with the heavy 28-year sentence for Juan Sorroche, accused of the attack on the headquarters of the Lega in Villorba (Treviso, 2018), with the reclassification as “political massacre” of the charge against comrades Alfredo Cospito and Anna Beniamino for the explosive attack against the carabinieri barracks in Fossano (Cuneo, 2006), with the trickle of repressive operations, special surveillance and other police measures, as well as the seizure of anarchist books and papers, and the closure of counter-information websites.

In particular, the DNAA is directly responsible for the transfer of the anarchist Alfredo Cospito to 41 bis prison regime. An almost total isolation regime, designed with the declared aim of annihilating the prisoner in order to induce him to cooperate. An unprecedented decision as far as imprisoned anarchists are concerned, marking a turning point in the war between the State and anarchism, but one that has already been used for years against some prisoners of the organization Brigate Rosse per la costruzione del Partito Comunista Combattente (BR-PCC). The DNAA, more generally, plays a coordinating and strategic role for the counterrevolution in Italy.

Numerous speeches concentrated on denouncing the maximally oppressive nature of 41 bis, on showing the true face of the anti-mafia, revealing how behind the facade of a popular institution dedicated to fighting organised crime is in reality hidden an emergency institution with exceptional powers aimed at repressing the internal enemy, linking Alfredo’s particular condition and the attack against revolutionary anarchism within a broader repressive climate. Some speeches emphasised how this authoritarian turn comes at a time of profound crisis in international and national capitalism, after two years of pandemic and within the war policies that dominate the governments’ agenda. Faced with the difficulties of capital, the state responds with a pre-emptive social war against its historical enemies. The climate of military mobilization, on the other hand, constitutes the best context for the liquidation of those subjectivities that are unwilling to mediate with power.

After about two hours near the DNAA headquarters, we marched through the streets of the city centre chanting chants, and after a brief moment of tension with the police the demonstration continued towards Campo de’ Fiori square. Crossing the market with slogans and leaflets, another short round of speeches communicated the reasons for our anger to those in the square. The demonstration then came to an end.

Instead, our mobilization is only just beginning. Continue reading “Rome, Italy: Report of the initiative at the DNAA, ‘National Anti-Mafia and Anti-Terrorism Directorate’ (September 30, 2022)” →

Italy: ‘The winter of capital’

Posted on 2022/10/01 - 2022/10/14 by darknights

The winter of capital

This weekend’s elections were very important for the fate of Europe. No, we are not talking about the miserable staging of the Italian round of elections, but about the referendums held in some occupied territories of Ukraine for annexation to the Russian Federation.

With them, the proxy and regionalized “world war” being fought between Russia and NATO takes a formal turn with important practical consequences. From the moment the Donbass, Kherson and Zaporozhye officially become part of Russia, Putin’s regime can claim that any Ukrainian attack in these territories will be read as an attack on Russia itself. The result is the order for general mobilization, the proclamation of martial law, and the transformation of its industry into a war economy to defend the homeland.

With this strategic shift, the Russian government moves away from the rhetoric of Special Military Operation – a neologism taken in inspiration from “international police missions,” “peacekeeping missions,” “humanitarian wars,” and other fanciful Doctor Strangelove sorties of the much-hated West – to the declaration of outright war. Demonstrating the farcical nature of any electoral mechanism, which always photographs the power relations between dominants and never an abstruse as non-existent “popular will,” Putin ordered partial mobilization even before knowing the referendum outcome, recalling the first three hundred thousand reservists.

From now on, all those states that have been arming the Kiev regime for months and that have enabled it to resist so effectively and to counterattack with unexpected successes become cobelligerent. Those who arm a state to which war is formally declared are also (almost) at war. Europe and the United States will now have to take responsibility for a conflict that they have fueled by all means, with the aim of bleeding the Russian enemy dry, hoping to achieve maximum results with minimum effort, i.e., by sending Ukrainian ascari1 to their deaths.

Rather than expire in the partisan readings of the court pen-pushers and opposing supporters, which as internationalists and enemies of every state we cannot but reject, reiterating our hostility against all sides in the war, it is worth dwelling on a couple of thoughts. Continue reading “Italy: ‘The winter of capital’” →

France: A letter from Ivan, from Villepinte Prison

Posted on 2022/09/28 by darknights

Below is a text by anarchist Ivan Alocco, who was arrested on June 11 and is currently imprisoned in Villepinte Prison, France.
Break the isolation! For immediate revolutionary solidarity with Ivan and all imprisoned anarchists!

–

I am writing to share some thoughts and give some news.
I would like to begin with something that illustrates well the methods of the judicial system.
A few days after my arrest, the judge who instructed the investigation, Stéphanie Lahaye, sent two cops from SDAT [the Anti-Terrorism Sub-Directorate of the Judicial Police] (including the judicial police officer “RIO 1237232” – like machines, they have numbers instead of names) to interrogate my daughter and her mother. Obeying his orders, the procedures of state justice, they tried to pressure a 12-year-old girl. After making her wait in the courtyard of the local gendarmerie barracks during her mother’s interrogation, they allegedly wanted to interrogate her alone. Evidently, her mother refused to leave her.
An ordinary, mundane procedure, a necessary act to establish the truth, according to judges and cops. A way, in my opinion, of trying to spread fear. A warning to my loved ones and to everyone, because, in the inquisitive logic of Justice, people who stay or stand by an anarchist accused of direct action are suspect and must be bothered.

This is somewhat the same logic that was used against me. When the same judicial police officer, during interrogations while I was under arrest, asked me, she reproached me for bringing my support to imprisoned anarchists, in France and in other countries. Of writing to them and occasionally sending them some money. Of course, I often wrote to numerous imprisoned compas and did my best to express my solidarity with them. Because they are anarchists and also because I am convinced of the rightness and necessity of the actions some of them are accused of.
I think solidarity, by any means necessary, with compas affected by repression is fundamental. To avoid openly solidarizing with them, for fear that repression will spread, would be to enter the game of Justice, to accept its logic. A logic that would make us retreat further and further, until we abandon, or almost abandon, the imprisoned revolutionaries. Continue reading “France: A letter from Ivan, from Villepinte Prison” →