Call for International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinians and the Greek Anarchists

An International Day of Solidarity is being called for January 23, 2009, for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the Greek Anarchists and other anti-authoritarian activists in Greece. There are many overlaps between these two struggles, and those similarities are explored below. The date of the demonstration is to also commemorate the anniversary of the Riots in the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland, during the period of Nazi Germany (1943), where 70,000 Jewish people took this city back, and held it for a long time before the Germans took over. The date of this march and the atrocities currently being committed against the Palestinians are highly ironic, given what the Jews went through during the Holocaust.

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Athens: Riot cops attack journalists, arrest 18 lawyers

They're out of control!

Some videos from today's protest actions:

Posted by Thomas




With university campuses closed to them (latest police tactic), rioters sought refuge in a building on Asklipiou St. From TVXS

Musical Innerlube: Tool - 'Stinkfist'

In solidarity with people seeking liberty everywhere



And especially with the young people clashing with police in Athens the past few hours. Reports are sketchy but the cops are coming down hard. Journalists and lawyers have reportedly been attacked by the cops.

Contrary to media articles, today's action has not been merely to protest the death of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos last month. It is also the anniversary of three days of rioting in 1991 after right-wing thugs murdered a leftist teacher, Nikos Temponeras, at a school under occupation in Patras.

Police had lost control of a good chunk of downtown Athens at the time and the smell of tear gas from Exarchia wafted all the way up to the Hilton.

Back to the fray. More later.

For live updates in Greek tune in to www.1431am.org

They broadcast a message by Subcommandante Marcos who spoke in Greek and thanked the Greek insurrection!

Strategic importance of HLS in the broader anticapitalist fight

The campaign to shut down HLS has become a "meeting engagement"-a battle neither side can afford to lose. Here is what the pro-vivisection "Foundation for Biomedical Research" (or FBR) had to say in their 2006 "illegal incidents report" about the importance of the campaign to close Huntingdon "Life" Sciences (HLS)

"Beyond the issue of research and the debate surrounding animal rights, there is a larger and more troubling message surrounding this regrettable pattern of capitulating to activist attacks. This is because those who seek to attack any corporation for any reason have, thanks to SHAC, now been provided with an effective model to gain publicity for their cause, seriously harm the company with which it has any complaint, as well as its employees, customers and vendors."

This is a quote from a document the FBR distributed on Capitol Hill during their 2006 campaign to pass the draconian revisions of the Animal Enterprise "Terrorism" Act. Most of the document whined about the steady drumbeat of protest and direct action against HLS-related targets.

What the FBR is saying in this particular snippet is that the battle over HLS has become so important that the capitalists can't afford to lose-no matter what. The Green Scare has in turn created a situation where opponents of capitalism also cannot afford to lose-or law enforcement gains a model to shut all of our movements down. In short, neither we activists nor the system as a whole can accept defeat on HLS, so it has become a strategic point of engagement affecting all of capitalism and anticapitalism.

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The deepest spot in the caves

This Mexican political prisoner writes about his experience of maximum security prison in Mexico. Dedicated to Mumia Abu-Jamal and read in part at the demonstration before the United States Embassy in Mexico City on December 9, 2008.


There are beings who are kept apart from other people for one reason or other, like the nymph Echo who was confined to the depths of the caves and ravines, where no one could see her, no one could hear her, except when she was interrogated, thus concealing the world of her existence.

This is mythology, it's true, but some men and women of flesh and blood are also kept apart from people and excluded from the world, and to this end, the deepest parts of the caves are fashioned out of iron and concrete, parts so deep that very few people can even see what's down there, so deep that the Sun can't reach that far, so deep that many don't even know these parts exist or where they are located.

These places are the maximum security prisons, where, right next to hardened criminals unable to lead a more or less normal life or develop relatively healthy relationships, other people are confined who are not only able to do all this, but who fight for the betterment of society and relations between human beings, for justice to be real, for ethics to no longer be relegated to speeches and books, and for freedom and human rights to be the true heritage of everyone.

The former are condemned for victimizing society, and the latter for being its conscience.

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