Jacques Verges, in his book “The strategy of trial” says: “In any case, it is a fact that every trial hides a political conflict and that justice is steadily full armed to defend the status quo”. A view that reflects with high definition a reality that gets imprinted infinitely on the map of human societies that were organized on the basis of systems which had inequality, un-rightfulness, forcing and exploitation as fundamental elements of their function.

The historical contribution of the judicial system, as it has been implied through the centuries, was nothing more than the imposition of the interests of the class-in-power upon society, by more ‘gentrificated’ means. Michel Foucault in the book ‘On the popular justice and the trials” similarly records that ‘the penal system, of which the function during the middle ages was basically financial, for a special period, was organized within the hard effort to repress the  insurrections. Up to that point, the job of repressing popular uprisings was primarily military. Ever since it ensures it, or better, it prevents it, a complex system of justice-police-jail. Its role is to force people accept their situation as proletariat and the terms for the exploitation of the proletariat”.

A pitiful alternation and deformation of the meaning of Justice, is what the tribunals of bourgeois democracy had been always representing. Cringe and submissive under the strict stares of the political conservation and its supporters, making the notorious separation of powers and its independence, look ridiculous. Staffed mainly from the most obedient organs of the dominant plexus, mere pions and puppets, a prey to the interests of each oligarchy.

It has resulted to be a common conclusion that those accepting mostly the revengeful hatred of justice come straight from the lower economically classes. The poor devils of this society consist almost absolutely the population of greek jails, a fact that makes clear that justice has consciously chosen the back of which class will support and ensure. Always the right hand of political-social oligarchy, it played a role, as it should, in the political and class conflicts that occurred in the turbulent years of this country, unshamefully dancing upon the exhausted and tortured bodies of those who lost. Post-civil war, junta tribunals had as their only mission to send far away parts of the society that struggled against fascism and oppression. To bend the fighting spirit of the people. To give an example, but to execute as well as many as it was considered necessary enough to transmit the Power’s clear message. Whoever demands dignity, equality, freedom and justice. Whoever demands to regain his own life, will not find land to step on. Exile, death, imprisonment, displacement, and extermination is the only she will taste.

So a justice, that with the one or the other way, depending on the economical or political needs of the status quo, was giving a faithful ‘present’ and offering its services. Which keeps on doing up to our days, of course, satisfying the impulses of a capitalist system by, passing -as an old bordello mistress- this country’s people in its dirty appetites.

Announcing strikes as illegal, legitimizing mass firings, providing coverage in anti-constitutional laws, in labor ‘accidents’ in the factory and working site owners or wherever they happen. Validation of decisions for the insane land demands upon the people’s property from every kind of crooks, forest de-nomination for housing needs of  REAL ESTATE’S ‘big sharks’, approvals for destruction and deforestation of natural areas in favor of corporate interests are just a few of its achievements.

Guaranteed supporter to the social-political elite’s repressive mood, imprisoning protesters, implying anti-terror laws on children, putting them in jail, finding innocent or implying low penalties on uniformed murderers that have been spreading since decades this land with dead bodies of people by ‘random detonations’. Closing the eyes in front of torturings, humiliations, rapes and unexplainable deaths of people that had the ‘chance’ to be hosted in the police stations of this country. Not giving a shit about the hundred dead inside the penitentiary hell. Closing and filing folders and investigations for attacks against fighting workers, like in the Konstantina Kouneva case, when she received an attack with acid from the boss’s paid bullies. They pronounce illegal, the squatting of empty buildings that function as self-managed spaces for various social events, but leaving beaches and mountains undefended in the appetites of oligarchs to create idyllic places of isolation. Penalizing and judging every collective fighting mobilization of people, as these of the peoples of Lefkimi, Grammatiko  and every active element of this society. Throwing into jail people without proofs, having as a sole indication their political identity. Abolishing the presumption of innocence. Condemning with shade evidences!

A justice that has as a sole target to create, manage and reproduce criminality. When it tries and gives abnormal longterm imprisonments to the low-level delinquents of this country, while the real criminals that hide behind ministerial and corporate offices humiliate and sodomize daily what you -as judges- think you defend. When no one is to blame for the spending and robbery of the public property, revealed through big scandals, while it’s brighter than the sun that behind hide the rats of the political power, as of a magic way, everyone is innocent or deceived. When it willingly ignores that the small or big delinquency that marches in the courts does not come from a virgin-birth, but is absolutely related and result of the political-economical system we have. And that’s hypocrisy and shamefulness. It’s disgusting imprisoning children, old people, handicapped, cancer-suffering, drug addicts and throwing them into jails. It is repulsive depriving the freedom of the most humble, while this place’s giants systemically rape every kind of legitimation and ethics.

We cannot refer to any power institution that surrounds us and to the consequences of which we become receivers, when we ‘re called to confront it, using terminologies that either demonize or mythologize it. Justice is no kind of invisible mythical monster. On the contrary, it’s a power deriving mechanism, consisted of human figures, and it’s them the basis and backgrounds of its function. Whether each one of these human units-gears serve it consciously and having knowledge of the actions they produce, the majority of this society knows it by experience, from the moment that any citizen of this country dragged into a court of law has rarely been vindicated. And if there exist any exceptions, all they do is confirming the rule.

A judge, in the present circumstances, should not function as a safeguard for securing the social peace. If he feels part of this society, if he listens its problems and struggles has as his duty to sabot, by all means and by the position he stands, the system he serves. Self-canceling in its substance his role and status.

Otherwise, he belongs to the subgroup of those judges, for which Marc Twain had said that if you scratch them, you ‘ll find the hangman. Those to blame for very heavily criminal actions against society, by legitimating unfairness and exploitation, judging strikes as illegal and condemning active and struggling syndicalists, blinking once more the eye to the employers. Those that through their decisions, blow a sense of impotence, obedience, withdrawal and compromise to the people’s body, in front of the obvious and cruel crimes of the powerful. Those that even within the so called democratically institutionalized powers and abilities they have,  remain imaginary figures, bad copies of roles within a pre-fixed scene, dedicated in misleading, hiding and terrorizing. Those that their climbing on the judicial grades passes through exterminating penalties against the poorest of this world, while finding innocent or ignoring of corporate and governmental practices that break every sense of legitimacy. Those, finally, that should give explanations upon the situation in the so-called greek jails and their pitifulness. That, in spite of being, with no doubt, aware of the circumstances and the situation that the imprisoned experience, they keep on putting numerous people into preventive incarceration, condemning with no proofs into paranoid penalties, but as well throwing into the pyre every other prisoner that has some strength and dignity left, to fight for her life and freedom. Revolted prisoners that because of their participation in dynamic mobilizations inside the walls, they are called to present themselves in the courts, in order to pay the price of their struggle. The price for rising the head up, resisting humiliation and imprisonment itself. To pay for rising their selves up in front of their tyrants, not only them but their families as well, being dragged into an abduction without an end, full of pain, anguish and tortures.

It’s tragic and ridiculous at the same time for someone to fantasize society as the body of a pure virgin, upon which come the unholy and demonic criminals-outlaws to rape. As it seems sick in an endless field, seeded with disembodied corpses. Within a morbid battlefield, where the brown earth became purple from the blood it soaked. Between the stench of rotting that the thousand corpses exhale. In screams and moans of moribund injured people, dragging in vain on a rotten human carpet, seeking desperately way out of this hell, the abettor to appear, those to blame for this doom, as uninfected inquisitors of other times, driving the foundations  of a purgatory in the infected earth. Of a justice’s temple, the foundations  of which are sinked into blood, while its officers, suffering of vanity, arrogance and immorality, thunder out shamelessly against the poorest ones, about the crimes they committed and the punishments they will receive, waving the sword of the punisher in the name of Themis . The most blind and syphilic Themis, ever existed.

To put it into few words, finally, the state, as original guarantor of the security of the political-economical elite’s interests, has a rich arsenal for achieving its goals and inside it are located institutions and roles like justice, courts, judges, penalties and prisons. Nothing more clear and simple.

In a life surrounded from restrictions and prohibitions. Limited and standardized daily life, full of contractions and uncountable compromises. Mortgaged and enslaved to the needs of survival. A survival that obeys the most inhuman circumstances. The most merciless and cruel laws of modern and postmodern life, our existence, our being, the only things totally belonging to us, unique assets of each and every one of us, are those that are now, more than ever before, objects of commerce, directly or indirectly, sacrificed on the shrine of this world’s historical evolution towards barbarianism.

Eternal worker. Eternal loan payer. Eternal voter and deceived citizen, seduced little virgin girl, mis-leaded by the mythical bad wolf. Eternal TV viewer and consumer. Eternally exploiter and exploited. Eternally nerveless, appetite-less, insomniac, tired, sad, unhappy, withdrawn, compromised and submitted. Eternally born dead.

Alternation and deformation in every word and meaning. Freedom, happiness, respect, equality, justice, struggle, resistance are just few of all the diachronic values that have lost their original meaning. Ideals so, but so necessary for the human society.

In the hunt of profit, all these seem like prays that have to be mummified, after death. The modern realism, imposed by the think tanks of survival, orders the deletion of all these values. Making anyone that defends and seeks them, look like a fool. Labeling him as naive, funny, or dreamer. The position of the most pure ideas, is taken by the most disgusting modern slogans like “The big fish eats the little fish”, “Take care just for yourself”, “Take care of your business and don’t occupy yourself with others”, “Does it have to be you the one to take the snake out of the hole?”, “That’s life, nothing ever changes”.

However, in spite of our times, all these slogans, born and cultivated upon withdrawal and quitting, result of the continuous terrorism applied by the dominants of this society, pushing everyone to close herself into her own little world, some people hear indifferently these slogans. They smile ironically, knowing the misery and emptiness that these expressions enclose.

In the New World Order, in the rules defining market and life, in the lifestyle of ridiculousness, in the amputation of thought and conscience. In the climbing and success into the world of nothing, that will pass over dead bodies, some people base their relationships upon the principals of solidarity, comradeship, mutual respect and understanding.

In the blood-soaking of natural resources in every corner of the planet, by multinational corporate schemes. In the annihilation of whole populations and countries for the economical and power needs of the super-national elites. In the mass dismissal of workers, which means the mass promotion of people into poverty and distress, in order to preserve the corporate profits. In the imperialist marches of capitalist developed countries, for the abduction and management of natural resources by un-developed countries, or for the service of geo-strategical interests, stepping over whatever appears on their way, cannibalizing like wild beasts upon innocent souls. In the modern slave-bazaar and the raw exploitation of the immigrants, that if not blown up on the borders of the ‘civilized’ countries or drown in their waters, will end up in concentration camps or in the best case invisible workers for the system and visible slaves in the gulags of waged labor, where the vision of a better life transforms into a daily hell. In the repression of struggling people with executions, imprisonments, abductions, ‘friendly’ talks, threats, beatings and tortures. In the penalizing of every activity and the cultivation of an atmosphere of terror, fear and insecurity, pushing the population to accept without a protest the Big Brother, the limitation and canceling of individual and social rights, the acceptance of a citizen-snitch role. In marginalization, estrangement, dead ending, unhappiness, depression, in the death of every piece of this society that keeps being alive. In all this misery, death and the chains lurking everyone on this world. In the cold breath of the powerful ones’ empire, there are still lots of people resisting.

From Africa to Latin America and from Asia to Europe and North America, the fires of resistance are not just still alive, but grow bigger constantly. Whether this refers to movements and collective demands, or fewer-in-number, more individual courses of questioning the existent world.
The guerrilla fighters in Niger’s Delta fighting against the occupation imposed to the area, for pumping black gold by the petroleum multinational SHELL. The land squattings in Brazil, the Indian autonomist movements with the Zapatistas and the revolted people in Oaxaca, Mexico. The guerrilla groupings of FARC in Colombia, the insurrection of the indigenous in Peru, that deny to offer their ancestral land to the appetites of money, without a fight. The processings, the fermentation and the obvious existing entropy for subversion of the political scene in the rest countries of Latin America. The heroic resistance of the palestinian people through decades, against the israeli monster and the peaceless areas of the arab countries under occupation.  The kurdish people’s struggle, the vengeance of the guerrillas in Nepal. The guerrilla groupings moving in the endless lands of India, the merciless and violent conflicts of workers on strike in the automobile sector in South Korea, that occurred in the factory of SSANGYONG.

The immigrant insurrections in the french suburbs. The insurrected of greece in December 2008 with the global solidarity movement that unfolded as support in the local incidents, bringing quiver to the leaders of other countries. The hostage of factory owners by french workers, the factory occupation and self-management in England, Germany, Northern America and elsewhere. The anti-war protests in every corner of the world. The house squats, the counter-information networks, the peaceful and dynamic manifestations of activists in global scale. The armed urban guerrilla groups that domestically and internationally refuse to surrender their weapons, fighting under difficult circumstances, shaped by the fierce physical, ethical and ideological war by the governmental terrorists. The new urban guerrilla warfare that has started by incendiary groups in the latest years throughout the european metropolitan cities, having as main and most important representative, our local greek incendiary cores and exploding nights. The -constantly increasing- participation of people in autonomous and initiative groups, occupying with partial issues, referring to whatever happening in the social web of this country. The struggles and sabotages in the working sites, the strikes, the road blocks, the sudden attacks against the means of production. The practices of self-organization, self-action, anti-hierarchy, that gain constantly larger space.

All these, and many more that i forget or ignore, shape, in their own -enlightening, or darker and harder to understand- way, a global historical puzzle depicting the million colors coming out  from the revolutionary light’s refraction, when meeting the prism of every revolted entity, lighting the way towards the social liberation.

Sometimes, some colors unify in a united beam of light, which, falling on the rotten and dead scene of this world, fires and sanctifies whatever stands on its way, while other times, lonely, impatient beams of light incise their own individual, spectacular but short-live course into the night. A crazy course against the human and natural laws. A hopeless effort to speed up and shorten a trip that never ends.

The Bono Gang, Severino Di Giovanni, Sabate and many others gave a meaning, through their way of life, to the proposal of direct action, re-appropriation, emphasis on the freedom of individual with an absolute way, paying the price of their choices with their own lives. They self-fulfilled as revolted and revolutionary individuals through an enraged battle to death against the state and its organs.

Lives of people, of which the knowledge, inspires and give example, transmitting messages of strength and courage to whoever decides to participate in a war against a mighty system, in the course of forming a political-ideological identity of an individual, with references in anti-systemic, libertarian, antiauthoritarian-anarchist ideas. Paying with dignity their own part in the thousands pages, written with blood, dedicated to questioning, disobedience, revolt and revolution.

In what has to do with me personally, i want to believe that i belong as well in this endless human caravan, the course of which, contrary to the stream of every times, leaves unerasable its footsteps, on the fresh ground of collective memory.

I was, i am and i will be anarchist and i try to defend this every day using word and action. Theory and action at any cost. I stand again in a courthouse 5 years after my captivation, having to defend my choice to expropriate a bank, and it still sounds to me like a bad joke the fact that i was given 25 years of imprisonment, because i tried to hit one of the most bloodthirsty and predatory mechanisms of capitalism, that suck the society non stop, since decades.

I will not accept the righteousness of any conviction of my self because i decided to re-appropriate a few of the stolen wealth that the moral and physical responsibles for the pushing of a large piece of society to poverty and distress, have stored in their safes. Those that lead people into desperation and suicide for not finding a way to pay out their debts and come face to face with catastrophe and tragedy. Those that while thousands are fired, wages are being cut and the economical capitalist crisis burdens dramatically on the backs of the people, they keep on profiting and bubbling their pockets.

Special indication of this reality is the fact that last year, in 2009, Alpha Bank, for example announced profits of 214 million Euros for the first 6 months, while Piraeus Bank published a 48% increase of its profits, the rest of the banks following with similar positive figures. At the time the state managers ordered the people to clench the teeth, in order for the infamous economical crisis to pass, the banks were not only left untouchable, but provocatively, surpassing any limit, they were nibbling ‘fillets’ of 28 billion Euros, accompanied by the gentle wishes of their subjects, for good digestion.

It was not me the one that promised fake consumptive paradises, bonding millions of people with the chains of the loans and the plastic money. It is not me the one that makes a living hell out of the people’s daily life, by blackmailing and threatening them to give me back money i loaned them as a proper loan shark. I definitely did not cooperate with gangs of mafia sharks that set up   high-level crimes in the stock market, for stealing the people’s money. Nor did i deceive anyone like a crook, setting up traps, well-hidden in the contracts’ little letters. So, if there’s someone that has to apologize for his crimes against the society, then this is the banks and not me.

Being accused for a criminal group’s creation, is a conversion of reality, while for decades, the robbery-gangs called ‘party groupings’, governing this country in turn, consisting the most raw, fierce and uncontrollable criminal organization, have slaughtered and eaten to the bone along with friends, ‘bestmen’ , and every kind of subordinates this country’s national wealth, making the modern mafia look like a holy virgin in front of them. When, for decades, corrupted or not parasites of the political and economical power, working under total coverage, behind ministerial bureaus and directorial positions, have looted and keep on looting along with their friends the people’s property, serving with total submission local and foreign profit snatches of mega-capitalists, with the result of driving a whole population in bankruptcy, subjection, IMF. In the trap of a global capitalist organism, that has as a functional role to eliminate labor and social rights in the internal of every country that has surrendered to it, by the hands of each domestic submissive and traitorous governmental power, up to its total colonization. Creating, essentially, cradles of capitalist orgies, for the insatiable desires of powerful international economical elites, upon the lives of millions of people.

It ‘s a conversion of reality to be charged with attempted manslaughter of police officers, when this is not only unproven, but it was me the one who took their heavy fire, and managed to survive out of pure luck. Plus, the charge against me for my supposed synergy on the bank’s guard injury is totally arbitrary, unstable and has no grounds at all.

Since the first moment, there was a huge indictment set up, through the hysteric screams of all the media. In an atmosphere of terror-lust, known and sworn parrots of the political sector of police, criers of the political elite and pencil-carriers of mud, cultivated the ground of my heavy conviction. With their magic stick they transformed a bank robbery into a Wild Western movie, converting reality, once more. A reality screaming that those that robbed the bank ensured absolutely the physical and -to the biggest point possible- psychic security of the customers and employees of the bank. As well as that the infamous conflict in the crowded center of Athens never existed, because for the term ‘conflict’ to exist we need to have two opposite parts fighting with each other. In our case, though, it was the uniformed organs “of maintaining and securing order” that contractually played, proudly and with self-sacrifice, ignoring the innocent citizens passing by among them, those two parts.

Opening the chapter of the penal and communicational management of this case by the state’s side, it should be outlined that it’s included -among many others- within a more general frame of increase and intensification of repression against the anarchist scene, which is in straight analogy of the government’s strategical plans for creating the new terms of society’s consensus on surrendering the last collective and individual rights that have been conquered with many hard struggles. An attempt of marginalization, criminalization and fierce calumniation of an active political scene.

The arrests of comrades in September 2009, in the frame of dis-articulation or a ‘major hit’ against the Revolutionary Organization Conspiracy of Fire Cores, was the ultimate hope for the passing out Nea Dimokratia government to subvert the pre-electional atmosphere of a sure defeat, playing the safe card of security, the only social field where it could ‘produce’ some work. After the newly elected criminal organization of PASOK taking over, having the people’s order for ruling with a staggering result against the supposedly basic opponent right wing party, still fresh, they lost no time, and started to run with fast and decisive steps in the same social space as the previous ones. Having as a trademark a hatefull, psychopath, arrogant Minister of Public Order, the new government applies the dogma of zero tolerance, going in a series of moves shown daily by the regime’s media, as a public work production of the highest significance. The truth was that the leaders of the New Order, preparing the ground for the upcoming attack against the whole of society, were showing a small specimen of iron fist against political spaces, but as well against those that were in the mood of moving into more anti-conformity paths.

With the same logic, there came more warrant issues and new arrests against comrades that are shown with ridiculous clues to be part of the ‘Conspiracy of Fire Cores’ case. The same logic was underlying in putting a price on the heads of three comrades M.Seisidis, G.Tsironis and S.Seisidis for 600.000 Euros, setting up a pitiful scene of terror-lust and detective story, having the American Far West as a background and prospective head hunters. Of course, the huge support that provided, five years now, imaginary and cheap journalistic reports, concerning the comrades, products of pitiful scums, on-line with dark centers and services of the Public Order Ministry, depicting them constantly for any illegal action was happening in the greek land, naming them No 1 public danger and putting their arrest in priority, so that the skein around the domestic urban guerrilla groups would be unfolded, has been a catalyst for their heads being put a price on.

However, the application of the new ‘zero tolerance’ dogma didn’t stop on easy targets, like the newly baptised by the regime comrades as ‘terrorists and thieves’, but took one more step. It went on 1.000 preventive police adductions on the memory day, one year after the murder of Alexis Grigoropoulos by cops, invaded in the anarchist infoshop ‘Resalto’, trying afterwards to transform a space of assemblies, discussions and events, into an ‘armed group’s secret and action planning house’, forcing people to prove in front of the repressive mechanisms that they are no elephants. It unleashed furious ords of cops against protesters, with the result of viewing a leftist fighter woman being ‘flying’ in the air, when a uniformed motorcycle copper landed on her, with no second thought, heavily injuring her, while many others were lynched by outrageous herds of praetorians.

The gradual loosening of the state’s dogs chains that was straightly analogue with the new order-lines of their political leaders, ends up in mid-February 2010, in the murder of an albanian citizen, in Vyronas, not by a ‘random’ -as it was usually happening for years- stray police shot, but by a cold-blooded execution from cops, in a supposedly organized arrest operation of two people that the previous day had -according to the police- humiliated the status of the uniformed mafia, by disarming the crew of a police patrol car in the streets of Maroussi. Ending up to communicationally/mediatically present as a collateral-loss, the death of a person that happened to pass by randomly from a spot of an arrest operation by the police, in favor of the arrest of two outlaws, humiliating every sense and value that the human life has.

Having easily made the jump of the heavy significance that the life of an outlaw has, into his arrest at any cost, it was expectable to have another sign of extreme repression. So, on the 10th of March, the comrade Lambros Foundas pays with his own life, falling down by copper’s bullets, his denial of being arrested by a police car in the streets of Dafni, while expropriating a car. A death that was totally justified by the regime and its mouthpieces based on indications of his comrades being related to the domestic armed struggle. If, in Vyronas, the cold blood execution of an unsuspected citizen didn’t reach any cover-story, there wasn’t any effort needed to be made in order of surpassing the fact that a ‘terrorist’ was shot in the back while trying to escape his arrest.

The state’s dealing of unfinished business with armed struggle, finds in the end of April an answer, in the arrests of comrades N. Maziotis, P. Roupa, K. Gournas, V. Stathopoulos, S. Nikitopoulos and C. Kortesis for participation in the Revolutionary Organization Revolutionary Struggle, putting people -with fast track procedures- in a status of captivity, penalizing human relationships, friendly contacts and telephone dialogues. Setting up again, the same old american-like scene of the summer of 2002, during the arrests of people involving with the R.O 17 November case.

Finally, this wave of harsh repression, moving in all directions, in the spirit of ‘whatever breaths is arrested’ and the hard effort of brutalizing the uniformed organs, takes everything on its way having no moral barriers, meeting the friend and comrade Simos Seisidis on the 3rd of May. His random location by police patrol cars in the area of Kerameikos as an armed robbery of a multistore suspect -something that was loudly proven fake almost immediately- leads, after his denial of stopping in a cop’s signal, trying to escape on foot, in a manhunt that ended in him being shot on the back of his leg, putting once more, the arrest of someone higher than the value of human life.

The continue, tragic and outrageous at the same time, as his arrest and detention circumstances while being medically treated, made his heavy injury deteriorate, to the point that it was finally needed to amputate his leg. And while all these are happening to S.Seisidis, another friend and comrade, Aris Seirinidis, that was found randomly that day in the same area of Kerameikos is being jailed in detention, accused under ridiculous and funny elements for an old action, a fact that made the health of his father, fighter and comrade K. Seirinidis turn so bad, that within very short time he died.

The report and recording of all these facts is not being made in order to express a complain of violating democratic rights and ethics between two fighting sides, but for the modern terms of the class and anti-state war, unfolding every day in the circles of society, to be shown, revealing the real face of its oppressors. To show the strategic of tension that the barons of the state interweaving and corruption have chosen against the anarchist scene ending up in beatings, house, infoshop and squat invasions, arrests, imprisonments and murders of comrades. Which plays with the lives of people like Marios Seisidis and Grigoris Tsironis, turning their existence fragile and uncertain in front of the cannibal appetites of some uniformed headhunters, on some random ‘meeting’ with them. Which drags in the tribunals fighters, having taken care of judges and ready made penalties of the highest possible level, through obvious or more covered legal acrobatics, ignorances and violations. Which, eventually, makes a war, with the full meaning of the term, against a social piece, making a disgusting effort to half-hide it -in vain- behind empty words about justice, democratic rights and guarantee of an abstract ‘sense of the citizen’s security’ when the same people that move the yarns of this furious repression, are, in reality, the society’s true enemy.

Now if anyone thinks that in this second degree trial, but in all its previous stages as well, were and are not underlying the same mechanisms which conserve and impose  the same ‘electrified’ ambience with an undefined but intense smell of danger towards me, wherever i may present myself, whether that’s a courthouse or the flank of jail, pushing the -anyway biased- institutions to deal with me ‘properly’, then he either sleeps awaken or she deliberately pretends not to see or hear anything.

It’s been already 5 years since the day of my arrest. 5 years isolated and cut off, of my social environment. Surrounded by high walls, barb wired fences and cameras. 5 years in an imprisonment and surveillance status. In a course with many traps, hardships, hard circumstances and difficulties. Correction and deprivation of freedom are authoritarian tools for achieving withdrawal, compromise, the polishing or change of views. The final lobotomy and re-integration of the individual as a danger-less element for the system.
For me, however, these 5 years worked as a transitional stage from the instinctual and simplified reflection-reaction to a more conscientious and complex one. To the mature and strengthening of my beliefs, to the firm, now, through new experiences, knowledge, about the right of the ideas and choices.

The prison space, has been, along with the help by certain people, a new field of struggle and conflict against authority. Fellow prisoners that had and have dignity and disobedience as their guide. Comrades and a big number of people of various political colors, that stood in solidarity with everything happening behind the walls, lighted small and big moments of insurrection. Oasis into a vast desert, where the only thing reigning is misery, pain, withdrawal and immobilization. My own participation, was simply obvious and imperative.

For the bourgeois justice, a bank robbery is just another article in the penal code, accompanied with specific penalties. For me, though, doing such an action had a central and special meaning, representing the solution into a theoretical-ideological and at the same time existential problem. It was the answer to the question: How does an anarchist walk into life, when he is called under a blackmail to choose  his position inside society, between the two choices that the modern capitalist system qualifies. Exploiter or exploited. Boss or worker.

And even if they were many those understanding the anarchist position, one to refuse and deny the choice of being a boss, then the individual’s denial to become worker would be accepted by very few, as the vast majority of society has linked survival or its existential destination with the institution of waged work.

For me, though, the thousands ‘because’ that justify such a negation, are found burried at the workspaces of the Olympic Games. At the dead people in Larko’s and D.E.I., factory, at the ship-repairing zone of Perama, at the house-building sites and everywhere else that workers have been sacrificed on the altar of profit. At the wheel chairs, at the frequent visits of people suffering from long term sicknesses into hospitals, results of the many years of exposure under unhealthy conditions of work. Only between 2000-2005 happened 78.894 labor accidents, of which 574 deadly, while between 2000-2008 there were recorded 1.236 dead people and around 12.000 injured.

The thousands ‘because’ hide into the extinguished smiles, the stress, depression, existential dead ends, the drowning compromises of young people to survive through waged labor. Into the unfulfilled dreams. Into the agonizing calls of the elders that spoiled their lives in the daily struggle of daily work, to be granted with a descent way towards death, and not more agony, misery and desperation for the last days of their lives. In the unfairness of creating -by your sweat- richness for the few, while you die slowly in the struggle for survival. Where creativity, inspiration and the necessary expression of human energy, through a desired activity, disappear or remain a privilege of very few, arrives the conscience that the modern kind of work has the same characteristics with slavery, and that every hardship, difficulty and malaise for the worker, means strengthening of the economical and authoritarian mesh that surrounds it.

To the dilemma exploiter or exploited, i chose in 16/01/2006 to expropriate a bank. To the dilemma unwilling and passive viewer of the facts concerning me, or active individual, i chose to activate myself and participate mainly where politics meet the real substance of its proposals and the separations between comrades disappear in front of the necessity of the battle. On the street.

Against the imperialist wars of the hyper-atlantic and european interests in Yugoslavia, Irak, Afghanistan, i was on the streets and the barricades of the dynamic anti-war demonstrations. Against the empty, infertile knowledge, specialization and underestimation of the true education i found myself in the constant school and university student mobilizations since 1998, interrupting later once for good, myself, my studies in the Faculty of Mehanology, refusing to submit myself in a system of brain compost and production of labor power for the domestic industries. Present in the arrival of Klinton and Blur, like they should and were ‘welcomed’ by the people in the streets of Athens. Present in the work demonstrations about insurance issues. In the anti-racist protests, in the marches about the turkish prisoners’ hunger strike, fighting against the ‘white cells’ in their country’s prisons. By the side of the palestinian people in their fair struggle. Absent from every call of the military to serve my duty, refusing every meaning of hierarchy, authoritarianism, blind obedience. Every sense of  of my self’s embodiment into the crowd, by national and racial terms.

In my 8-year presence outside the walls, in the social struggles, my main worry was to help the most possible on their strengthening and promotion, putting myself in their service on the one side, and to create a consequence between theory and action/practice, on what was concerning my way of moving, on the other side.

It’s unquestionable that everyone getting in contact with political ideologies, interpret the content and their lessons according to their own ability of analysis and perception, and applie them, or not, in their daily life, depending on the level of conscience that they have, and responsibility they feel about what they finally represent.

For me, being able to call my self an anarchist, means break with everything, or at least attempt of break with everything. It means de-comfortness/inconvenience and sacrifices. Abolishment or canceling of relations and perceptions that could come into conflict with what i believe. It is hard to revolt against a total alienation influencing not just your environment, but your same self. It is hard to revolt against yourself.

Consequence, cleansing, purity and sincerity are characteristics i believe that are necessary for the revolutionary subject. A consequence, not of logistic kind, but as a real personal commitment towards the needs of the social struggles. A cleanse and purity, not of church kind, but as those necessary human characteristics that someone needs, in order to be able to convince about the truth and fairness of her purposes. And finally, a sincerity that will be the corner stone of creating relationships with the comrades and the social environment.

Every struggle real-ised individually or collectively and seeking the elevation of human and its own life, hoping to the foundation of a society liberated from the malaises and chains of today, is an infinite trip to the absolute. And it should be a trip to the absolute. The ideal. What seems to be utopical, but the more you approach it, the more real it seems. The path to the absolute can crash or elevate someone. But it worth it risking even your own life to walk this path.

For me, the trip did not finish in 16/01/2006, nor this was my destination. It was a small station in my own dangerous trip. It was my own absolute answer upon modern labor, as a simple man and as anarchist. That, on the one side, simply seeks the solution in making a living and on the other side makes a practical criticism on the institution of work, by value codes and terms of conflict, without any sense of exchange or floating and mutual serving of interests with authority and its servants.

My arrest and capture, is another small station, that, although the fact that time has frozen in a daily monotony, during my presence in it, i was honored to live a magnificent revolt, initially in Malandrino jail and then in every other penitentiary Dahau in April 2007 and a huge -in participation- hunger strike in the total of greek prisons in November 2008, for the justification of long term demands, as well as many other moments of disobedience, solidarity and fighting.

In the same way i was honored to receive these 5 years of imprisonment the estimation, love and solidarity of comrades, men and women, but as well of an amount of people that did not necessarily belong to the same ideological space, a fact that was a source of strength and courage for me. All the actions made as an indication of support towards my self, from the most simple to the most complex ones, are for me an immaterial but invaluable heritage, and i am extremely happy and thankful for it.

As long as i live and breathe, the trip will be continued, either under favorable, either under contrary circumstances, without any stress at all about ever reaching my destination. For me what counts is the trip and not the destination, anyway.

And if the storms and uproars separated me from my friends and comrades, i tell them that their picture, the remembering of laughs, disappointments, the joys and anguishes we lived together accompany and will be accompanying me, until the time our fates cross over again.

Time for regrets, despondencies and turning-backs there doesn’t exist, as we run with the speed of light into transcendental and risky courses.  Our sincere apologize is the only we have to give to those that felt -without worthing it- our flaming aura, caused by our unstoppable course among them.

I have no other belief, than that we will eventually win. The only thing we have to do, slightly changing the words in the last letters of Severino Di Giovanni before he fell into his enemies’ hands, is to hold with strength and retain steady the rudder of our Argo , in the persistent quest for the goldhair skin  of our dreams, with all the flame and the dare of our youth.

29/09/2010
Domokos’ Prison
Giannis Dimitrakis