A Victory For The Prison Hunger Strikers.

       A victory for solidarity, and the determination of those on hunger strike. An action taken to force the state to stop its vindictive collective punishment, to free those relatives of the prisoners who were being held for no other reason than they were relatives.

 Inter Arma received and translated:

THE  HUNGER STRIKE OF THE CONSPIRACY OF CELLS OF FIRE WAS VICTORIOUS

      Today is a day that a crack in the walls of the imprisoned world around us has opened. After 32 days of hunger strike, the mother of Christos and Gerasimos Tsakalos and the girlfriend of the latter will soon pass the exit of prison, free again…

      32 days of hunger strike, with eight comrades of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire being hospitalized, balancing between life and death. Mihalis found himself in the ICU the last few days, Olga has reached 40 kilos, Panagiotis had an already compromised health from previous surgeries on his head, George P. has a problem with his heart, with his heart-beats reaching 30 and all of them had medical measurements indicating that they lost 15-20% of their initial body weight.

      32 days, the hunger strike became a daily, slow torment of death, in order for us not to make truce with the absolute death of emotional blackmail. An insidious blackmail which authority wanted to impose on us by abducting and keeping our relatives as hostages in prison. 32 days of hunger strike, every fading beat of our heart, reminded us of the promise we made together when we met for the last time, “Let’s go, until freedom …”.

      After 32 days of hunger strike, the shadow of repression grew pale, the walls of captivity lowered and prison admitted defeat.

      This victory is not only the result of the hunger strike of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire. It’s a victory of a whole world of solidarity with arson attacks, occupations, sabotage, marches, gatherings, unexpected interventions, which broke social peace, turned cities into fields of insurrectional moments and occupied buildings into living labs of subversive situations. In an everyday life where the desire for freedom has been suspended indefinitely, life flooded with small and large liberation gestures, with fires, with slogans and sparkling eyes of persons who wore hoods.

We are flooded with many thoughts that want to fill with words the corresponding meanings. But now, there is neither a day for celebration, nor for accounts of victory. Today we stop the hunger strike, having beaten the scarecrows of authority who wanted our relatives in prison, BUT at the same time the hunger strike of the remaining political prisoners, for the overall requests that have been set, continues. The days that follow are critical both for their health and for the total bet of anarchist struggle. Therefore, there is no time neither for relaxing, nor for victory celebration. The die is cast long time ago… We, as the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire, remain on the ramparts and prepare our counter-attack, supporting the struggle conducted within and outside prison.

Authority and it’s scarecrows should know that every judicial coup, every jail, every moment of oppression, every propaganda lie, every shade of bourgeois morality will return back to its instigators and owners, with multiple power and vehemence. With the power and vehemence of sabotage, fire, explosion, execution… In war, we answer with war. Time for us to attack first…

STRENGTH AND SOLIDARITY with anarchist comrade Nikos Maziotis. member of R.S., and the Network of Fighting Prisoners

VICTORY TO THE STRUGGLE OF THE HUNGER STRIKE

EVERYTHING CONTINUES…

Conspiracy of Cells of Fire – FAI/IRF,
Imprisoned members’ Cell,

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The State Has Many Ways To Take Your Life.

URGENT!  URGENT!  URGENT!

Mon. April 6 national call in: No medical execution of Mumia!

 

PLEASE SHARE WIDELY    

SAVE THE LIFE OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL!

STOP HIS EXECUTION BY MEDICAL NEGLECT!

DON’T LET THE STATE MURDER ANOTHER BLACK LEADER!

SHUT IT DOWN FOR MUMIA!

     Stopped from carrying out the death penalty against Mumia Abu-Jamal by a worldwide movement that spanned three decades, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections has been attempting over the past three months to execute him by medical neglect.

      On March 30, Abu-Jamal was rushed, unconscious, to the Schuylkill Medical Center in Pottsville, Pa., suffering from diabetic shock, with a dangerously high blood sugar level of 779.   After just two days of treatment in the hospital’s ICU, on April 1, Abu-Jamal was returned to the prison infirmary at SCI Mahanoy in Frackville, Pa., into the hands of the very same doctors whose medical neglect and mistreatment nearly killed him.

      Prison officials initially denied visits by family members, supporters and Abu-Jamal’s attorneys and only backed down after receiving thousands of calls. Those able to visit Mumia on April 3 reported he was extremely weak, had lost 80 pounds, and still had elevated blood sugar levels over 300. For lunch that day the prison fed him spaghetti, one of the worst foods to give a diabetic patient.

The murder of aging political prisoners by denying them inadequate health care has happened before. Earlier this year, MOVE 9 member Phil Africa died under suspicious circumstances at SCI Dallas. The lack of standard medical treatment impacts all prisoners, particularly those over 55.

     We are demanding that the state of Pennsylvania cease and desist in their attempts to murder political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal:

●Allow daily visits by Mumia’s family, friends and attorneys. Their support and protection at this time of vulnerability should not be restricted.

●Allow Mumia’s choice of specialist doctors to examine and schedule treatment for him -- NOW. Neither the prison staff at SCI Mahanoy nor the Schuylkill Medical Center has a diabetes specialist. There is precedent in Pennsylvania for this. Prisoner John E. du Pont, an heir to the du Pont chemical fortune, was allowed care by private doctors during imprisonment. Mumia deserves the same.

●Release Mumia’s medical records to his attorneys.

●Release from prison all the elderly age 55 and over. Mumia will turn 61 on April 24.

●Allowa full investigation of prison health care in Pennsylvania.

●Mumia is innocent and should never have been incarcerated. We demand his immediate release.

     We are calling on everyone to participate in the following actions over the next few days:

●Twitter widely using the hashtags #mumiamustlive,  #saveMumia and #Blacklivesmatter.

●Call, fax and email the following state officials to raise the above demands:

~ DOC Secretary John Wetzel: 717-728-4109; crpadocsecretary@pa.gov.

~ Gov. Tom Wolf: 717-772-5000; fax 717-772-8284; governor@pa.gov.

~ Prison Superintendent John Kerestes: 570-773-2158; contact.doc@pa.gov.

●MONDAY, APRIL 6: A car caravan will demand to see Pennsylvania Department of Corrections Superintendent John Wetzel at the DOC office: 1920 Technology Parkway, Mechanicsburg, PA 17050 at 11 a.m. Cars leaving Philadelphia will gather at 7 a.m. on JFK Boulevard between 30th and 31st Streets (across from Bolt and Mega buses). If you can offer rides or need a ride, call or text Joe Piette at 610-931-2615 or email jpiette660@hotmail.com.

●TUESDAY, APRIL 7: Press conference in Philadelphia at 11 a.m. outside

District Attorney Seth Williams’ office at Juniper Street & South Penn Square (across from City Hall, near Macy’s).

●FRIDAY, APRIL 10: Organize a demonstration in your city, on your campus, wherever you can get out word to stop this attempt to murder Mumia. We need to SHUT IT DOWN FOR MUMIA!

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Capitalist Success, The Growth Of Fatcats.

      Everybody that is in touch with the ordinary people of this country is fully aware that the financial Mafia's policy of "austerity", under the stewardship of the Oxbridge millionaire duo, of Cameron and Osbourne, has returned the living conditions of some of our people back to the Victorian era. The tactics used have been varied, from bedroom tax, to slave labour workfare, from cuts in welfare benefits, disability allowance, etc. to zero hours contracts. Wages have been depressed for more than 5 years, while energy prices have taken off like a series of Soyuz rockets.

      Despite this actual scenario of poverty, the coming Crooks and Liars competition, known as the general election, is pushing the babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, to spew out an ever increasing flow of its main ingredient, bullshit. According to reports from the mouths of Oxbridge millionaire puppets, we are blessed with capitalist success. Everybody is working, everybody is better off, we have the best economic growth in Europe, so run out and vote for the best Crooks and Liars, the Tories, and get more of the same.

      How do we square this with the recent report from NASUWT, teaching union, which states that it is witnessing kids in "Victorian conditions"? According to the report based on a survey of 2,452 teachers, kids are turning up at school hungry, tired and wearing inappropriate clothes due to a continuing squeeze on family finances. It states that some kids are arriving at school with no socks, no coat, and is also aware of more families depending on food banks. It also draws attention to the fact that many children are being degraded and damaged by poverty and homelessness.

     Some other findings from the report are, almost seven in 10 (69%) of teachers said they have seen pupils coming to school hungry, while eight in 10 (80%) have witnessed youngsters turning up in clothes that are inappropriate for the weather with a similar proportions reported children arriving in unwashed or damaged and frayed clothing, a further three in four (78%) said they have seen pupils without appropriate footwear. The survey also said that it had noted "Pupils who come into school unwell. Often their parents cannot afford to take a day off work, and therefore send their children to school when they ought to be at home."

     This is the true picture of capitalist success, the growth of wealth, but no account of how that wealth is spread. Yes, more people are working, but poorer, yes, the wealth of the country is growing, but we the people don't get a share. Balance sheets that take no account of the well being of the ordinary people, everything is measured in profit and loss to the corporate world.

      Why do we go through with this charade of democracy, playing the parasites' game of the Crooks and Liars competition, and electing another bunch of self seeking careerists, who will continue the plundering of the public purse and appeasing the corporate world at the expense of the well being of us, who create all that wealth?

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Bairns Not Bombs, Glasgow.

 

       Glasgow's Scrap trident march on Saturday April 4th, was a very well attended affair. I'm no mathematician, but I put the attendance around the two thousand mark. The march was a colourful affair with an array of banners from different groups around the country, from Stirling to Ayrshire to Edinburgh and more. There was the ECAP banner, (Edinburgh Campaign Against Poverty) IWW, peace camps, CND, Scottish Socialist Party, and a Black and Red anarchist flag. There were literally hundreds of Bairns not Bombs placards, which I think encapsulates the mind set of the Scottish people.

FILE0012 from ann arky on Vimeo.

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I'm A Better Anarchist Than You!!!!

    I'm a better anarchist than you!!!! But who is the purest anarchist of all??

    Positions as the one taken by Green Anarchy are neither an exception nor a thing of the past. Certain elements in the “anarchist” milieu still like to criticize in a similarly short-sighted, poorly informed, dogmatic and sectarian manner the struggles of the peoples in the Global South, wittingly or unwittingly reproducing the logic of colonialism in the process.

    I am writing this piece in response to a recent article by Gilles Dauvé, who slanders the Kurdish movement in Rojava in much the same way. A similar piece, based on equally dubious ethical and logical grounds, was published by the Anarchist Federation in London. It is important to emphasize that, although I will be responding specifically to the poorly informed critiques of the aforementioned articles, the issues I am raising here are far more important for the anarchist movement in the West than for the Kurdish or Zapatista movements themselves, which do not need any judgment or approval from some privileged ideological purists elsewhere.

Read the full article HERE:

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The Struggle And The Solidarity Is World Wide.

      While here in the UK, in relative calm, our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, is covering us in the shit that is the "general election", elsewhere in the world the system of capitalism is facing a more robust attack by the people. From mass protests to strikes, from hunger strikes to direct confrontation, day in day out, the system is under attack, on a daily basis, the people are confronting the cancerous power of this corrupt system.

Tuesday, 31st March, 2015:
       Peru, Arequipa: very heavy policing on 8th day of indefinite strike against Tia Maria mining project “Strikers say policemen threw and fired tear gas and shot from helicopters…. hundreds of policemen attacked and entered their homes by force to arrest people …”…they entered the houses with arrogance, kicking down doors to arrest people just because we are against polluting mining… With more than three thousand police they besieged the whole of Cocachacra and kidnapped all the people of Tambo Valley. They have also police contingents in Mollendo to stop the population having access or making its way to us. We are not allowed to have demonstrations. …”

        This is just one of many struggles that are bubbling up though the festering crust of the capitalist system. To get an idea of just some of the people's battles against this exploitative system it is worth paying a visit to Anarchist News. They have managed to compile a list of people's struggles during the month of March 2015, from across the world. It is not a definitive list, but it is encouraging to see that the battle to destroy this greed drive, destructive, exploitative, earth plundering system, is under such sustained attack.  

Peruse the list HERE:  

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Punk Muslim.

       Not an everyday sight, but one that would be great to see catch on, a punk Muslim. I saw this on El Lokal, a wonderful autonomous centre in Barcelona, that I visited a few years back, but sadly I don't speak or read Spanish.

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The Vindictive Brutality Of The State.

       I think it is important to highlight that the main demand of the prison hunger strikers in Greece, is the release of their relatives. To be charged and imprisoned by the state is something that we might expect, but to have your close relatives imprisoned, because of their relationship with you, shows the true vindictive brutality of the state, a state that is supposed to be managed by a left wing government, Syriza.

     This is a letter, first published in Inter Arma, from Haris Hatzimihelakis, one of the hunger strikers:

On Tuesday 24/3 I was transferred to the general hospital of G. Genimatas in Athens because of my deteriorated health after 22 days of hunger strike. Today, Friday, while writing this I am now in the 25th day of strike and I have lost 15.5 kg of my initial body weight of 84.5 kg. In a similar situation and are also the other hunger strikers, members of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire, most of whom are hospitalized in various hospitals at the moment. Our demand for the release from the clearly retaliatory custody of the mother of the comrades Christos and Gerasimos Tsakalos and the wife of the latter has become a “ball” in judicial circles hands, which move the date of reviewing it from week to week, motivated either by an unprecedented disregard for our life or an active effort to cause irreversible damage to our health which deteriorates rapidly. More specifically, although the prosecutor handling the case has made a positive proposal on Tuesday 17/3 neither of the councils handling the cases of the relatives of the comrades has reviewed the request for replacement of custody with a release on bail. Meanwhile, the political leadership stands defiantly indifferent to the judicial practices, likes of which we have not seen throughout the post-junta history of Greece. Apparently the “left” SYRIZA government is not interested in the fact that family is oficially being criminalized for the first time and relatives of political prisoners are being detained clearly in an vindictive way with ridiculous and loose accusations.

I, from my side, declare that for every effect that the hunger strike may have on my health (which from this point on is tragically possible) the Political and Judicial authority which arranges the physical and moral annihilation of the hunger strikers, is solely responsible.

NOT A STEP BACK

IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF THE RELATIVES OF THE CONSPIRACY OF CELLS OF FIRE

VICTORY TO ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS ON HUNGER STRIKE

Haris Hatzimihelakis

Member of the Conspiracy of Cell of Fire FAI/IRF

Friday 27/03/2015

P.S. I salute all solidarity gestures both in Greece and abroad. Comrades your actions give us strength.
Solidarity and complicity with Alfredo Cospito and Nicola Gai. Brothers your words burn like fire in my heart.

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The State Kills In Many Ways.

      Greece, like other European countries has abolished the death penalty, but there are other ways the state can take away your life. The state demands the monopoly on violence. This is the latest report on the prison hunger strikers in Greece, with the hunger strike starting on March 2nd. it is obvious, that by now, several of those involved will be in a critical condition.

From Contra Info:

       On March 31st 2015, a judicial council permitted the release of Athena Tsakalou, mother of the Tsakalos brothers, under restrictive conditions: bail of 10,000 euros, obligation to check in to a police station three times a month, ban on exiting the country, and prohibition on leaving Salamina (Salamis Island), which means that, if her sons come out alive from hunger strike, she will no longer be able to visit them in prison.
    However, another judicial council dismissed the motion for conditional release of the wife of GerasimosTsakalos.
Meanwhile, the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire members – eight of whom are currently hospitalised in critical condition – together with anarchist prisoner Angeliki Spyropoulou enter the 30th day of their hunger strike (since the 2nd of March). Earlier today (31/3), CCF comrade Michalis Nikolopoulos ran the risk of having a cardiac arrest.

Immediate release of the companion of Gerasimos Tsakalos!

      

        Prisoners in A wing of Koridallos men’s prison, show their solidarity with the hunger strikers by doing a banner drop.
         The banner reads--  “Immediate release of the relatives of CCF – Victory to all the hunger strikers – Dignity or death”

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Perfoming Members Of The Prancing Prick's Clubs.

       The circus game of Crooks and Liars, known as the general election, is being thrust upon us with all the usual hysteria, by that babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, all the usual slight of hand and smoke and mirrors will be in use. It will of course, be the same old boring waffle, the usual attempt by the Crooks and Liars to prove they are the best Crooks and Liars in the game. To take part in the Crooks and Liars contest, you are expected to be a member of one of the prancing pricks clubs, sometimes called political parties. 

        In the ensuing weeks we will be smothered in the same old crap, spouted from the same old privileged Oxbridge educated millionaire parasite class. They will, with the obligatory smiling face, be telling us how much they care about us peasants, how we are all in this together, promising you and I, the same old pie-in-the-sky, if we will only let them screw us for another five years. They will be asking you to legitimise their entrenched power and pilfered wealth, seeking your approval as they bolster the wealth and power of their buddies in the financial/corporate Mafia. Sadly, the greatest fraud show on earth, the general election, will be seen my those who indulge the Crooks and Liars with their X on a piece of paper, as having achieved something. It will of course, no matter how few actually vote, be taken as giving the charade of the Crooks and Liars game, the stamp of legitimacy. They will then be entrenched for another 5 year spell of helping themselves, and their corrupt corporate cronies, in their continuing plundering of the public purse. 

      By then, as George Carlin said, "they have you by the balls". Of course, we could turn up at their performances and have a good laugh and expose it for the smoke and mirrors illusion that we know it to be. We could also spend the run up to the Crooks and Liars competition in a concerted effort to reveal the hypocrisy, corruption and self serving reality of the Crooks and Liars competition they call the general election.

      Though there is a call for change, there doesn't seem to be too great a ground swell to scrap the ballot box and take control of our lives. So perhaps Ian Bone's Class War election campaign has something going for it. An opportunity to use that platform as a propaganda exercise, a chance to talk class war politics to a wider public, to put class war on the agenda, to once again get more people talking about class, and the realisation that we are being conned, and this is a class war situation.

From Ian Bone's Blog:

     We are standing Class War candidates in the general election on May 7th 2015. We are doing this to launch a furious and co-ordinated political offensive against the ruling class with the opportunity an election gives us to talk politics to our class. We in no way see the election as an alternative to direct action. By the brick and the ballot.
We are not talking community politics here. It’s too late for a patient slowbuild like the IWCA. The ruling class have us by the throat -they need a short sharp kick in the bollocks. Our election campaign will use any means necessary. we won’t be ushered away by PR minders – we will make ourselves central to the campaign in a funny, rumbustious combative and imaginative way. We will be on the streets and in their faces.
Comrades whatever our yesterdays you are welcome now. join in. reject cynicism. have fun.
FULL STEAM AHEAD THROUGH THE SHIT 

Read the full article HERE: 

 

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