FAI / ELF New Horizons of Burning Rage’ take responsibility for media sabotage (UK)

From Act For Freedom Now!

As part of the ongoing anarchist war for total liberation, we carried out a hit on the Bathampton radio and TV relay station. Fires were set at four points of the structures, and we left undisturbed. As a result of the sabotage, on top of causing hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of damage, we regionally shut down all TV channels on Freeview as well as all national analogue and digital radio stations. Additionally it took down Vodaphone and other mobile networks, damaging police communications and other digital services. 80,000 homes and businesses in the area were affected.

The entertainment industry is an important tool to manipulate human behaviour.

Without a steady supply of distractions it would be much harder to persuade people that their lives are satisfactory, to convince them to keep going to work or in whatever way to reproduce the system. So to deprive the network of the ability to offer this essential means of escape from chronic modern stress, anxiety, frustration and dissatisfaction is to undermine the smooth running of society, however temporarily.

There are many soft targets and many lo-tech methods available for us malcontents who gladly choose conflict over despair. This gives rise to the prospect of rebellion with thousands of faces, with infinite reasons to blockade and destroy whatever stands between us and our goals. We want to experience harmony as a living planet, face to face encounter as intimate circles of proud and free-thinking individuals, and a chance to mould an existence filled with wild play and fierce joy.

Our first response when faced with today’s crushing domination and a subservient society will always be outbreaks of disorder, refusal and beauty.

Our comrades from far and wide who also carry this fight share our thoughts so closely that often their words could be ours. So when they are kidnapped and held far away from us our determination is only further fuelled. Following many actions in Italy the state has unleashed a wave of repression against anarchists and their projects (Operations Ardire, Mangiafuoco, Ixodidae, Thor…), some across borders, accusing some of attacks of the FAI (Informal Anarchist Federation) and raising a trophy for the media-judicial circus: Nicola Gai and Alfredo Cospito, who they claim are FAI / Olga Cell. But if the prosecutors thought for one minute that they had dismantled the group even in Italy with their operations, another cell soon proved them wrong with an attack on the banking system in the capital, followed by grid sabotage in Indonesia, gunshots in Mexico, liberations in Russia, bombing in Greece, mass arson in Argentina, to name but a few. The new anarchist guerrillas laugh in the faces of the powerful because the repression is only throwing petrol on the fires of the open leaderless resistance.

We are on the side of everyone who has burnt stuffy textbooks and taken the offensive to reanimate an anarchy that had turned to dust in so many throats. Any rebel’s capture becomes yet another motive to strike, as we have before and will again, as a reminder of the social cost of their imprisonment.

This action carried out eight years to the day since Xosé Tarrio (a dignified prisoner of Spain’s FIES isolation units, against which a series of attacks last decade were later claimed by the first generation of the FAI) died in the cells, leaving his blood on the hands of the jailers, courts and cops.

FAI / ELF,
New Horizons of Burning Rage

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Critique of ‘Do Not Support the ALF’

By Jake Conroy (SHAC 7), from Because We Must:

I don’t tweet or tumbl or any of that stuff, so I don’t really have a place to put this besides here. Nor can I contact websites like Animal Liberation Frontline or NAALPO due to my legal issues. But this ridiculous article about how we need to do away with ALF supporters has been heavy on my mind. So I thought I would share my thoughts. Feel free to share on your social media outlets if you feel inspired to:

While I share in the anonymous author’s desire to see more action and less talk, the arguments laid out in their article are tragically flawed, dangerous, and counterproductive (and somewhat laughable as it is being posted on blogs and all things social media, thus creating just the opposite affect of the original argument). I have spent awhile thinking about and being angered over the article and how best to respond. Ultimately, my own personal story, which I think is fairly commonplace for a lot of us, was the best rebuttal:

I think my story is pretty typical for anyone coming up in the mid 90′s. I moved to the Northwest in 1995 when I was 19. I quickly became vegan and interested in politics. I didn’t know any other activists or even vegans at the time. However, I found myself captivated by hardcore and punk music, and zines that espoused the lifestyle. I would go to places like Fallout Records and dig through the dusty box they had in the corner, full of old magazines. Here I would find old Sea Shepherd journals and issues of The Underground (the ALF Supporters Group newsletter). I would go to hardcore shows and pick up literature at tables. I spent hours in used bookstores digging through the history sections for books on radical activism. I would spend days pouring over these materials, reading and rereading them, and dreaming and scheming.

Eventually I would find my way into my local animal rights group. I worked with the Northwest Animal Rights Network in Seattle that was a mix of the greatest group of people. Our tight-knit core group of 10 or so had retired naval lawyers in their 70s down to punk rock teens with mohawks. But the one thing we all had in common was that we unabashedly supported the ALF. One of the first demonstrations I ever went to was an ALF support demo after a local Honey Bee Ham restaurant had its windows smashed in. Myself and a friend started passing out information on animal rights and animal liberation at the local hardcore shows. We would be doing tables upwards of 3-4 times a week. There wasn’t much in the way of ALF support merchandise at the time, so we screened pro-ALF shirts and hoodies we got from the thrift store and sold them to cover the costs of photocopies. While I certainly don’t attribute it entirely or even remotely to the two of us, there was definitely a genuine feeling of support for direct action and the ALF within the community.

Over the next several years I would redirect my focus from simple protests to civil disobedience, to direct action in the form of whale hunt sabs off the coast of Washington, to helping get the SHAC USA office off the ground and working on the anti-HLS campaign for 5 years. During that time I also worked on and helped start some of the biggest and most important direct action support magazines of those times. Those magazines would help build, among other things, community support for imprisoned activists around the world. That support would come in many forms, including leaflets and magazines, t shirts, videos, benefits, and support funds. Eventually myself and 5 friends would be found guilty in the SHAC 7 trial. I would be sentenced to 48 months in federal prison, partly because we chose to publicly share ideas. Controversial ideas, like supporting direct action and the ALF.

All of this started with zines I found in a box in the corner of a record store. It led to high-fives with friends, wearing black shirts and taking goofy pictures with disposable cameras at hardcore shows (that’s what we did before Instagram). I started out as a kid listening to music and reading propaganda. I never was a press officer, or a convicted (or not convicted) operative, nor am I disabled. But I think I’ve accomplished some really exciting things in my 17 years as an activist – from getting fur out of major retailers in Seattle, to using direct action to stop the killing of whales off the coast of Washington to organizing with SHAC USA, one of the most successful grassroots animal rights campaigns in our history. And I started out exactly as the kid you are saying needs to stop their “madness”.

Do you know who else started out the same way I did? Being inspired by listening to the music you want to end and reading the zines (now online, called blogs) you would like to do away with? ALF activists like Rod Coronado, Keith Mann, Peter Young. Andy Stepanian, Darius Fullmer. Do you know how ALL of those folks survived their prison experiences? By receiving books and letters and photos and donations by all those people who you suggest do nothing more than “work and watch movies with friends”.

The bottom line is, for over 40 years there has been ALF support work going on all over the world. (Please learn the history of that work at Conflict Gypsy) That work has created a community of people that might not be exactly what you want them to be, but ultimately will support those people you revere so much when they need it the most. Their simple presence will keep that community around, will foster that support when its needed, and keep the issues as relevant as possible. Of course we want more action, less words. But ultimately we need both, because that’s what will keep these ideologies going throughout the peaks and the troughs, the highs and the lows. To not show your support publicly for direct action is what may be the final blow to one of the most important elements of the animal rights movement.

Athens, the Revolutionary Struggle trial: Statement of anarchist Jean Weir to the terror court of Korydallos

Revolutionary Struggle are an anarchist-communist urban guerilla group. Members and co-accused are ‘on trial’ by the Greek state – more info here.

Jean Weir is a insurrectional anarchist from the UK who was invited by the members of RS to speak at their trial, which of course they chose to make into a ‘trial’ of the state and the capitalist system. Jean’s publishing/distribution project Elephant Editions has a website here.

INTERNATIONAL REVOLUTIONARY SOLIDARITY & INSURRECTIONAL GUERILLA STRUGGLE

SOLIDARITY WITH THE MEMBERS AN CO-ACCUSED OF THE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE CASE

HONOR FOREVER TO FALLEN FIGHTER LAMBROS FOUNDAS

– dmp

TRANSCRIPT OF STATEMENT (10/09/2012):

I wish to clarify right away that I stand here as an enemy of the State and society. Far from being a lively community sharing social well-being and the joy of life, what is referred to as society is no more than the dull organisation of inequality and exploitation through social roles and forbiddance. The law is the barbed wire that holds everything in place, and has been internalised to such an extent that it forms the unconscious basis of daily habit and routine even for those who apply it. The media form opinions to maintain consensus and the delegation of individual responsibility to that organ of institutionalised terror, the State. The State, which includes its subjects, is at the basis of every social relation at the present time, including the one here in this court today.

I have come to stand face to face with the enemy inside this bastion of State terror because I was invited by the three comrades of Revolutionary Struggle. I haven’t come to enter into dialogue concerning these comrades or any others. My presence here is an act of solidarity and a continuation of my struggle as an anarchist. At least the present judicial proceeding has discarded every vestige of the democratic swindle, revealing the true essence of power. It’s impossible to pass over the fact that this trial is taking place inside a prison, the greatest crime perpetrated by man over man, and the physical proximity of the judge and the gaoler is an unusual if unintentional declaration of truth. The judge is nothing without the gaoler. The gaoler is nothing without the judge. They are one and bear equal responsibility for their actions. Terrorists and criminals are the servants of the State and capital, not those struggling to survive or fighting against a world of strife, war, poverty and oppression.

It is in the context of this struggle that I first heard of the anarchist Nikos Maziotis. He was in the extreme and dangerous phase of a hunger strike to enforce his refusal to wear a uniform and become a killer in the pay of the State. At the time many anarchists in Italy where I was living had also refused to do military service, choosing to go to prison rather than join the armed force that keeps humanity divided into classes and intervenes violently to extinguish any attempt at liberation. But also and above all because military service is one of the State’s weapons for building model citizens devoid of personality, individuality and their own way of thinking against which it is necessary to rebel and refuse.

I was already aware of the anarchist struggle, of the importance of the anarchist struggle in Greece alongside the exploited, the students, the bus drivers, schoolteachers, the people of the villages of Halkidiki, etc and had read inspiring reports of their actions and also about the State repression against them. But it was Nikos Maziotis, who without knowing it, was to be the propulsive element in my coming to Greece in person. It was on the occasion of his trial in 1999 that I came to Athens for the first time, to attend the court in solidarity with him. It was then that I discovered the wild beauty of the Greek anarchist comrades, their passion for freedom that found immediate expression in a thousand ways and never ceases to grow and intensify, inspiring and igniting free spirits all over the planet. Two things in particular impressed me on that occasion. First and foremost the unmitigated courage and dignity of Nikos Maziotis as he faced the perpetrators of power and privilege. His statement to the court, his affirmations as a man, an individual, a revolutionary, an anarchist, were made looking into the barrel of the gun of judgement without any concern for the consequences in terms of the years he was facing locked up in a cell. What he said that day is a classic of anarchist theory concerning the need for violent attack on the class enemy in first person and I personally have contributed to spreading it in the English language (the text, I mean, hopefully also the attacks). It has inspired comrades and rebels all over the world. What also impressed me and has affected my life ever since was the immediacy of so many comrades’ action in solidarity, without mediation, without the taboos about so-called violence that put a brake on the just anger of the exploited. They expressed solidarity in its only authentic manifestation, by continuing the struggle, the conscious attack on the profits of the bosses and the instruments of repression, even and above all when the class enemy was out in all its force to protect the property and arrogance of the rulers of the planet. Each with their own means, each with their own responsibility.

Armed struggle is on trial. Anarchists also. For any struggle to be worthy of the name it must be armed and self-organised, far from any delegation to the self-proclaimed representatives of the workers movement who have shamelessly betrayed the latter and collaborated with the bosses by reigning in the bad passions of those who have nothing to lose but their chains. Anarchists are against hierarchy and this also applies to the weapons used in the struggle. The weaponry of the anarchist combines the idea, the concept of freedom and the need to destroy not only inequality and poverty but also and at the same time, authority, hierarchy and obedience. They have the capacity to organise themselves and go to the attack without leaders or led, and push others to do the same. Words, stones, pistols, fire, dynamite, Molotov cocktails, graffiti, sledgehammers, hacksaws, theory, analysis, identification of the class enemy as it changes in order to stay the same, machine-guns, spray cans, bazookas are some of the weapons for the self-management of the attack.. (I forgot the catapult, la fionda..) All combine in destructive playful alchemy far from the deathlike logic of judgement. Even when a class enemy is struck down, it is just something to be done and let’s get it over with.

Anarchists abhore the blind institutionalised violence of the State with its arsenal of uniformed robots, tasers, tanks, drones, poisonous gases, flash grenades, truncheons, jackboots, armoured vehicles, cctv cameras, helicopters flying over our heads, courts, prisons, concentration camps, bomber planes, missiles, institutionalised religion, the media, the manipulation of people’s minds, etc. Only the State has the power to send men to their death or to kill, always with the blessing of the priest, after instilling them with patriotism and xenophobia from birth. Greece was the first country to use napalm against the guerrilla in the mountains. Now, irony of history, it uses nerve gas imported from the Israeli State which, after evicting millions of Palestinians from their homes to survive in camps, claims its legitimacy from the gassing of 6 million Jews by another State over half a century ago.

Anarchists are against prisons even for their enemies and know well that when the present setup of the means of production is destroyed and social wealth belongs to everyone, to each according to their needs, from each according to their desires, there will be little cause for strife. The State will do anything to obstruct the struggle for freedom in whatever form it takes, whatever instrument it uses. Since the beginning of the anarchist movement around the middle of the nineteenth century the organs of power have always reacted particularly violently against anarchists because the State, any State, be it red, black or the multicoloured version of social democracy, cannot tolerate freedom, be it in the form of ideas or in the self-organised action of the exploited. I could give many examples but I think we are short of time and I’ll carry on. And of course not only anarchists have been massacred by the State but the exploited in any attempt they have made to self organise their attack against oppression, and we saw this the other day in South Africa when 27 miners were gunned down in a demonstration against the conditions in the mine.

In the space of a century and a half the number of anarchists who have been imprisoned, exiled, guillotined, garrotted, electrocuted, tortured, gunned down in action, shot by firing squads, beaten to a pulp in the street and left to die in a cell, pushed out of police station windows or killed in traffic ‘accidents’, add up to thousands, and often the written word of the anarchist revolutionary has been as severely punished as the bullet. Far from showing signs of penitence or begging for mercy these proud fighters faced death as they had faced life, fearlessly, with a proud cry of Long live anarchy! Long live freedom! That is why the exterminatory delirium of the State is a battle lost before it begins. For every anarchist and rebel slain by the State thousands more spring up out of the nowhere of the uncertain, and the undecided. And that was visible in 2008 in this country, something which inspired people all over the world. Every second an anarchist spends in prison his spirit strengthens, expands beyond the walls and nourishes the solidarity that he or she inspires.

The anarchist struggle is qualitative not quantitative. Its aim is not to control and lead the masses into battle or act in their place but to push the exploited and excluded to act in first person to attack the class enemy and its structures. Sometimes it’s the other way around, a mass explosion of rage erupts after some exalted lackey of the State takes the law into his own hands and guns down a schoolboy, a rioter, a respected elder in the ghetto or a kid in the banlieu. When anarchists put themselves alongside the exploited it is not as their saviours but to fight together with them to extend and widen their attack, to turn riots into insurrections. Sometimes reality acts the other way, the rebels surpassing the anarchists in their destructive fury. In recent years in Greece and in many parts of the world there has been a proliferation of direct attacks on the structures of capital and the State by small groups or individuals. Unlike the seventies and eighties when capitalism was undergoing ferocious restructuring that was responded to in part, not only, by highly structured marxist-leninist armed struggle groups, from the nineties the attack has taken a more flexible form by anarchist groups based on affinity, often with no name or acronym. The workerist element of the struggle more or less disappeared along with the industrial working class due to the introduction of robotisation and real time operations thanks to information technology and capital’s resulting ability to exploit starvation wages on the other side of the planet.

The armed group Revolutionary Struggle appeared in 2003 at a time when there was an anti-terrorist frenzy globally, which in Greece coincided with the capture of the 17th of November group followed by true media delirium. At first their targets were symbols of authority and the State – police, the American Embassy, the Ministry of Finance and Labour, and also an attempt on the minister for Public Order who had been responsible for upgrading the repression. They acted directly without needing the alibi of the masses in order to strike the common enemy, for their own dignity and coherence. When in 2008 the so-called financial crisis became official along with the responsibility of the State and the banking corporations, their actions turned to financially-related targets such as the Stock Exchange, Citibank, Eurobank, etc.

During the whole period the group published extensive analyses which were combined with their actions and contained a strong class position, exhorting the class of exploited to rise and attack those responsible. They are a part of this new complexive reality of the struggle against capital and the State, one that is pushing towards a self-organised revolutionary outlet. Their choice of armed struggle in the specific sense is not presented as an end in itself but simply as a tool to bring the revolutionary perspective to the fore and present the hypothesis of the need for immediate attack in an unequivocal discourse addressed both to the anarchist movement and the wider movement of the exploited.

The comrades who have claimed responsibility for this organisation are individuals who have been active fighters in the struggles of the anarchist movement in Greece in its many forms for decades and are well known in the movement and beyond. In the face of the media outrage and scaremongering following their arrests they came out and proudly claimed the organisation, decriminalising it in the face of the terroristic attack of the media on the minds of the population in order to prepare the terrain for consensus and support for their political and physical annihilation at the hands of the repressive organs of the State. They have written volumes explaining the reasons for the attacks and the need for social rebellion particularly at this moment where, as in many other parts of Europe and the world, the organised crime of State, bosses and banks has led to further extortion from the dispossessed who are now at breaking point. Their message is that of the need for direct attack, that the structures of capital and the State are not invincible.

The words and the actions of the Revolutionary Solidarity group [eh, you mean the Revolutionary Struggle? interpretor] of the Revolutionary Struggle group, (yes… it’s the same thing… solidarity is the struggle and the struggle is solidarity… ) have been translated into many languages in the dimension of the continuation and intensification of revolutionary solidarity in the dimension of attack. This has led to multiform actions, from banner-hanging, sabotage, incendiary attacks on banks and the structures of repression, discussions, international meetings, publications, posters, etc. and have been one of the recent sources of inspiration to anarchists everywhere.

At a time when life has been mortgaged to Capital and become little more than a question of accountancy where every day people are bombarded by the media with figures in billions while they are struggling to stay alive and feed their children, Revolutionary Struggle has had considerable impact on those who see the crisis not as something that has to be readdressed and corrected, but faced head on and destroyed, along with work and the whole economy. Poverty will never be eliminated until we destroy work because it is the condition that forces people to spend their lives doing soul-destroying jobs at starvation wages.

Millions of young people all over the planet are made to feel useless and without hope due to spreading unemployment. It’s time to destroy work as a very concept and take back our lives. Work is a crime, an ideological and physical imposition on the great mass of human beings, animals, and the earth itself, for the benefit of a small percentage of glitterati, but believed in and defended by the whole social set-up, exploiters and exploited alike. In the words of Herman J. Schuurman one of the founders of the Mokergroep, a group of young proletarians in 1923 wrote this: We want to create as free people, not work as slaves; therefore we will destroy the system of slavery. Capitalism only exists because of the work of the workers, thus we will sabotage it and put an end to it. If we are not working towards the destruction of capital, we are working towards the destruction of humanity! We do not want to be destroyed by capitalism, so capitalism will have to be destroyed by us.

I don’t know if the Revolutionary Struggle comrades are advocating the destruction of work, but that is where the totality of the struggle for the destruction of the existent takes us, without compromise or half measures.

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A short background on the Revolutionary Struggle case

On March 10th, 2010, anarchist comrade Lambros Foundas was murdered after an armed scuffle with police forces. Those were the days when Greece was first subjected to the stifling scrutiny of the IMF/ECB/EU Troika, those were the days when Lambros Foundas, member of the Revolutionary Struggle group, lost his life in a shootout with the police during a preparatory action aimed against the political and economic elite that ravages the planet, and plunders and exsanguinates social wealth globally, relegating human life to rock bottom.

After a month and amid a climate of terror-hysteria, in April 2010 the police made preemptive detentions in order to dismantle the Revolutionary Struggle group, and also arrested and imprisoned anarchists Kostas Gournas, Nikos Maziotis and Pola Roupa, who took political responsibility for their participation in the organization.

Simultaneously, anarchists Vaggelis Stathopoulos, Christoforos Kortesis and Sarantos Nikitopoulos were caught and sent to prison. The latter three categorically deny any participation in the organization ever since their arrest, stating that their prosecution concerns their years-long involvement in subversive projects, their political affiliation to the anarchist/anti-authoritarian space and their comradely relationships.

Kostas Katsenos is also charged with participation in the group, and ever since the period of these pretrial incarcerations an arrest warrant was pending against him, too.

The system wanted to deliver a decisive blow to the organization, deeming Revolutionary Struggle as a threat; therefore, it expanded its offensive through the aforementioned arrests so as to crush a wider part of the subversive movement.

After six months, in the context of this expansion of the repressive offensive, dozens of comrades from the anarchist/anti-authoritarian milieu were called to testify and underwent interrogations, along with friends and relatives of the six imprisoned anarchists.

The vindictiveness of repression mechanisms was proved once again, when the State went as far as to charge Marie Beraha—spouse of Kostas Gournas—with participation in the group. This prosecution is a purely vindictive act against Kostas Gournas, in an effort to curb his combatant stance.

On October 5th, 2011, the RS case trial got underway in the special court of Koridallos prisons, in a closed room, withcomplete absence of any publicity. While the mass media always seemed eager to aid the repressive offensive and state propaganda, nowadays they keep silent—in a provocative way and under a political mandate—about anything related to the court proceeding of the RS case.

On the one hand, the regime is conducting a trial against its political adversaries and wants to gag any message of struggle and to distort its meaning. On the other hand, the three comrades, who took political responsibility for their participation in the organization, have defended its actions and political plan. At the same, with their statements in court, all defendants in this case have converted the trial sessions into a harsh reproach upon the political-economic system of wretchedness and exploitation, unveiling the nature of laws and specific treatments that are enforced against those who have the strength to resist.

It must be emphasized that none of the accused comrades is currently imprisoned. Vaggelis Stathopoulos, Sarantos Nikitopoulos and Chistoforos Kortesis were ordered released after 12 months of pretrial incarceration. Kostas Katsenos presented himself to the authorities at the beginning of the trial, and was held imprisoned for six months before being released.

Revolutionary Struggle members Kostas Gournas, Nikos Maziotis and Pola Roupa were released from prison after 18 months, when the maximum period of pretrial detention expired.

Today, Nikos Maziotis and Pola Roupa are at large (!) and no longer attend the court proceeding.

As we write these lines, the trial is at the stage of defense witnesses’ testimonies. Already, the witnesses in defense of Revolutionary Struggle members K.Gournas, N.Maziotis and P.Roupa gave their statements in court. In particular, comrades from Greece and abroad argued the significance of the Revolutionary Struggle group in political and historical terms, and defended armed struggle as well as the entirety and breadth of revolutionary ventures. In the upcoming days, the court will hear witnesses’ testimonies for the defense of V.Stathopoulos, K.Katsenos, S.Nikitopoulos, Ch.Kortesis and M.Beraha, who deny their participation in the organization, nevertheless demonstrate the importance of struggle and the need to resist.

During the days of this international appeal, in late November, it is estimated that the trial will likely be nearing the defendants’ statements. It is thus considered as very important to receive messages of solidarity and resistance from comrades all over the world, who can show in their own way that the accused comrades are not alone, that the struggle for the overthrow of this world is always timely.

– ASSEMBLY FOR THE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE CASE (Athens)

International Conspiracy for Revenge – FAI/IRF takes responsibility for arson of a school in Manado (Indonesia)

School burns during the week of solidarity action for Eat and Billy, called by the International Conspiracy for Revenge.

325 receives and transmits:

On 11 of November 2012, covered by the night and with desires of revolutionary solidarity to the imprisoned anarchists from around the world, we burnt one state elementary school in Paniki, Manado. We salute our action to all of our brothers and sisters from Informal Anarchist Federation – International Revolutionary Front (FAI – IRF).

Maybe, many of the comrades will be asking why we put a fire in a school? It’s a simple answer.

First, school is a prison. And there’s no other excuse to defend the school and write it out from the list of targets of revolutionary actions. In school, we can’t learn about freedom, bravery, uniqueness and revolutionary solidarity. We learn nothing but the situation of society that imposes on our dignity as a human being.

We dedicated our action to remember our brothers, Eat and Billy who are still jailed by the state. Also, through this action we want to send our revolutionary greetings to Nicola Gai and Alfredo Cospito, members of Conspiracy of Cells of Fire, Theofilos Mavropoulos, Gabriel Pombo da Silva, Marco Camenisch, members of Revolutionary Struggle and the
imprisoned anarchist in Chile and Bolivia. To Luciano Tortuga and Mario Tripa Lopez, we send you revolutionary hugs to both of you.

This action is part of our issue of Direct Action for one week to remember our brothers who are imprisoned by the state, the struggle against state, capital and society.

Never step back,
Never unarmed,
Never bow,

For anarchy
For the black international

International Conspiracy for Revenge (ICR)
Informal Anarchist Federation – International Revolutionary Front (FAI – IRF)

–

Notes on the action:

The fire started at around 9pm. The entire school was burned out. 322 children now have a lot of free time without state education. There was not a single casualty. Following the previous ICR action in Manado on 5th November, the police organised a meeting specifically to discuss the situation, where media were not allowed inside to hear the proceedings. They are presumed to have decided on a policy of denial, to attempt to suppress the information about the attacks. Hence, the previous explosive device in Manado was declared only to be an “empty suitcase” mistaken for a bomb, and the arson of this school declared as an “electrical short-circuit”.

(Mainstream media)

International Conspiracy for Revenge – FAI/IRF claim bombing and call for global actions in solidarity with prisoners of FAI-Indonesia Eat & Billy

325 receives and transmits:

“Remember, remember
The fifth of November
The gunpowder treason and plot.
I know of no reason
Why the gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.”
(V for Vendetta)

Last night (Monday, 5 November 2012), we placed a small explosive package.
We put it in front of Red Monkey Karaoke’s pub in Manado. We did it as a small gesture of a solidarity to all the rebels in Papua who were shot by the Indonesian military, to the people in Philippines who stand up against the eco-disaster of mega project of SMI-Xstrata, to the rebels in Greece squats who faced the eviction and were kidnapped by the state, to the anti-fascist fighters around the world who stand up against discrimination and terror.

We know it means nothing for some people who can only throw us by critiques and on other side, put their self behind the bars of reasons. For some people, this kind of solidarity “isn’t the true solidarity” because we hide our face and only put one name: Informal Anarchist Federation – International Revolutionary Front. Even so, we still don’t want to send our solidarity to “some revolutionary”, on the contrary we declare ourselves as a nihilist front.

But, we still want to mention our brothers in arms who always light a fire in our hearts by sending us their message: never step back, never bow, never unarmed, Conspiracy of Cells of Fire and anarchist revolutionary Theofilos Mavropoulos, to the revolutionary prisoners in Greece, to Gabriel Pombo da Silva, to Luciano Tortuga Pitronello and Mario Tripa Lopez, to Alfredo Cospito and Nicola Gai who are kidnapped by the state, to the anarchist prisoners of operation Ardire, Mangiafuoco, Ixodidae and Thor, to the brave one Henry Zeggarundo, to Marcelo, Juan and Fredy, to both Ivan Silva and Carla Verdugo, and last but not the least: our two brothers in struggle who are still seized by the state, members of FAI Indonesia section: Eat and Billy, and Tukijo: you are also our brother.

Our action tonight is a part of an international call of general strike and international solidarity to all the fighters who rise against domination, control, power and eco-destruction.

Our action totally echoes the call from our brothers of Revolutionary Groups for the Dispersion of Terror and the Fires On The Horizon from Greece, the Insurrectional Cell Mariano Sanchez Añon (CI-MSA) from Mexico, the Wolfpack in Russia, and the Cholera Cell as well as the Cell of Conspirators for the Extension of Chaos in Buenos Aires.

Never step back,
Never unarmed,
Never bow,
Solidarity in action, always

International Conspiracy for Revenge
Informal Anarchist Federation – International Revolutionary Front
–

Notes on the action:

Red Monkey Karaoke is one of the high class entertainment places in Manado. The device was placed in the parking area, in the middle of many cars from rich people. The target: cars in the parking area. Destroy the cars (as a main transportation for urban people). This is a symbol that ICR – FAI/IRF stand next to the rebels who are against the eco-disaster. To show solidarity and never step back from the frontline.

Red Monkey Karaoke is located in the main street of Manado. Pierre Tendean street is the widest and main street in Manado. Red Monkey was chosen because it is one of the consumerist symbols of Manado. The targeted was not the people, and that’s why the package was placed in the parking area.

–

The device was discovered by Megamass corporate security at 24:00 hrs. The security alerted Manado police who secured the area. At 02:00 Sulawesi police force arrived, made their evaluation and at 02:32 the item was detonated.

=======================================================

Dear comrades and companerxs of Informal Anarchist Federation – International Revolutionary Front (FAI – IRF) from around the world, to all the rebels who still rise against the power, society and eco-disaster.

We, the International Conspiracy for Revenge, Indonesian section of FAI-IRF want to make an international call of direct action against all property and symbols of society, eco-destroyers, fascists, military and our enemies. This international call in the beginning is to remember the abduction of our two brothers from Long Live Luciano Tortuga Cell – FAI Indonesia, Eat and Billy, by the state one year ago. One year of kidnap and harassment of revolutionary action done by our brothers. And not to forget to mention, the fugitive member of Long Live Luciano Tortuga Cell, K, who is still underground and hunted by power.

But in essence, our action will be dedicated to all the rebels and revolutionaries who never step back, eating their words, and who never want to wash their hands by the sale of another revolutionary name to protect their comfort zones.

We want to call our sisters and brothers in arms from all the cells of FAI-IRF to refresh our revolutionary memories. That until today, we haven’t forgotten and will never forget our sisters and brothers who are kidnapped and seized behind bars by the state. Eat and Billy are only a small piece in a wave of repression that always faced the rise of insurrectionary desires around the circles of FAI-IRF. Action always speaks louder than words.

For one week, starting from today, we want to send our revolutionary greetings for Eat and Billy and other rebels (proud and revolutionary members of CCF and Revolutionary Struggle, Luciano Tortuga Pitronello, Mario Tripa Lopez, Marco Camenisch, Gabriel Pombo da Silva, Theofilos Mavropoulos, Alfredo Cospito and Nicola Gai, Marcelo, Juan and Fredy, Ivan Silva and Carla Verdugo, anarchist prisoners of operations in Italia and many more revolutionary names) that must be remembered and mentioned in our hearts through action.

See you in the street, covered by the night through the fires against power and society.

For anarchy
For Black International
For our sisters and brothers

International Conspiracy for Revenge
Informal Anarchist Federation – International Revolutionary Front
FAI Indonesian Section

================

Communiques & News from FAI-Indonesia

First release of Black International Editions: “Mapping the Fire”

International Words of Solidarity with the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire (CCF)

From 325:

Update: Statement of the nine members of the R.O. Conspiracy of-Cells of Fire and Theofilos Mavropoulos in the first session of the new CCF case trial

PDF: English & Spanish versions (Click “Save As” to download)

“This pamphlet is a meeting point of comrades from all over the world. An imaginary meeting since the walls and bars of the prisons where we are temporarily keep our bodies hostage. But our meanings remain free, escape from the cells of prison and are expressed with words continuing to provoke authority.

Words that still smell of fire and gunpowder, words which carry with them all of our hate for the system, words unrepentant and armed, words which transfer stresses and desires, words which break the isolation of prison, words full of passion for the mutiny we want to continue, words from Chile, Mexico, America, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Bulgaria, Indonesia…

The letters sent to us by the hostage comrades, replying thus to the international call of solidarity of the CCF is not just mail between prisoners.

Our plan for a Black International of imprisoned anarchists, is not simply “a nice theory” which begins and ends inside printed words. It is the deposit of memory which exists, in a move forward.

A memory which does not always count its moments with common terms and common reference points. By reading this pamphlet someone can discover an international galaxy of points of views and positions with comrades whose references speak of the class war and the proletariat and others who speak of nihilism and anti-socialism.

This difference for us is not a contradiction. On the contrary it reveals the invisible line which connects all forms of anarchy and dispute into an international revolutionary front which has as its aim to destroy every form of authority.” Conspiracy of Cells of Fire : Imprisoned Members Cell (Excerpt from the Introduction)

Today in Greece, October 8th, a trial for the case of the Revolutionary Organisation – Conspiracy of Cells of Fire will take place in a specially converted room in the female prisons of Korydallos prisons. The trial concerns the arrests in Volos and the arrests on December 4th, the sending of the 14 incendiary anti-system parcels and the clash in Pefki, 17 comrades are on trial. There will be a solidarity demonstration at the courthouse of the female prisons of Korydallos on this day at 9am.

This publication, the first from Black International Editions, is released online and in paper format from three countries – Greece, Chile and United Kingdom, as an act of solidarity and confrontation to this court process against the CCF and their co-accused. The words of the anarchist prisoners who have responded to the international solidarity call of the CCF meet with the statements of the groups of the international network for counter-information and translation. Together with the armed words of the CCF, a new international revolutionary front is drawn out, this new publication maps the fire that has been spreading across oceans into many territories. In the words of Eat, imprisoned member of Long-Live Luciano Tortuga Cell, FAI Indonesia:

“We are the new chaotic virus, the ghost of freedom, the uncontrollable international plague of revolt.”

For Greek language version, you can find this publication on paper at various self-organised spaces in Exarchia, Athens, Greece, or email sal.spf(at)gmail.com for copies.

In Santiago, Chile, find it at Biblioteca La Hiedra or via Entropia Ediciones in a Spanish language version.

In UK, find it at anarchist spaces, like Kebele in Bristol, or 56a Infoshop in London. You can also find it at the 2012 London Anarchist Bookfair where Elephant Editions will have copies – elephanteditions(at)riseup.net

The email for contact with the imprisoned CCF members has moved to riseup.net’s mail server. From now on, you can communicate at sinomosiapf(at)riseup.net

For the destruction of the existent…

Mexico: Responsibility claim for armed attack on a municipal police patrol car in the municipality of Valle de Chalco in EdoMex

From Liberación Total via Contra Info:

We decided to join the call of anarchist groups and individuals that are not limited to words and curses against social peace, and take in their hands the decision to blow up the system of domination, turning direct solidarity with our captive brothers and sisters into practice.

For this reason, we claim responsibility for a new attack against the uniformed shits: we opened fire on the 282 patrol car of the Valle de Chalco municipal police in EdoMex, killing all of its crew members.

We did not attack a public transportation unit; we fired on a patrol car, i.e. against a well identified target in our fight to the death against the system of domination and its minions.

If we had only killed one uniformed cop, and the rest of the crew were civilian personnel and family members of that municipal cop, as the media of massive stupefaction like to ‘lament’, we would not have any regrets. We would attack again without remorse. There are no guilty or innocent in the struggle for the destruction of the existent. Anyone who feeds this system of death is our enemy.

We also want to clarify that we know nothing of the whereabouts of the cop that’s reported missing. We neither kidnap, nor imprison anyone. We do not believe in prisons, nor in so-called ‘people’s prisons’. We fight for total liberation, not to impose another system that’s equally repressive.

We salute the informal groups and the anarcho-individualists who have joined this new coordinated action! Chaos has returned for everyone who thought it was dead.

Direct solidarity with all imprisoned anarchists in Mexico, Chile, Greece, Italy, Indonesia, the United States, Switzerland and all over the world!

Against any domination! Fire to the Power!
May the fight spread! Long live anarchy!

Insurrectional Cell Mariano Sanchez Añon (CI-MSA),
fraction of the Informal Anarchist Federation of Mexico (FAI-M)

~

Translators’ notes

Mexico State, often abbreviated to ‘EdoMex’ (from Estado de México in Spanish), is one of the federal entities (31 states and 1 federal district) which comprise the ‘United Mexican States’ (aka Mexico).

According to other reports in the regime’s Press, the occupants of the patrol vehicle, two men and one woman that were shot dead in the ambush of Tuesday, September 18th, were all cops: one uniformed and two plainclothes.

‘People’s prisons’ (cárceles del pueblo) apparently refers to the secret dungeons, prison cells, etc. used for the kidnapping and incarceration of state officials by national-liberation guerrillas such as the MLN-Tupamaros.

9/11 Redux: Call for an All-Out Anarchist Attack on the Mainstream Media!

Big media and its State has attacked us… Now let’s strike back.

We know this is a last minute call, but we wanted keep as much time as possible out of State’s hands for protecting itself, while attacking us.

This is going to start on 9/11, the 11th anniversary of the Dark Day of Terror; this unrivaled jewel of the society of Spectacle, when for hours, the same images of planes hitting the towers were televised in a loop, like countless shots of an invisible yet very present weapon of mass disruption. We believe that this significant date is the exact right time when to bring this anarchist insurgency up to a new level.

Eleven years ago, a major attack was carried upon the people all around the planet. This was an all-out onslaught of terror through the Spectacle, that resulted into a global fall into an Orwellian nightmare for most if not all of us. This attack was used shock the public, especially the establishment, into calling out for total mindless vindication upon anyone who’ll be labelled a «terrorist», by terrorist States. It was used to crush our civil liberties, develop an unprecedented grid of total surveillance upon the proles, through CCTV’s and telecoms, as well as to bring despotic legal-militaristic measures to repress dissenters, immigrants and native people alike, put them into maximum security prisons; and to further impose racist, restrictive immigration policies. It was also used to justify endless foreign military invasions worldwide, in what now seems to be part of the «new world order» agenda that George H.W. Bush called for, 22 years ago on the exact same date.

Whether intended or not, and conspiracy or not, the 9/11 attacks were the foundation for a new Nazi “Enabling Act”, aimed at bringing ordinary fascism everywhere in the Western world, under a doctrine of Terror, of (inter)national (in)security. It was a further way to bring new legitimacy and life to age-old imperialist policy by rich Western countries, in a time where there wasn’t any global Enemy to fight against. No matter which political figure of democracy was in charge, this was aways pushed further and deeper, to the benefit of a few corporate crooks, and to the most grassroot level, with the invasion of our neighborhoods by a violent, paramilitary «gestapo» on steroids, in body armors and with an murderous arsenal around their belts. This has become, in essence, the signs of a dead, broken society, which needs to always further invade and militarize itself in order to keep going longer. As others pointed out, the rising Prison Society is a way for the State to buy itself more time; even perhaps secure its future, like it tries to secure its futures by invading Eurasian, Middle-Eastern and African regions. But primarily, all this cannot be achieved without a propaganda and mind-control machine that plays a central role into this global war theater. In a society that no longer exists, the established order relies on propaganda, as it presents itself as the only thing that binds all together. The only social tissue that exists is a power grid.

The Spectacle and the State are now one and the same. Attempts to distinguish them are irrelevant, since all that differs is the process behind these that pretty much equate to the same thing at the bottom of equation: producing a spectacle of power, and giving power to this spectacle. The police are the heroes in the evening news just like they’ve been for decades in mediocre Hollywood productions. The political, financial, scientific elite are the only relevant expertise, and the figures of the capitalist establishment they work for. Electoral process is intertwined with media manipulation. And none of this is new, only that now it is so obvious. The spectacle, in their world, is everything, and the telescreens of all kinds are its most pervasive weapons, their results being the production in our minds of the illusion of society, especially its fictitious projection across time and space. Like following trends and materialist ideals. Like seeing yourself in a televised debate, or fantasy movie. This is always, always, about what’s not there, what tries to be real, but that is never.

Therefore the total rejection of this shallow, lifeless, despotic, violent capitalist society can be best achieved through the direct counter-offensive upon its Mouth, the Mouth of the State, which keeps the sheep into line, that tells them which way to march. We gotta do this any way we can, with the best means we’ve got at hand, but the machine of the Spectacle has got to be subverted, broken, sabotaged, disrupted, tarnished, destroyed.

A clash with the image, a crashing of the spectacle, a cognitive dissonance is what will liberate us and the rest of the slaves. It can get as simple as someone losing reception on his-her cell phone, TV, radio, and then seeking to communicate with other people. That is the only true revolutionary event that can happen at this point in our collective alienation by technology. We can’t convince people to unplug themselves, this would be an obvious waste of time, especially when we can’t manage to unplug ourselves. We gotta unplug them all, cut off their servitude with the techno-industrial system. We believe this is the best we can do as anarchists, the most high-profile, far-reaching action. How this can be achieved? That is the question that’s been haunting some of us for a long time. But it may be simpler than it seems from afar.

To destroy cell phones, TVs and laptops will be useless (not at least for more people than ourselves), as the devices of invasion and oppression of the Spectacle are to be found in things as diverse as transmission antennas, cables, data servers, TV/radio stations, asshole reporters themselves, advertisement panels, CCTV cameras, “telescreens” in public places, speakers shouting the most inane mediocrity and despicable sounds in our ears everywhere. We should follow the mainstream media’s own sacred principles of maximal propagation and direct, aggressive exposure. Developing alternative media was an absolute necessity, and it contributed to the spreading of our movement, or at least its survival through time, but it is now time to go beyond that, to wage war on the media infrastructure of Power, to invade its long, mostly unchallenged dominion. Because this is about taking power, for ourselves.

Whether it’ll have an effect or not depends on YOU, if you choose to adopt this kind of tactics and for how long, wide and deep the attacks are gonna be carried up against this totalitarian regime. The more the media is attacked, the more it will be recognized by the so-called «masses» as the very hostile, dictatorial system that it really is, the more the many will be likely to join in the resistance. That is our theory for a new praxis. We hope that the many will find ways to prove it right.

There is no need for slogans (although we’re not calling against it!), sabotaging the media infrastructure -in noticeable ways- is in itself a clear enough signal of its refusal -in the same way that the media itself is its own message of domination- a refusal of its violence and invasion in our lives, beyond words. At best, détournement is a always a grand, beautifully subversive tactic, but we cannot expect it to be easily applied to every context or situation. The machine can be destroyed, it is in our power to do so. If you have located and isolated any kind of device of the spectacle in your area, this is a call for you to attack it on this September 11th, and onward…

“Against all authority” is our eternal principle. Down with all Power and its advocates.

For total liberation!

– some anarchist(s)

How is it to be Fun?

It’s been almost a year since Occupy Wall Street began and quickly evolved into a nation wide series of events. In that time we have witnessed an increase of attention and interest in anarchism and black bloc activity.  We are excited about all the new arrivals but are also concerned for their safety. There are many texts available about black bloc tactics as well as about how to minimize your risk of experiencing harm while engaging in these kinds of actions, but these texts are largely only available through obscure publications and websites. We wonder if things would have been different for the Cleveland five if they had been able to access some of this information prior to winding up in a police trap.  The following is a letter to the new arrival, may it find you well and be of some use to you as you experiment with new means of approaching freedom.

So you caught wind of some of the media hype about the black bloc or maybe you saw us at a protest doing what we do and now you want in. Sweet, welcome! We’re not an organization so you don’t have to sign up anywhere, we are people all over the world who employ a certain tactic against domination when we see fit to do so and we’re excited to meet you. Together we’ll create and destroy history. However, before crossing that line into illegality with us there are some things you could benefit from knowing and considering.

Alright, first things first, Security Culture. Security Culture is exactly what it sounds like, it’s when we adopt a set of habits and practices that allow us to create and maintain a culture in which we keep ourselves and each other secure from police repression.  Obviously, we hate the police and the police hate us. We attack them when we can and they attack us when they can. This does not only take place in the arena of protest. When we’re not openly fighting them in the streets we are doing everything we can to undermine their authority and make their jobs more difficult. We spread anti-police propaganda, we collect and exploit information about them, we clandestinely sabotage their infrastructure, we figure out ways to solve our own problems and keep ourselves and our neighbors safe without them, and in rare cases throughout history we’ve even murdered some of the bastards! And likewise, when the police are not beating, gassing and arresting us at protests they’re doing everything they can to put us in jail. They listen to our phones, read our text messages, infiltrate our events, surveil our spaces, record keystrokes on our computers, plant evidence, raid our homes, force our friends to give up information on us, send undercover agents to entrap us, and in some rare cases throughout history they’ve even murdered some of us bastards. The State has and uses many agents towards this end; they’re expanding their technologies, developing their tactics and getting paid well to do so.

This brings us to the most basic element of Security Culture, keeping your goddamn mouth shut. This means not talking to people about illegal things you’ve done to prove you’re cool. It sounds easy but a lot of people fuck this up. The only people you talk to about sketchy stuff are the people who you’re doing it with (those people are your affinity group, we’ll explain what that is in a second).  It also means never talking to police or feds for any reason ever; the only thing you will ever have to say to them is “I want to speak to an attorney”.  And the second most basic element of Security Culture is staying off their radar.  This means being careful of what you say on your cell phone and where you bring it, the same goes for email and what you look up online.  It means not announcing your intentions to overthrow the government via violent means during and Occupy General Assembly in Cleveland. The whole thing basically boils down to being careful that the government has no idea what sneaky plans you have cooking up in your head, you don’t want to go to prison for years BEFORE you even got to burn a bank just cause you let it slip to the wrong person you’re going to bring molotovs to the party.

You’ve probably heard all that before but it never hurts to hear it again.  Even experienced criminals can sometimes find themselves caught in police traps, and inexperienced criminals often fare little better than fish in a barrel. Type Cleveland bridge 5 into an internet search engine to find out what can go wrong when inexperienced people allow a sketchy dude they just met into their affinity group.

Now for some basics about a key elementary component of the black bloc: the Affinity Group. If you haven’t got one yet don’t worry, you can still riot, it just won’t be nearly as much fun or as destructive. An affinity group is basically three to eight people who trust each other well enough to get their hands dirty together. Don’t just grab a hold of the first few anarchists you meet and form an affinity group. These should be people you know well, preferably people you like and get along with.  Friendship is helpful in these groups for developing bonds of trust, but remember that someone who is an awesome party buddy might be a total liability in an arrest scenario, and likewise someone who is totally solid, down, and capable might be a complete bore to hang out with. It can also be helpful if you share subcultural roots like punk or hip hop or fly fishing enthusiasm or whatever.  This is not because a shared subcultural identity is in any way a magic defense against betrayal, but because it makes it easier for you to find out about someone’s personal history.  You can find out through friends of friends what this person was up to before you met them last year. Were they volunteering at an infoshop somewhere with people whose friends you’re acquainted with, or were they getting busted with a bunch of drugs and mysteriously doing no time for it only to show up later in activist circles trying to get people to do illegal actions? Also it’s best to avoid having people in your group who are mentally or emotionally unstable, as well as people who are addicted to drugs or alcohol. You’re not going to get much sleep if someone from your group gets busted and they’re sitting in a jail cell with a head full of information the police want to mine and they’re getting dope sick or having a panic attack. You might also want to be cautious of committing crimes with rich kids. It could be very easy for someone to decide that their rebellious phase is over when they are forced to make a choice between going to jail, or enjoying wealth and leisure. For more on why you should avoid doing actions with drug addicts or rich kids look up ‘Jake Ferguson‘ and ‘Jennifer Kolar‘ on the internet.

Once you’ve gotten with a sick tight clique and are ready to go all out, it’s probably a good idea to start small. Before paintbombing the face shields of a line of riot police together, you can instead go out at night and do some wheat pasting or graffiti together. After that try moving on to more risky nighttime vandalism, a smashed ATM here a slashed cop tire there, use your imagination. You’ll get a better idea of who you’re working with and whether or not you want them by your side when the stakes are higher. A great way for you and your group to deepen your knowledge of each other is to do a reading group together.  Not only is this helpful for expanding and deepening your own ideas about why you wish to destroy the current order, but you also learn important stuff about who is in your group. Someone who is an adrenaline junky just in it for the kicks will often have little interest in reading and discussing ideas.  This person is a liability because if they are motivated not by a desire to resist domination but only by a desire to get their pulse up, then the likelihood that they’ll roll on you when the fun part is over and they’re facing charges increases greatly. Often, but not always, an informant or provocateur will also have no interest in developing and expanding their analysis and will only be interested in pushing you to commit crimes.

There are no easy answers for dealing with snitches and infiltrators. It’s important to out snitches publicly so they can’t just move onto their next victims, but before outing someone as a snitch or an undercover you want to be completely sure which is usually difficult. If you get too hasty you could end up needlessly ruining friendships and reputations just because you let your paranoia get the better of you. It’s a good idea to discuss your suspicions with others and get some feedback; you might find out there is a reasonable explanation for what was making you suspicious. But if someone is acting in a way that makes you uncomfortable and you’re having a hard time trusting them, just stop associating with them, they can’t entrap you if you don’t plan or commit crimes with them. There have been instances where people have collected information about people they’ve suspected of being infiltrators and found out for sure, like when Peter Bohmer managed to get a hold of the parents of a suspected informant on the telephone, he pretended to be an insurance salesman and they mentioned that their son gets insurance through his employer, he then asked who their son was employed by and they proudly told him that their son is an FBI agent! There have been other times when informants have been so obvious about it that there was never a period of doubt. It would be cool if we dealt with snitches the way the mob does but so far as I know, no one snitching on anarchists has wound up in stitches yet.

If you have to, go it alone for your first few times out with the black bloc. Keep in mind that even though you won’t have an affinity group watching your back or helping you to pull off some of the more exciting things we black bloc’s have been known for, you at least know your group isn’t compromised. Patience is key with forming a crew. Choosing the right affinity group could be the difference between a series of exciting adventures in your war on Control or an excruciating sentence in a prison cell. While it is important to stay snitch free and safe, there’s really not too much to worry about so long as you keep your senses sharp and exercise good judgment. For every agent or snitch out there trying to bust you there are a hundred people like you who want to destroy this world and experience joy and freedom in the process.  You’ll end up meeting just the right people and you’ll be doing this for a long time, I promise.

So how do you find out where the next rowdy action is going to take place?  There’s a number of ways to find out about upcoming Black Bloc marches and/or riots. The best and easiest way is to be in a community of anarchists – don’t worry you’ll meet them (although after a while you might wish you hadn’t, I won’t lie to you, we’re a strange bunch!). But barring that, you could look for call-outs for upcoming black bloc actions on websites like Anarchistnews.org or Infoshop News, but you might find it easier to try to connect with anarchists in your region through more local sites like Puget Sound Anarchists for Seattle or Bay of Rage for the SF-Oakland bay area or Sabotage Media for Eastern Canada. If you live in a big city try and look for posters at anarchist spaces or just around town announcing any upcoming anarchist demonstrations. You can usually tell whether or not it’s going to be a riot based on the language in the call-out and the imagery in the posters. There is no point in going to a liberal protest march with very few other anarchists and proceeding to vandalize ATMs and fight the cops. It’s much better when it’s 300 or more of us chasing off the riot police and helping each other loot and burn the property of the ruling class. Again be patient and vigilant because there’s gonna be some crazy shit going down as the system continues to crumble and you won’t want to miss it!

Now let’s say you know the date, time and location of the anti-capitalist march. You know there’s going to be a black bloc and you’re either going it alone or with your affinity group. You’re bound and determined to get fierce against oppression, but do you know the terrain? You might consider walking, skating or biking around the area beforehand to take it in and familiarize yourself with its features. This could include noting the locations of Corporate targets, banks, State buildings like courts and probation offices, as well as other insidious institutions like anti-gay mega churches or white supremacist meeting places. Note whether or not these places are near the march routes. Try to locate CCTV surveillance cameras, escape routes, good places to hide things before the demonstration, rooftops with quick and easy access, bars or coffee shops you can dip into. Keep an eye out for weapons caches, maybe a hotel’s fountain is full of heavy river rocks, or perhaps there’s a construction site guarded by a rickety chain link fence that’s full of rubble and rebar. Take note of whether it’s on a hill or not, what the weather will be like and anything and everything you can think of. If there is a lot of hills try to remember where the dumpsters are, those things can get rolling pretty fast with the help of gravity and whatever they crash into is going to feel it. Captain Obvious gets caught, so look sharp, and try to not act suspicious.

So now you know the area and the demonstration is still a few days away, what are you going to do during it? If you’re alone you might want to start small. You might have fun printing or photocopying a leaflet you made for the demonstration or printing already made ones from anarchist websites. If you size it so you can cut the paper into fourths with the text and images on the front and back, you can fill your backpack with these and throw them up into the air when people start breaking shit and that way the gawkers can be informed of why this thing they just witnessed took place. You might have noticed that there is a staircase to a roof overlooking the march route and you took steps to make sure it was open during the march so you could run up those stairs and make it rain propaganda leaflets as the march passes. You could also shoot off some fireworks or hang a banner from up there. Any of these things can serve the purpose of both communicating to others and raising the excitement level of the march, which is important because a bored march is a vulnerable march. Maybe you just want to show up with a can of spray paint express your ideas all over the walls of a city in the midst of revolt. You might consider bringing something sharp you can use to slash the tires of police cruisers or corporate media vans before blending back into the bloc. Perhaps you’ll bring a hammer, crow bar, U-lock, plastic bag of rocks, a chain or some other blunt instrument you can use to smash capital (literally) and or protect yourself and others from police attacks. Remember to keep these items concealed from the cops when they’re lining both sides of the march looking for troublemakers like you, or you can hide your heavy wooden pole in plain sight by attaching a black flag to it and waving it proudly! (A flag pole by the way will go through a window easily if instead of swinging it like an axe or a baseball bat you use both hands and jab with the end of it.)  It’s also helpful to know that the flow and mood of the march at some point might call for mobility, defense from police attack, and to not to stick with preplanned march routes. When this happens be ready to use the forces of spontaneity and improvisation.

Now let’s say you do have an affinity group and don’t need to act alone.  What can groups do together that you can’t do by yourself? Well, for starters, you can act as organs within the bloc. You could be medics, window smashers, paint bombers, graffiti writers, wheat-pasters, scouts, a communications team, a shields team, a video team, looters, or you could just hold a sweet banner you and your friends made. Your crew could take on the task of building barricades with whatever is around to impede the police. Newspaper boxes, trash cans, tables from fancy restaurants, or dumpsters (lit or unlit, your choice) can all be used to slow the pigs’ roll with little effort. Some clever graffiti during the May 68′ riots in Paris read, “Barricades close the street, but open the way” referring to their use of cars to block roads in their informed push towards freedom. Even though the demonstration you’re planning to attend probably won’t involve burning barricades or hanging the last capitalist with the guts of the last bureaucrat, the point is that it is a good idea to have a game plan.

Police and Feds call the part where you and your crew come up with said game plan as ‘the conspiratorial stage of a crime’, so it’s important to do this part carefully. Many arrests happen because of mistakes people made while putting their plan together. So watch what you say on the phone, or what you look up on your computer. Don’t buy sketchy things on your credit cards or from a place near where you live. Before excitedly hashing out your menacing plans with your affinity group make sure you’re someplace where you’re not going to be heard. It could be a good idea to ditch your phones and go for a walk in the park, or on a hiking trail just to be sure that your conversation isn’t under surveillance.  Not that you’re going to be doing anything larger than Black Bloc but when Fox News uses “Black Bloc” and “Al’Queda” in the same sentence it makes sense to take precautions.

Now that the big day is coming you might be thinking ‘what do I wear‘?  Obviously you want a black jacket with a hood to hide your hair and something to cover your face. A black ski mask will cover more of your face than a black bandana will but you also might be the only one there wearing a ski mask and will therefore be easier to single out. It’s probably best to go with a solid black bandana (solid black means no pictures or designs printed on it) and maybe some dark sunglasses.  Underneath your black party clothes should be some normal-flauge, something you can blend into an unmasked crowd with after you’re done tearing shit up. You want to look like a yuppie, a college student -a liberal peacenick- someone the police aren’t going to think to search for the hammer that just smashed that ATM ten minutes earlier. Maybe wear a nice button up, or an Obama 2012 shirt, or a preppy blouse. At this point you might be wondering, do I just show up to the march already in bloc? No. Have your black bloc clothes in your backpack ready to put on when you start to see other people mask up, if you show up to the bloc and everyone is already masked then go inside the crowd (these are your friends) and mask up, if not, then duck down behind a car or something and quickly assemble your ensemble. The reason you duck low behind something is so there aren’t photographs of you bloc-ing up that can be used to connect you with all the crazy shit you did that’s featured on the next days’ front page. Something not so obvious to some that the police use to sort out the differences in the black bloc are shoes and backpacks. Insurrectionary anarchists in Chile have dealt with this by wearing their hoodies over their backpacks and covering their shoes with plastic grocery bags so they don’t have to throw them away afterwards. Maybe showing up to your first or second riot with plastic bags on your shoes isn’t the best idea, but it does gives you an insight in the ways the police police the bloc. Sometimes police will kettle and mass arrest entire crowds, if for some reason you can’t get away make sure you do not get arrested with your party clothes on you or in your back pack. Mass arrests take a long time to execute, giving you plenty of time to ditch anything sketchy you’re still carrying.

This might be a good time to go over body armor. Unless you plan on confronting the police head on with sticks, shields and helmets along with thousands of other people in the streets all day long, which does happen but not often (enough), you probably don’t need it. If you’re new to this whole riot thing, try to wear things that help you remain agile and reflexive to your surroundings; always remain ready to run, attack, defend, de-arrest, disperse and blend in. You’ve probably seen many of us pick up tear gas canisters and throw them back the way they came.  Well those things will burn your hands so we do this with gloves, heavy duty gloves stolen from Corporate chain stores, like just about everything we arm ourselves with, even computers and video cameras. If you think you might find yourself in a situation of prolonged conflict in tear gas, a gas mask is handy to have and if that fails lemon juice and apple cider vinegar on a black bandanna pre-sealed in a ziploc bag will help counter the effects. During the December 2008 riots in Greece, people neutralized the tear gas in the air by setting fire to cars, dumpsters, and whatever else was around to burn up the gas, while the jury’s still out on the scientific merit of these anecdotes, word on the streets of Athens is it works. However, it’s usually a bad idea to play with fire outside of the context of total open insurrection in the streets. If you find yourself in something like the 92′ LA riots, or the above mentioned Greek insurrection, then sure go for it, but if it’s forty people in hoodies breaking away from an anti-war march, then maybe don’t up the ante so much.

So the big day is here! You’re so glad you went to bed early last night, but you’re so nervous you wanna throw up. Well I’m glad you noticed because on a day like today it’s really important to listen to your body. It’s normal to feel some butterflies but if you’re gut tells you something is Totally Wrong: listen to it. This might mean ditching your super sketchy plan and just going and playing it by ear, seeing how the day unfolds and striking only if an opportunity arises. Even if you decide to commit no crimes at all, just being another body in the crowd dressed in black is helpful, the more of you there are the harder it is for the police to single anyone out. Try to have a Plan B scenario worked out beforehand in case one of you doesn’t feel up to it. Make sure to stay well hydrated throughout the day and avoid eating huge meals. Have a lite meal before leaving home and eat small amounts of food periodically throughout the day, think apples and protein bars.  Also do some stretching; you’re going to be on your feet all day so you want to feel limber and agile. Make sure you and your friends look inconspicuous on your way to the demonstration. Arrive 5 to 10 minutes later than it officially starts, avoid police lines, and find your people. It’s customary for at least one person to raise a black flag high so that others can find the black bloc before the demo starts.

So what ends up happening? Maybe nothing memorable. Maybe you just go home with blistered feet and no cool stories. Maybe you all just get beaten and arrested. Or maybe you start a fight that sets off something big and the police flee in terror while you and your friends burn the banks and loot the shops. Whatever happens remember, we don’t do this because we believe we have a road map out or a blueprint for a better world, we know that any one who claims such absurdities is a lying politician. We do this because capitalism has created a world here and now that has nothing for us and this is just one way our deep and total desire to destroy that world can manifest itself materially. We don’t believe in waiting for some magic moment to strike. The system perpetuates itself by controlling you, promising you a future so long as you politely endure a miserable present that seems to never end. When we resist their control the present becomes ours for as long as we can keep it. This is the state of exception, this is what we want to create and expand. We might never end up expanding it into perpetuity, but we don’t see that as a reason to simply accept the conditions of the nightmare we’re currently living. We refuse to go down without a fight.

Be dangerous and stay safe. We’ll see you in the streets. ATTACK!

Spectacle of police terrorism against the R.O. Conspiracy of Cells of Fire and Theofilos Mavropoulos at Evelpidon courts

A communiqué by all of the imprisoned comrades themselves

From Contra Info:

The trial against the imprisoned CCF members and anarchist Theofilos Mavropoulos was scheduled for the morning of June 27th at Evelpidon courts, in Athens. In addition to much heavier charges, all ten of them are now prosecuted even for incitement to criminal acts in relation to three texts that had been published online in October–November 2011. The first one was a solidarity text to the anarchist hangout Nadir (in Thessaloniki) and the second one concerned the preliminary investigation due to the text in solidarity with Nadir, both signed by the imprisoned members of the R.O. CCF and Theofilos Mavropoulos. On June 26th, one day before the trial at Evelpidon courts, a solidarity statement concerning this new prosecution against CCF members and Theofilos Mavropoulos was issued by the anarchist hangout Nadir.*

The third among the aforementioned texts that has also been included in the trial brief is not even their own, but it is a responsibility claim for incendiary attack on Studio ATA in Melissia, Athens, signed by the Deviant Behaviours for the Spreading of Revolutionary Terrorism/International Revolutionary Front (the same group that on June 29th, 2012, claimed responsibility for the explosive attack on the Greek headquarters of Microsoft in Maroussi, Athens, an action which was carried out in the early hours of Wednesday, June 27th).

That Wednesday morning, 27/6, a spectacular terror-show was set up by the agents of “citizen protection”. By 8.30am, dark-blue luxury jeeps and blue paddy-wagons of the special terror-unit set off from Koridallos prisons and crossed the city’s streets at high speeds, with flashing sirens wailing like crazy.

Eight of the imprisoned comrades attended the proceeding at Evelpidon courts, while two of them were absent (for non-alarming reasons). Among them was comrade Olga Ekonomidou, who looked well —she had finally come out of the solitary confinement of Diavata prisons and is expected to be transferred to Eleonas–Thebes prisons, given there will be no “unpleasant surprise” on the part of prison authorities.

A small-scale scuffle broke out when the imprisoned comrades were being transferred from the police paddy-wagons into a hellish basement at Building 9, because few thugs from anti-riot squads tried to provoke and push back the gathered people (by that time, nearly over a hundred), and even used police batons against solidaritarians. The incident soon came to an end, with no serious injuries.

The eight prisoners were locked up for approximately five hours in that basement. Numerous random people, and even lawyers passing by, were asking curiously in a whispery voice why were so many repressive forces lined up across the courtyard alleys, evidently terrorized at the sight of not only hooded and fully-armed blue cops but also of a total of five green police squads guarding closely for hours the space between the detention rooms and the solidaritarians.

When the prisoners’ transfer finally began from Building 9 to the courtroom in Building 2, within a distance of nearly 100 metres, it was already expected that the trial would be postponed after the counsel’s respective appeal. Police vehicles were parked close to each other, in order to block any visual contact with the captive comrades. Not more than 80 comrades were present then, what felt at least discouraging, bearing in mind the political importance of this prosecution as an attempted silencing of radical free speech. However, solidarity slogans were chanted lively in the alleys of courtyards, while several of the comrades, friends and relatives managed to accompany the smiling and proud CCF members as well as revolutionary Theofilos Mavropoulos inside the courtroom, who were all handcuffed and “escorted” tightly by “anti”terrorist hooded macho thugs.

Solidarity words included the following slogans: ‘The anarchist discourse cannot be penalized; cops and judges, go fuck yourselves’, ‘Freedom for the Cells of Fire’, ‘Praxis of anarchist is not just words; freedom for the anarchist comrades’, ‘The States are the only terrorists; solidarity with armed guerrillas’, ‘Only bursts of Kalashnikov would do justice and make you [cops] come to your senses’, ‘The passion for freedom is stronger than all prison cells’, ‘Rage and consciousness, denial and violence; down with statism, long live anarchy’…

People who stood outside the courtroom at the time were shouting out loud their solidarity and complicity with the accused, when a police squad passed near them; a cop was particularly irritated at the sound of an anti-Nazi slogan, so much as to raise his middle finger. He got the response he deserved—to put it in his ass, of course—but, other than that, comrades stayed calm, moved closer to the courtyard and focused on greeting with their strength and applauses the anarchist prisoners on their way back to the police vans, after the presiding judge had agreed to the postponement of the trial (set for December 2nd, 2013).

Unlike the conditions at the court-martial of Koridallos women’s prisons, where identity cards of visitors are withheld and returned upon exit from the courtroom, no one must give identity card upon entrance through the metal detectors in Evelpidon courts area. Nevertheless, the day was marked by ambushes of plainclothes cops who conducted identity checks of visitors earlier in the morning, as well as verbal provocations by anti-riot cops against attendees who were walking away from Building 2 after the trial process was over, by midday.

The jeeps and vans of the terror-unit drove off with sirens wailing once again, headed back to Koridallos prisons. After a while, one police battalion harassed two comrades who were leaving the area, asking for their identity cards. A “law enforcement officer” attempted to punch one of them, who was also chased by the murderers in uniform, but quickly got away. The bullying ended only after the squad’s leader ordered his sheep to come back to the herd.

So, this was not just another day at public courts. To try to put it in other words, it was a low turnout of attendees at the umpteenth trial against comrades, a long waiting within the disgusting environment of the temples of bourgeois justice, where court employees were pushing back and forth shopping trolleys (“expropriated” from supermarkets) laden with piles of trial briefs and judicial documents of countless cases against civilians; and it was a harsh reminder of the ongoing captivity of unrepentant revolutionary fighters, in the context of an overt prosecution of freedom of speech and solidarity.

* On July 2nd the anarchist hangout Nadir was raided once again, in the context of an extensive police operation across the city of Thessaloniki.
Here’s the communiqué by the imprisoned members of the R.O. CCF of the first phase and anarchist of praxis Theofilos Mavropoulos concerning the trial farce of June 27th:

[ Tuesday, June 26th, 2012 ]

On June 27th we stand trial charged with incitement to criminal acts in relation to three texts that were released when we found ourselves captives in the State’s prisons. One of these texts is a responsibility claim for arson on vehicle(s) belonging to a television production studio company by the group “Deviant Behaviours…” of the International Revolutionary Front (IRF), and the other two are our own announcements about the cops’ raid in the anarchist hangout Nadir (in Thessaloniki), as well as the interrogation that followed this text…

The phrase in question that annoyed the judicial mafia is “not 1 millimetre back; 9mms in cops’ heads.”

We could have not wasted even a single word about this case. The legal implications of this new prosecution are just a drop in the ocean for us.

We know that we have ahead of us predefined convictions to many decades in prison. How could we be concerned about a few months more, from one misdemeanor charge? But still… an anarchist of praxis cannot think with the legal reasoning of a lawyer.

This prosecution acquires a distinct political value. As already shown, the State, the prosecutorial authorities and police services have repeatedly tried all innovative methods and tactics against the CCF: members of the Conspiracy charged with abetments while being in custody; extension of remand in custody (by an order of new pretrial detention just few hours before the expiry of the 18-month period of the initial pretrial detention) against one of our comrades (Gerasimos Tsakalos) while he was hospitalized as a hunger striker; cooperation of the Italian and Greek authorities for our probable extradition to Italy; further prosecutions in relation to texts, etc.

It is written somewhere that the more your enemy persecutes you, the more it’s proven that you have succeeded hard blows against the enemy.

To us, the charges that fill the thousands of pages of our trial briefs are a title of honour. But we want to stress that, as anarchists of praxis, what we leave behind us unanswered becomes a legacy for the future; to the contrary, what we gain creates our perspective.

The fact that the prison guards can keep for two and a half months comrades locked up in solitary confinement cells, without the aggressive reflexes of anarchist solidarity being activated (with few exceptions), is undoubtedly a defeat.

If the daily attacks by dastard petty fascists and their presence on the street, in the squares and neighbourhoods won’t be met with the corresponding retaliation on our part, with knives, knuckledusters, fires and explosions, then they will mark the retreat of the enemy within.

The recoil of offensive actions from the new anarchist urban guerrilla warfare (with the exception of the anarchists of praxis and the cells of FAI-IRF) against the tension conditions of the social machine is obviously a victory of fear and repression.

We do not want to let fear and defeatism become our shadow. In spite of the times, we remain unrepentantly hardheaded and steadfast. We will not turn down the volume of our discourse or disarm our words.

The fact that we are being accused because of our texts for “inciting others to commit felony offenses” means that our words can still communicate with the doubters and deniers of our era and be transformed into actions. We are proud of it. We never liked hollow words. At the same time we never believed in, nor reconciled with democratic liberties and rights. We have always thought that they serve as a “showcase” for the police state and the social machine.

By the prosecution of our texts, even the last illusions that some people may maintain about democracy are withdrawn. Now the curtain of freedom of speech has been pulled back, and the judicial censorship has been exposed. Yet this is a good thing… Therefore, we will never talk about the “criminalization” of discourse and ideas.

We have always believed that the insurrectionist theory is accompanied by anarchist practices, as well as vice versa.

Logos and praxis (discourse and action) are inseparable concepts. The positive side of our prosecution is polarization. Once illusions are withdrawn from the scene, each and every one takes position. There are no innocents.

We respond to the fear of repression with the momentum of attack. Ignorance and indifference are repealed, and now decisions speak.

The dilemma is clear. Either with the society of the existent or the deniers of our era; either an appeased citizen or oppugning riotmaker; either an eternally indignant protestor or anarchist of praxis; either rule or exception, either now or never.

NOT 1 MILLIMETRE BACK
9MMS AGAINST DIRECTORS AND SERVANTS OF THE SOCIAL MACHINE

PS. In court, where we’re called to appear, we disdain the judicial marionettes and disregard the defense of our rights. After all, we have thrown the rights which democracy “grants” to us into fire long ago, along with our legal identities.

Our presence there and our stance are yet another insult and an affront to the laws’ Inquisitors.

It is a small part of the total anarchist war we declare against society of the State.

The imprisoned members of the R.O. CCF of the first phase and anarchist of praxis Theofilos Mavropoulos