Long live the Informal Anarchist Federation – International Revolutionary Front

“Lightning never travels in straight repetitive lines. It breaks out
suddenly. Even an apparent ‘silence’ is not a retreat, but the calmness
before the storm…”

NOTHING IS OVER
EVERYTHING CONTINUES

The imprisoned members of the R.O. CCF

A flame of solidarity from the C.C.F. to the brothers and sisters in Chile

Forever free

Forever anarchists.

Long live the FAI / IRF

The imprisoned members C.C.F.
And the anarchist revolutionary Theofilos Mavropoulos


Monday, September 19, 2011

Konstantina Karakatsani: A Look Inside the Juvenile Wing of Thebes Women’s Prison



From Culmine (September 14, 2011):

Konstantina Karakatsani wrote the following as her contribution to “Women Facing Imprisonment,” held on June 10 and 11 at the Patission 61 & Skaramaga squat in Athens. Karakatsani spent the first few months after her April 2010 arrest in the Thebes juvenile wing before being transferred to Korydallos, where she is currently serving an 11-year sentence on charges pertaining to the Fire Cells Conspiracy.


Someone seeing the conditions for the first time as an observer would perhaps describe them favorably. There are little rabbits in the garden, little flowers on the walls, and irony smiles in this place, specifically designed for female minors who break the Law. Moving further inside, you come face-to-face with a sterilized, imposing atmosphere: cameras; double glass; thick strong bars; bright lights that are always on, even at night. The cells are opposite one another, with heavy doors that make a deafening bang when they close. The doors have a hole the height and size of your face, so the guard can disturb the prisoners every hour during her nightly rounds through the wing. She does this by turning on the light with a corridor switch and looking inside your cell. The girls in the wing are 14 to 21 years old. Violence is a regular phenomenon, always caused by the same “irreconcilable” differences—telephones or hot plates in use—but also by deeper differences: some want to assert their authority over others to thus “move up” in the eyes of the rest. There are “neighborhoods”—in other words, different tables at which each clique sits separately. The cliques are formed mainly according to where you’re from, and sometimes one clique comes into conflict with another, given that the element of “national pride” is strong. That said, there isn’t as much apparent racism toward immigrant prisoners in the relationships between prisoners as there is on the part of the staff.
The juvenile wing will never be peaceful, since it’s not like other women’s wings. The atmosphere is marked by the characteristic tension and energy of youth, of people who were brought up on crime and were therefore excluded from the stereotypical “normal” childhood. Here in prison, little “foreigners, thieves, prostitutes, drug addicts, and gypsies,” as some simply call them, may not be living a life like other girls. But they nevertheless have vital instincts, needs, and desires inside themselves, which they try to fulfill where they are now living—some for a short period of time and others for half their lives—and which they express outwardly through their attitudes. They are constantly looking for substitutes for the things imprisonment has deprived them of, sticking magazine photos on the walls of what they lack, like clothing, makeup, and half-naked men. They throw “parties,” dance to loud music, get involved in sexual relationships with one another, or come up with schemes to get high. Of course, there are also some who don’t even try to fill the emptiness of their stolen lives, because they feel their lives are over. They close up within themselves and their cells; they swallow razor blades, batteries, etc.; they vomit blood; they make deep cuts on their hands and the rest of their bodies; they burn themselves with cigarettes. As they explain it themselves, with self-destructive logic, they are “dispersing their inner pain” by causing pain to their bodies as well. Or they’re simply doing it to get attention from the people around them. And those are the cases that often wind up in the psychiatric wing for a generous “therapy”of psychopharmacological drugs that turn them into vegetables. This certainly doesn’t just go on in the juvenile wing. It also goes on in other wings, in Korydallos, and generally in all prisons. Only here it’s more serious, given that the situation involves very young people who are still quite fragile when imprisonment comes to play its role, forming a personality that literally crushes any childhood they have left. Imprisonment becomes a such a part of their life and influences them so negatively that people who spend time in “correctional” institutions as minors generally wind up going back again later in life.

A few more words in general


Women’s prisons face the same problems as men’s: food, hot water, lack of medicine (there’s never a shortage of “stupefying” drugs; what’s really lacking are medicines that treat illness and other ailments), overcrowded cells. Apart from those, there are also certain idiosyncrasies that have to do exclusively with women—matters that require specialized care and infrastructure, like pregnancies, babies, gynecological problems, and mammographies. These are matters that prison neither takes care of nor faces up to in the manner that it should. The overwhelming majority of prisoners are immigrants, almost all of whom come from from the lower social strata—the ranks of petty criminals. This fact is a reflection of society itself, which pushes them to the margins for various reasons, whether racial, class, etc. These are degraded women who do their “work” by stealing, because quite simply that’s the only thing they learned to do or the only thing they are able to do to survive. But I don’t want to contribute to the mythologization of what goes on here, so I also have to talk about another side of prison: the situation of certain immigrants (especially gypsies) who advance economically by dealing heroin, and who have accumulated enormous fortunes. In any case, they are part of the range of people who seek their fortune on the path of so-called (by the law) “crime.” Petty theft, sex trafficking, and naturally drug dealing are thus the most “profitable” as well as the most accepted options for everyone, immigrant as well as Greek prisoners.


Women, especially immigrants, are confronted by the staff in the exact same way they are confronted by the State outside the walls—with disdain, racism, and indifference. Since they also have a problem with understanding and being understood, they are incapable of handling their legal cases, finding lawyers, filing petitions, and whatever else may be necessary. There is no service that can make things easier for them, no one deals with them, and they therefore remain victimized by their judicial sentence. The situation takes a tremendous toll on them and discourages them from demanding things, because rejection has put down roots inside them. Financially comfortable prisoners (yes, they also exist) from “higher social strata” are certainly not confronted the same way. Nevertheless, prisoners are a group of people one can easily compare with society. They form a heterogeneous mass comprising all kinds of people. From a woman full of the very dignity that comes from resisting the damage caused by imprisonment, to one who blatantly snitches. From a lady with aristocratic airs sentenced for embezzlement, to the poorest gypsy who stole wallets in the metro. From a drug addict, to a murderer who simply reached her limit. A mother who killed her son. One who pimped child prostitutes. Another who killed someone trying to rape her, or killed her husband, her father, her mother, a neighborhood shopkeeper. Each with a different motivation, a different conscience, or no conscience whatsoever. A complex of social contradictions and inequalities under the same roof, behind the same barbed-wire fence. Relationships between the women are typified by shared characteristics (nationality, criminal “pursuits”) or on the basis of common viewpoints, interests, or lifestyles.


The role of the political prisoner


In prisons, we are obligated to coexist with guards—in other words, a group of people, whether abusive or kind, who view us as political. But given our general position and the outside solidarity and public knowledge about our cases, it becomes clear that the political prisoner has solid ground under her feet. We don’t keep silent about anything, and the guards know that very well. We thus get a certain informal “respect” from them, which in some way facilitates our demands.
Contact with other prisoners is an opportunity for us to promote the values we hold as human beings and political subjects, values that automatically come into conflict with the established dog-eat-dog attitude fostered by the condition of imprisonment. We operate according to our own system of values, not prison’s. The radicalization of others can be achieved through our daily “friction” with them and through our behavior in practice. For example, if someone takes an interest in the wing’s problems, demands things, achieves those demands, and confronts abusive attitudes (like those of guards who are disdainful toward prisoners, or those of prisoners who snitch), then others see that person’s entire bearing methodically working toward what they recognize as dignified. That said, I don’t view political prisoners as some kind of prison elite. However, their combative experience outside the walls can be transferred inside, but also while they learn from the experiences of other prisoners, who have much to share. For total antagonism toward the regime that deprives us of liberty.

—Konstantina Karakatsani, Korydallos Women’s Prison

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Our Lives of Burning Vision – About the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire & more

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Actforfreedomnow – Bourbouras present a 68 page publication about the most recent situations and events connected with the Revolutionary Organisation Conspiracy of Cells of Fire and their 17 January International Solidarity Call for an International Revolutionary Front / Informal Anarchist Federation (Global).

Free PDF – Paper copies available in single copies or bundles (10x = £20 + postage) from 325.nostate.net or from the radical distros which carry 325 magazine. Benefit for CCF prisoners and accused of the same case – Nonprofit.

“In the chaos of our own existence we are a part of the imponderable element which organizes subversion, plans mutinies, that leave even ourselves dazed. The translation of texts, letters, communiqués, etc. so that comrades in other countries around the world can read about the desires and ideas and projectuality of the comrades in Greece, is one more weapon at our disposal. What began as a simple desire and a challenge, has brought us into a new field of experiences, acquaintances and responsibilities. Now that we’re here, they will not get rid of us easily.
We have become another aspect of the asymmetric threat. The war to the end, has already begun. …”

This is why, as individuals with our actions and solidarity, we will continue with all means possible as anarchist revolutionary insurrectionalists, to express our thoughts and desires, whether it’s through the letters-texts of our fighting comrades who are hostages in the hell-holes of Greek democracy or through the actions of the comrades outside in the streets day and night with all means untilsocial liberation for Anarchy.

Actforfreedomnow - Boubouras

March 2011
From the introduction by Actforfreedomnow – Bourbouras.

A huge storm of revolt raged through the streets of Greece in December 2008. After the 15 year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos was murdered in coldblood by a cop, riots spread throughout the whole country for several weeks. Hundreds of corporate and government targets were attacked, plundered and set on fire. Although it was anarchists and anti-authoritarians who took the lead in this storm during the first week after the murder, it spread itself fast and many people got involved in this revolt against miserable living conditions, against the authorities and against the hopelessness offered by this world to the exploited and oppressed. But the revolt didn’t cease at the end of 2008, neither did it start on the day of the murder. The attacks against the structures of State and Capital went on and spread to several smaller towns in Greece.

About 180 fire attacks and, since a couple of months, artisan [‘homemade’] bombing attacks were carried out under the name of ‘Conspiracy of Cells of Fire’. The attacks targeted banks, car dealers, shopping centres, governmental institutions, police stations, offices of political parties, houses of politicians, judges, criminologists, journalists, private security firms and companies building prisons,… and always accompanied by elegantly critical and nihilistic claims of anarchist responsibility.

The claims did not only criticize Capital, State and Authority (in all of their aspects), but also the resignation of the exploited, their herd mentality, their collaboration with the system. The Conspiracy of Cells of Fire (CCF) refuse to regard oppression and exploitation as simply being imposed by batons and blackmail, but understand it as a social relation in which all have their responsibility –and make or don’t make the choice to fight against it.

In September 2009 extensive anti-terror raids attempted to strike the CCF, these raids became one more political tool to attack the wider anarchist & anti-authoritarian movement, a situation which intensified when two members of the CCF were captured during an operation in November 2010, Athens. Against the ongoing legalistic kidnapping of our comrades and for the escalation of struggle for total liberation, the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire : Illegal Sector called for an informal global project based on anarchist subversion, direct action and international solidarity. These papers document some of the many communiques, letters and legal & court updates concerning the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire, the accused comrades of the same case, plus solidarity actions resulting from the call for a formation of an Informal Anarchist Federation / International Revolutionary Front.

Whilst this publication can of course only offer a partial view upon the situation and topics, it is produced in the spirit of rebellion which fuels the total war against domination. It is an unfinished document that seeks collaboration through acts of refusal. The international call which has been circulated for the subversive formation of an International Revolutionary Front / Informal Anarchist Federation (Global), which is based on the principles of international solidarity, permanent subversion and constant conflict should be discussed, debated and acted upon without delay.

Dedicated to:

CONSPIRACY OF CELLS OF FIRE: IMPRISONED MEMBERS CELL + THE ACCUSED OF THE SAME CASE

14 AUGUST CHILEAN PRISONERS

ALL FIGHTERS & HOSTAGES OF THE TOTAL WAR AGAINST ALL EXPLOITATION & HIERARCHY.

FOR A GLOBAL INSURRECTIONAL NETWORK & INFORMAL COORDINATION

——

Anonymous Editions / Anti-Copyright Network
March 2011 / NET-DIY

——

PLEASE SPREAD – REPLICATE – RE-POST

Solidarity to all those persecuted for the Conspiracy Cells of Fire case who are on trial since 17/1 in Koridallos prisons(greece)




“Paths change, times change,

Ways change, but the aim is the same.

This is our fate, to fight and resist.

To fight and fall down, to fall down and win.”

Solidarity to all those persecuted

for the Conspiracy Cells of Fire case

who are on trial since 17/1 in Koridallos prisons

SELFORGANIZED STEKI OF THE POLYTECHNIC / COMRADES


"Reventando lo existente. Reflexiones del combate minoritario" – Book in Spanish about the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire

Libro. Reventando lo existente,reflexiones del combate minoritario: Conspiración de Células del Fuego. Grecia.



In view of the trial that began on January 17 and for a better dissemination of ideas of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire, a book is being published in Spanish, first in digital pdf format.


The book is called "Reventando lo existente. Reflexiones del combate minoritario"

(Destroying the existent. Reflections on minority struggle) and contains a chronology of the Halandri case, all the statements ofthe prisoners (Massouras, Hadtzimihelakis, Karakatsani, Tsakalos,Argirou), the chapter "Critique and contributions" (the statement

"The interpretations they give, time to talk about their aspirations," chapters 3 and 4 of the brochure "Conspiracy Theories ", thetext of G. Voutsis Vogiatzis
pages from "The Diary of a bomber" and the letter that Poly Georgiadis wrote to the Conspiracy ofCells of Fire) and all communiques and texts of the Conspiracy.

The back cover carries a famous phrase of the English poet
William Blake: He who desires but, actsnot, breeds pestilence."







our revolutionary solidarity comrades!
translate actforfreedomnow!

Mad arson attacks for Conspiracy of Cells of Fire


Athens, Greece

The communique spontaneously combusted shortly after appearing:

“Saturday night 15/1 and Sunday 16/1 we torched:
- bank of Proton Bank in Vironas area
- Local organization of PASOK (ruling party) in Moshato,
- Two vehicles of a security company in Gizi,
- Personal motorbike of a cop who lives in Exarchia (Asimaki Fotila street).

We dedicate these actions to our imprisoned comrades accused in the case of the “Conspiracy of Cells of Fire” and tried as of today in the political court marshal in Koridallos prison. Three of those have taken the political responsibility for the organization, while the others deny their participation, but keep intact their rebelliousness and dignity. We pledge that we will not leave any imprisoned revolutionary alone. These violent acts of resistance are not only fair, but also the duty of every person who puts themselves against a world where exploitation and injustice reign and money is in charge. The individual agreements and disagreements are to be discussed; what is non-negotiable is: solidarity between individuals and groups who are fighting for freedom in every way and with any means. Also, towards the new treaty that criminalizes social, political and personal relationships (like in the case of the notorious “safehouse” of Halandri, but recently the case of the four comrades wanted for arson in Thessaloniki), we respond with even more rage and anger, more litres of petrol and butane bottles. Of course, we do not forget the famously disgusting minions of the system, the journalists, who for a salary and a career, mock and step on the freedom and the dignity of our comrades, repeating the lies of the police and presenting various scenarios of their imagination; to try, condemn and destroy lives and reputations, before “civil justice” does it officially. They should know that on this side of the war, memory and honour is in excess, and sooner or later they will pay for the dirty role they have chosen in life.

Finally, we want to say that we chose to act on this theoretically “tough” weekend before the beginning of the trial, when the police have unleashed their obvious and also hidden running dogs, in fear of a new armed attack, to break in this way the terror and fear that the State attempts to impose on society and on people who are fighting. As long as the State is unable to mend the holes of a system that’s collapsing, the noose will tighten and the measures will intensify. We must stand strong and act with all our power, until the Revolution and Liberation, social and individual.

Freedom to H.Hadjimihelakis, P. Argirou, G.Tsakalos who have taken the political responsibility for the “Conspiracy Cells of Fire” and P.Massouras, K.Karakatsani, A.Mitrousias, G.Karagiannidis who are imprisoned for the same case.

Solidarity to all imprisoned anarchists and revolutionaries.
Struggle by any means – Revolution First and Always.

Wolves of Solidarity”

Bombing at police station in Mexico State

Bombing at police station in Mexico State
Direct solidarity with Panayiotis Argyrou, Gerasimos Tsakalos, and the others charged with being members of the Fire Cells Conspiracy in Greece, who are now on hunger strike: Antisocial, nihilist, and anarchist until the end! —Earth Liberation Front (Informal Anarchist Federation/Global Network) clik n foto to read...

solidarity attacks for the greek comrades in trial for the connspiracy of Cells of Fire case.2011

IN U.K.

Arson of security vehicle in solidarity with Conspiracy of Cells of Fire in Bristol (UK)
Attack in Bristol for Conspiracy of Cells of Fire (UK)

Attack in Bristol for Conspiracy of Cells of Fire (UK)
“In the early morning of 17 January, two telecommunications utilities vehicles, of British Telecom, were set on fire in Bristol.This attack was made in solidarity with Conspiracy of Cells of Fire and all those who are fighting inside and outside the prison walls.We denounce the trial against the accused and imprisoned of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire. We denounce all trials, refusing to recognise the authority of the State and its judicial apparatus.

We send comradely greetings to the imprisoned cell of Conspiracy of Cells of Fire and say that we recognise ourselves, our actions and our ideas in a common project of destruction.We salute all rebellious and revolutionary prisoners and all people rising up against capitalism and the State.

Long Live Anarchy!

For an international informal anarchist federation. “
17 January Group



Arson of security vehicle in solidarity with Conspiracy of Cells of Fire in Bristol (UK) 15 January 2011

“Early hours of saturday morning security and surveillance van set on fire in solidarity with members of conspiracy cells of fire group who face trial in Greece on monday the 17th.”


Solidarity with Cells of Fire



solidarity attacks for the greek comrades in trial for the connspiracy of Cells of Fire case.2011

London UK - Solidarity attack on Barclays Bank, Dulwich FROM www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/01/472295.html17 January 2011 - Solidarity attack. Barclays Bank, Dulwich, London got a visit early this morning just after midnight - a gift - can of petrol - left at the entrance - in flames - a small attack on the banking system -
in solidarity to the Greek comrades in court today 17 January for the start of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire trial.


midnight express

İstanbul, Turkey (16.01.2011) - In the night of 16th of January 2011 at 7 p.m. against the biggest one of the shopping centers in Istanbul, Cevahir AVM, there was an attack with fireworks.

The 4 of the exploded 7 fireworks hit the entrance and the windows of shopping center. While fireworks begin to explode, there had been no injury except a little bit panic.

While the banks, shopping centers, fasfoods and other part of the consuming culture reduce imagination and free time to shit and debt, while our planet began to unliveable because of the consumption and commodification, we see a little art-sabotage not inappropriate.


The actions that we took like this is for solidarity with our comrades who are now in hostages in Greece dungeons and with Conspiracy Cells of Fire.

Insurrectionary greetings

ÖFKE (ANGER)

Source: http://istanbul.indymedia.org/news/2011/01/270789.php

istanbul.indymedia.org/news/2011/01/270789.php