Arson Attack on the Offices of New Democracy ( Greek government political party)
We take responsibility for the attack on the premises of the local organization of New Democracy, in the 5th municipal district Agios Eleftherios on Petridis Street, with an incendiary device in the early morning of October 13th. We chose to place the device in front of the metal door of your offices because although we could have broken into them and burned them completely, we did not want to risk the safety of the residents of the apartment building located above your hole. So we consciously hit this target and minimized the damage, because for us it had great symbolic value, clearly proven by the fact that you kept quiet about it.
In its 50 years it has remained and will go down in history for the dozens if not hundreds of scandals with bribes, murders, trafficking rings, participation in fascist groups, etc. This right-wing, patriotic-traditional party, which still gathers a huge percentage of supporters, has been in power for 5 years and with a specific and methodical plan has created the ultimate European paradise for domestic and international capital, as well as for the mafias all over the world, and absolute hell and dystopia for the lower economic and social strata. New Democracy and all its cronies (judges, mafia, businessmen) act shamelessly and cynically without trying to hide their atrocities, sodomizing anyone who tries to take out their dirty laundry or opposes even their own victims.
Every day we wake up in a world that is sick without dying. In a world where citizens’ discontent is limited to painless protests for the state, harmless symbolism and “remembrance anniversaries”. All this while the most murderous government of the 21st century is devouring and plundering the last forest areas on the altar of profitability, stifling entire settlements. The same moment that orchestrates dozens, and for us who count the deaths from covid as such, thousands of state murders. Migrants at the border, at sea, in police stations, Roma by cops for any reason, militants, prisoners, women, drug addicts. It is as if the 7 plagues of the Pharaoh had fallen on our heads, except that it is not some god that is punishing us, but the state and its armed minions, seeking by force to make us a “civilized country”, the one that dismantles hospitals and is responsible for thousands of dead, the one that burns-floods-loots and murders in the name of its own god, capital. With the 2 most recent murders of immigrants in the police stations most “famous” for their barbarity, Agios Panteleimonas and Omonoia. And this power is not impersonal. Above all it is not invincible. The people who make it up have houses-jobs-offices-vehicles, the parties have their offices, all institutions exist somewhere in their physical form. Power is not an abstract concept that is imposed and fragments our lives. It is the people of the state and capital, and it is through a methodical plan of theirs and their external allies that the Trojan Horse is attacking us.
The repressive framework that they have installed and is managed by the Greek police aims to neutralize those who resist their universal hegemony. That is why they want to put us in the cells they build to punish those who ignore their orders. What is unprecedented in the period we are going through is the intransigence of the state and the “omerta” attitude that this government has been holding since 2019. For all these years many struggles have been begun by various subjects and a striking example is the hunger strikes of political and non-political prisoners, few of whom have been vindicated.
However, this is not a defeat but a trigger for rallying.Because every beast state makes a noise when it falls. The consistency of speech-action, aggressive solidarity and the transmission of empirical knowledge are the characteristics that give us hope no matter how dystopian things might seem. The war against the state continues and our values lead us to extend the struggle.
Solidarity with the militant prisoner Thanasis Pikasis!
Free Nikos Maziotis!
Fire in the cells of the Republic!
Victory to the weapons of resistance in the Middle East and Kurdistan!
Opening a new activist space in Exarcheia has a significant dimension. This historic district of resistance to the dictatorship, and today to gentrification, is particularly threatened by the Greek government and developers. Squats evicted and migrants controlled, permanent presence of police forces and muscular surveillance.
It is against the current of the urban transformations underway in the centre of Athens that Eva and Nicolas decided to launch a new solidarity and activist initiative in this district, and have just opened a café-library, a meeting place open to people that the government wants to chase away from there: La Zone, at rue Soultani 17 in Athens.
But let’s start with my meeting with Nicholas, thanks to two activists from the Nevers Anarchist Federation who came to Greece with a solidarity convoy.
Drawing a portrait of Nicolas Richen is quite simple because it is made easier by the foreword of his book The Buds of Hope of a Terrible Greek Winter. He explains to us how when he was a student in Quebec, the Maple Spring in 2012 (the largest student movement in Quebec history) made him aware of “our collective strength”, the basis of his political commitment. This ultimately led him to Greece in 2016 “to learn, observe and participate in self-managed collectives”.
It was in Ioannina (Epirus) that he met his accomplice, the photographer Antonia Gouma, and they decided to take portraits of some “victims of the austerity measures decreed in the early 2010s by European banks and the Troika “. A sulphurous context, aggravated by the rise of xenophobia, fascism and the extreme right in reaction to the influx of refugees in Greece. A series of photos, “The cry of the street“, introduces this series of live testimonies. One is one dedicated to Anastasia, a 56-year-old divorced woman, a former art teacher “with a broken life”. Then come those of young people who are part of the “exodus generation”, 4% of Greeks, many of whom emigrated between 2008 and 2016.
So why did many of them—often students doing low-paid jobs to survive—decide to stay, to continue fighting and not to lose hope?
This is what Sofia, the convinced, frank and passionate anarchist, or Fotini, a shy and anxious young girl, in solidarity with the refugees, will explain to us. Or Zografia, curious about the world but, unlike the others, still trusting the electoral process and the parties’ demonstrations.
Between two series of photos, Nicolas tells us about his participation in the march of November 17, 2016, in memory of the student uprising against the dictatorship in 1973. An edifying insight into the presence and repression of the police in Athens.
Then come the testimonies of Nikos, Manos, son of a worker, Ilirida, originally from Albania, or Rania, who joined after the police murder of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos in 2008. All trying to finish their studies, forced into small makeshift jobs and often living with their family.
But with what prospects for them? Escape the deadly circle of capitalism, reclaim language, build a new collective imagination? From the struggle can be born many popular initiatives, free without conditions and self-managed: from social kitchens to residential squats to health clinics.
Finally, Nicolas takes stock of these testimonies “as so many echoes of a hope beyond generations and borders “.
We can also discover a more intimate Nicolas Richen in Des nuits et des étoiles, feu et vagabondage dans la ville , his collection of poems dating from 2022, dedicated to all alley cats with the stated objective of “sharing certain fragments of emotions and aspirations”.
The political commitment of Eva Betavatzi, the second person behind the La Zone space, dates back to 2015, when she joined the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debts in Brussels, and then worked there from 2018 to 2021. The ‘Greek crisis’ was already well established. Her meeting with Mamadou Bah, a Guinean activist who had been attacked by Golden Dawn and had taken refuge in Belgium, was decisive and forged Eva’s conviction that the fight against illegitimate debt was an integral part of the anti-colonial and anti-fascist struggle. At that time, the last Nazi leader of Golden Dawn, a member of the European Parliament, also moved freely in Brussels with complete impunity. Eva then campaigned in Belgium in anti-eviction groups and for the cancellation of rents during the first lockdown and then for the reduction of rents in Brussels.
These experiences led her to Athens in 2021, but above all made her think a lot about her first job as an architect. Today, she practices it voluntarily in the service of causes other than commercial ones, such as renovating in 2022, with Nicolas and other comrades, the ground floor of one of the oldest Athenian squats.
Is opening a new place of exchange in Exarcheia, in the form of a café-library, an act of resistance to gentrification for you?
Yes, but we would first like to point out that the Athenian anarchist movement is seriously lacking space. One could say that it is “too cramped” within the city walls. In addition, in recent years we have witnessed a deprivation of spaces since the election of Mitsotakis and the strengthening of gentrification. Many squats have been evicted since 2018-2019 and quite a few activist groups are struggling to find new buildings and even to rent premises with the skyrocketing prices of rent and electricity. From a more sociological perspective, the struggle and survival of squats in Athens necessarily raises the question of the multiplication of meeting spaces and conviviality, not only in Exarcheia, but everywhere in the city, in order to effectively combat the spread of all-out commercialisation. Opening such a place from scratch must represent a huge financial challenge, not to mention the paperwork?
Yes, for La Zone , it is a bit of a “Do it yourself” challenge, because we initially only had a very small investment budget. But in DIY , we must include the real solidarity movement that was spontaneously established from the start of the work. Thanks to the support of many comrades and friends, we acquired skills in painting, carpentry, plumbing, electricity, etc. We were able to count on the help of the resourceful people used to squats, on our friendly relations, on getting by, on spontaneous support, especially from other cafés in the neighbourhood. For transporting materials and recycling: our arms, supermarket trolleys and a car from Brussels!
We also had to learn how to use a coffee machine, do accounting and orders… other things that may seem like trinkets, but are nevertheless crucial. For the administrative side, yes, we can talk about a Kafkaesque journey, particularly in Greece. Getting directions to the right procedure, the right office, and especially the right tips so as not to get lost indefinitely in the bureaucratic labyrinth, etc. Small and big hassles requiring a lot of energy.
What does your stock include today in terms of books and magazines?
For the moment, we have benefited from many donations, particularly from the anarchist and radical left in countries such as Belgium, France, Serbia, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, etc. But also spontaneous deposits from individuals, publications from local collectives, the press, literature, posters and even recipe books!
Why did you choose the name La Zone ?
The story began when we were looking for premises in the Kypseli district further west of the city where there is a street called “Sainte Zone”, hence the play on words. But for us, La Zone is also a snub to the spaces for the bourgeoisie. But we can also see it as “joyous mess” or even a reference to Zone à Défendre (ZAD) or a Zone without borders! We chose a French word because we wanted to be a place of primarily Greek and French-speaking expression (and at most multilingual in the longer term). Finally, La Zone fits well with the idea of DIY and the warm aspect of a lounge to hang out without having to consume. How did the inauguration go on September 7?
There was a lot of joy and it was to our great surprise that we managed to bring together around 80 participants. It was, it must be said, a great sport. We had to improvise as bar tenders and animators. People had brought their favourite poems to read. It was very positive, we received gifts, people we didn’t know bought books, lots of exchanges and common desires, projects for rebetiko evenings or film screenings, poetry evenings or writing workshops, translation and collective learning…
Athens is a very large city, for you, is the atomisation of the places of struggle a handicap or on the contrary an opportunity? And what do you think of the Greek anarchist movement?
The atomisation of the anarchist movement can be seen in a positive way as an escape from centralisation. Given what happened in Exarcheia in recent years, it is not necessarily a bad thing. When you think that today some “tour operators” allow themselves to visit the neighbourhood as if it were an “alternative” zoo, not to mention the voyeurism of misery! But as for the Athenian movement, not all anarchist groups have the same conception of anarchy, far from it. Here we see criticism from both sides of various groups. Some have a pyramidal organisation, for others it is less the case. There is also a problem here with the machismo still very anchored in our circles. The same goes for racism. This is the feeling shared with many queer or non-queer comrades and those fighting with refugees.
But what should be noted is the real solidarity during the strong mobilisations, as was the case in 2022 when thousands of people, comrades, assemblies and anarchist, autonomous and even left-wing groups took to the streets of the centre against the metro construction site on the only square in the Exarcheia neighbourhood and against the permanent presence of the cops. This is the most recent period of massive mobilisations for the defence of the neighbourhood. The barricades were set up at least one evening a week and nights of clashes took place. Today, the anarchists gather a little less massively, the movement has lost space but also energy, and the repression is stronger than before, in particular because of the recent revision of the penal code which authorises the cops to do almost anything. Athens remains a place where there is a lot of resistance from below: something happens every day. But let’s never idealise radical spheres, neither in Greece nor in France for that matter.
One last question, what are your dreams, your hopes?
Eva: it would be that the people from the last squats in the neighbourhood mix with other groups and activists, because since gentrification, Exarcheia is no longer very welcoming for migrants, especially with the constant police presence. For this, the multiplication of meeting places and also self-managed living spaces is more than necessary.
Nicolas: I don’t like the term hope anymore, because it often locks us into a wait-and-see attitude. I would be happy if our new space contributed to creating new relationships of solidarity and anti-authoritarianism to build immediate actions, relationships of mutual care, beyond all forms of borders. Living in such a metropolis and in an often dystopian reality, it is this everyday neighborhood solidarity and internationalist relationships that allow us not to go “crazy”. Whether in Athens or elsewhere in the world, queer, feminist, decolonial, anti-racist/anti-fascist and ecological struggles are intertwined. This is what gives collective strength and a subversive joy to move forward.
For more than three years the peoples of Burma have waged popular resistance against a military junta, which seized power after a landslide defeat in the country’s elections. Even before the coup, ethnic rebels in the countryside have been waging a decades-long resistance against the Burmese central government. Now, in a historical moment, the entire people has united to strike final defeat into both the fascist dictatorship which has since birth plagued the country, as well as the chauvinist and divisive approach of the “Burmese” state against the many peoples of the land.
Most of the country is again in the hands of the people, with the dictatorship retreating everywhere and on the defensive- but the hardest battles are still yet to come. The times ahead of us mark a crucial period of transition and development as the revolutionary forces consolidate the strength to be able to confront the junta in their strongholds. We believe the time has come for internationalists, as they have always done, to come to the side of the people and organize in the defense of the revolution.
To this end we announce the Anti-fascist Internationalist Front, a vessel for individuals of all nationalities to join the people of Myanmar in their resistance to the dictatorship, and invite all who consider themselves anti-fascist or revolutionary to contact us at the email below.
On Thursday, September 26, masked students released a banner, raised barricades and confronted the COP present with molotov cocktails, in memory of all of those who fell in the struggle on September 11.
Monday night at the Bedford Ave L train station in Brooklyn, we smashed 8 OMNY readers, 1 OMNY machine, and 2 MTA machines. We made the fare FREE because they had to open the emergency door to let people in. This is in direct response to the L train mass shooting committed by NYPD, when they shot Derrel Mickells and two bystanders over $2.90, in a Black neighborhood under militarized police occupation. New Yorkers say enough is enough and fuck your fare.
We live in a world in which the pig enforcers of racial capitalism can casually shoot us over a few dollars. All our lives especially Black lives are worth less than $2.90 to them. Whether it’s paying the pigs to menace Black and Brown communities and restrict movement, for funding genocide near and far, or creating technology to convenience the rich and confine the poor, capitalism is designed to kill.
This is a call to action. Anyone can do this. Gather info, plan well, be covered, be their nightmare. Let’s all smash! Puncture the walls of the techno-prison and see real light, breathe real air, and destory the fare!
Recently, Black Revolutionaries in Atlanta sent out a call for a Summer of Resistance, a sustained, militant, and decentralized campaign targeting the multitude of appendages of the settler-colonial so-called United States, its Zionist client government, and their many accomplices in promoting a genocidal agenda in Palestine that is killing tens of thousands. In response, we turned our attention to the MTA and the touchless payment system, OMNY, that it is trying to shove down New Yorkers’ collective throat. These machines represent a world in which we must trade away our privacy for the right to move about our own city. The existence of OMNY and the city’s desire to phase out all other methods of payment is an obvious ploy to increase surveillance and further violate our communities by policing the main arteries of transit for everyday New Yorkers—as if the subways weren’t fucking crawling with police already.
We smashed ten of these machines in multiple subway stations across the city. We estimate that this is equivalent to about $40,000 in damage.
OMNY is in part result of a contract between the MTA and Cubic Corporation, a sprawling multinational entity owned by the private equity firm Veritas Capital [9 W. 57th St.]. Veritas’s portfolio also includes Peraton, which is working with the Department of Homeland Security to build HART. This advanced surveillance system will compile and centralize biometric and other data on nearly 300 million individuals, further facilitating DHS’s campaign of terror against immigrants and communities of color. This database, of course, will soon be open to Zionist security forces through DHS’s Enhanced Border Security Partnership, which promises rapid mutual biometric intelligence sharing among the Zionist entity, US, UK, and EU.
Veritas is invested in the oppressive technologies shoring up the imposed colonial borders that have been constructed on Palestinian land and between the United States and Mexico, ripping apart traditionally Indigenous territories. Here, at the margins, we see the extremity of state violence enacted against those it has decided to keep out by any means necessary, through both active violence—when the Zionist military murders Palestinians in cold blood—and passive, when US agents allow families to drown in the Rio Grande before their very eyes. These horrors are manifold, and Veritas is profiting from them.
If your city has a public transportation system, it is likely to be linked to Cubic and Veritas. Chicago’s Ventra system, London’s Oyster, the Breeze card in Atlanta, and countless other systems inside and outside of the US are all Cubic endeavors. Your governments are selling you out to a private company that actively promotes the imperialist projects from Palestine to Mexico. Why? In our view, they are rolling out an ever-more militarized version of the already extant police state. Cops flooding the subway and National Guard bag-checks are only the beginning. They are relying on us growing accustomed to being controlled in every aspect of our lives, of us willingly giving up our privacy in exchange for their rotten idea of “safety.” There is no safety under occupation, and we are indeed living on occupied territory. We may not yet face the same violence in the metropole as we see at the margins, but, as the resistance grows and the intifada is globalized, they are certainly getting ready in case we get too rowdy, too ungovernable. We are the frogs in the slowly heating pot.
Disabling these machines is just one small act of resistance, one that requires no more than a good, heavy hammer (16 oz. or more, no wooden handles), some safety equipment (goggles and protective gloves), and a solid plan for concealing your identity. Bring a friend to watch your back and go to town. Smash an OMNY, cover a camera, break one of their stupid video ads. Join the Transit Liberation Front today!
In a society that champions the urban landscape as the sole way of existence, our liberty and very essence endure relentless oppression day after day. To turn a blind eye to this truth is to allow this tyranny to thrive and progress. It’s degrading to merely endure this survival state instead of truly living. We must rebel against it by any means necessary. Therefore, on 26/5, we executed an incendiary attack on the equipment situated at the construction site of the Elikonos station within the forthcoming line 4 of the metro. We harbor no delusions that this strike will halt the advancement of the new line project, yet we grasp that it represents a stride in the correct direction. Every development zone of this nature leads to the gentrification of the surrounding locality, causing small enterprises to flounder and rents to soar to exorbitant levels. It is our obligation to stand as the barrier against this dystopian future until absolute emancipation.
We sternly assert that the metro in Exarcheia Square shall never come to fruition. Both it and the uniformed enforcers upholding it shall meet a fiery demise.
RAGE AND AWARENESS, REFUSAL AND FORCE TO SPARK DISORDER AND CHAOS
UNTIL CITIES AND THE CONTEMPORARY WAY OF LIFE ARE ERADICATED
[On the night of May 12/13 in Leipzig, several Tesla cars were set on fire in the Schomburgkstrasse parking lot of a Tesla dealership. Two Tesla cars were completely destroyed, and two others heavily damaged, with damage amounting to 120,000 euros. The Saxony Regional Criminal Police’s Center for Defense against Terrorism and Extremism (PTAZ) was in charge of the investigation. The day before the attack in Leipzig, 2,500 demonstrators marched in Berlin from the forest towards the Tesla factory in Grünheide, with clashes with the police. On May 16, a communique was published on de.indymedia.].
Disrupt Tesla – Electric cars set on fire west of Leipzig
On the night of May 12/13, as the dust began to settle in Grünheide and the cops were leaving, we went to remove several Teslas from circulation at a car dealership in western Leipzig using incendiary devices.
Unfortunately, due to technical errors, only a few vehicles were hit, which limited the damage.
We see this action as an opportunity to take action against green capitalism. The different means we choose can complement rather than compete with each other.
Whether in Grünheide, Leipzig or in the countries where raw materials are extracted for electric cars and other “smart” crap, we oppose both the “old” fossil world and the “new” green world!
Greetings to forests, towns and villages in resistance!
Exarchia is under threat of being completely levelled by the businesses of capital and the bosses who are trying to erase every competitive and social expression of the area. Exarcheia as a neighbourhood and as a place of resistance is targeted by the state and investors with the aim of sterilization and turning them into an entertainment centre for the rich and the tourists.
The “new” shops are the showcase for all this, bringing hordes of our political and class enemies into the neighbourhood. The bosses are getting rich and the residents are being kicked out. How much longer will we tolerate this situation, this fiasco, people are angry. On Friday, March 1st we chose to break the windows of a shop that hasn’t even opened yet on Friday, at the corner of Arachovis and Zoodochou Pigis, st. next to the stationed MAT killers. (riots forces cops)
What will happen to this shop with the already installed internal and external cameras? Bar, entertainment centre, grocery store, gourmet restaurant, concept store… It doesn’t matter, it’s unwanted in the neighbourhood! Let’s intervene in diverse ways in the junk shops before they even open, before it’s too late, before the pedestrian streets become suffocating, before the grocery stores are a thing of the past.
LET’S NOT EVEN LET A NEW STORE OPEN.
LET’S END THE SHOPS OF THE RICH
Less than 24 hours after flames engulfed a gravel plant in the Buch district of Kirchseeon, some fifteen kilometers east of Munich, the police in Upper Bavaria came to the conclusion on Tuesday February 6 that it was clearly arson.
Several fires were identified on the site of the gravel extraction plant (a material mainly used for concrete and roads), destroying or seriously damaging a company building, two front end loaders and several conveyor belts shortly before 5 a.m. on Sunday night, February 5.
Around 180 fire-fighters were on the scene, including large fire-fighting trucks from Munich and the Rosenheim district, and continued extinguishing the fire throughout the morning.
According to the police, the material damage caused cannot currently be quantified in more detail, but is expected to be in the six-figure range.
The Upper Bavaria-Nord police headquarters also declined to comment on rumors that the series of arson attacks on construction machinery in and around Munich had not ceased.
