The Hainides: 'Venceremos!'

Message from the HAINIDES:

"...Hi guys! Venceremos!

The violence of a stone or a molotov is not violence. Violence is drinking Coca-Cola.
Violence is being in upright villages, in apartment complexes. Violence is sitting on couches watching television. Violence is from nursery to post-graduate school, 30 years in institutions; institutionalization, when all mammals - small kittens, tiger cubs and puppies - are at their peak of activity and at their prime, that is violence.

Violence is heteronomy. If Texaco and Mobil want, they can have a war in the Aegean anytime. What democracy are we talking about? Bourgeois democracies are dead because they have an inbuilt contradiction. The contradiction is the following: on the one hand they praise and promote individuality and on the other they press everyone into a morass of conformity.

I believe all peoples and mankind are not judged by what they have, but by what they give. And if Greece has one value it is not an ancient past, it's that it is a crossroads.
A crossroads that can send a new signal.

The signal of self-organization, of autonomy, of self-regulation. Naturally we do not want a greater salary than anyone else. We do not want a 1,400-euro minimum wage. We want wage and income equality for all men and women.

We want a society that will be based on being childlike. Children have some characteristics that history has utilized. One characteristic is the ability to see clearly when reacting. It is exploring. And, mainly, it is immaturity. I stand on our immaturity and our childlikeness.

But, for all this to take place we need a radical restructuring. A restructuring even of our language code.

In other words, is it by chance that the language we use is itself authoritarian? For example: From the age of two tots are told by their mother 'My child, go quickly to the toilet to do your kaka!' So he will do. He will take a crap, clean himself, have fun, unburden himself.

That is where guilt becomes associated with our ass. Do you understand this? Guys, authority is not something nuclear that acts everywhere in ever expanding rays. It is a veil that constantly passes through us.

It is authority from father to son, from mother to daughter, from one friend to another. It requires a radical restructuring.

And I believe we can provide a thunderous example of self-organization and self-regulation. Guys, the whole world wil get the message. We only need to calm our nerves.

The streets are our schools. And the squares. And the buildings. Our cities need a partial explosion of course. We want organic produce, gentle forms of energy.
Tomorrow's society must be psychotherapeutic for whoever seeks authority. Whoever seeks authority must be gravely ill. That is how you must deal with him.

True society is everywhere. And the centuries-old stereotypes and divisions must be abolished. We are everything, all. We do not judge or determine anyone.

Guys, Venceremos! Guys, we all have a tiger within us! The only true uprising is the one that is everlasting. ..."

Grenade attack against progressive factions in Athens

Eyewitnesses report the attack took place while the issue of military armaments was being discussed. [photos from Athens Independent Media Center]



As reported by Javno:

Hand Grenade Explodes In Greek Capital, No Injured

A hand grenade exploded late on Tuesday in the centre of Athens, causing minor damage at the offices of a leftist human rights group but no injuries, police said.

A wave of left-wing violence since the police shooting of a 15-year-old in December, which triggered Greece's worst riots in decades, has rocked the fragile conservative government.

"The grenade went off outside the offices of the Network for Political and Social Rights, causing minor damage to the building... and a cafe across the street," a police official who declined to be named said.

Police said they had received no warning and no group had claimed responsibility for the attack yet. The building also houses an immigrants' community centre, which was crowded at the time of the attack, the semi-official state agency ANA reported.

Last month, the left-wing guerrilla group Revolutionary Struggle claimed responsibility for the shooting and serious wounding of a 21-year-old policeman in central Athens.




Below are some unauthorized translations of statements released by some of the groups attacked:



Statement issued by the Network for Political and Social Rights

Murderous hand grenade attack on the Immigrants' Place

Yesterday evening, 24 Feb, 2009, at 10:05, "unknowns" lobbed a hand grenade at the Immigrants' Place located on Tsamadou Street in Exarhia (the offices of the Network for Political and Social Rights share the same space). At that time the Place was full of people as an open event by the Association of Conscientious Objectors was underway and our organization's coordinating committee was in session. It was entirely fortuitous that there were no victims from the attack given that the grenade did not manage to break the window's double-plated glass, bounced and finally exploded in a flower pot situated in front of the building.

Last night's murderous attack by the para-state comes under the general attempt at a counterattack by the establishment in the wake of the December revolt. All this time lately we are observing a rise in state and para-state violence, as well as a black propaganda campaign against the resistance ("the far left is responsible for the violence"). the "unknowns" who threw the hand grenade are not only attacking us. They are attacking the entire insurrection; all those who revolted in December; all those who are taking action to refuse the market dictatorship and truncheon 'democracy'.

It is probably unnecessary to state that we will not take a single step back. It is probably unnecessary to declare that the para-state will receive the response it deserves.

Athens 25 February, 2009




Press release issued by the Association of Conscientious Objectors regarding the attack on the Immigrants' Place

Yesterday evening around 10pm and while an open event of the Association of Conscientious Objectors was underway concerning new programs for the acquisition of gear by the Immigrants' Place (13A Tsamadou St., Exarhia), an unknown assailant threw a hand grenade and subsequently disappeared. Those of us who were inside the hall heard a bang on the window followed immediately after by a powerful explosion. The perpetrator attempted to lob the grenade into the hall where the event was taking place by breaking the window. Fortunately the glass did not break and the grenade fell in a flower-bed beneath the window and exploded, causing only material damage in contrast to the assailant's obvious intentions.

Aside from the Association of Conscientious Objectors, the Immigrants' Place houses a host of collectives of the Left, the feminist movement, the gay movement, etc., as well as immigrant group activities. As a matter of fact, Greek language lessons that are daily attended by dozens of immigrants had just ended a short while before the attack.

The resurgence of the far right or para-state terrorism, before which it appears we find ourselves, can only frighten those who are already frightened and that does not include us. Obviously, and as happens in such cases, the Association of Conscientious Objectors will continue and intensify its activity, particularly now that we understand how disturbing some find this activity. A hand grenade exploding outside our door was not required to teach us how murderous nationalism and militarism can be and how opposed to it we are. The militaristic mindset, an example of which we lived through yesterday, is foreign to the freedom movement, of which anti-militarism is a vital component. Whoever invests in fear (the framed strategy of tension in the Aegean that is used to justify the feast of arms purchases, terrorism, racism and xenophobia, nationalism and militarism) will find us arrayed in opposition.

Presently, when, following the December events a low-intensity war is being waged against anyone who opposes today's warped society, against any who are engaged in struggle (i.e. the characteristic case of Konstantina Kouneva), it is time to make a stand. The time is now, before the encroaching economic crisis intensifies, before social tensions worsen, before a new Krystalnacht and a new Ordine Nuovo that stigmatized respective historical periods of the past.

date:
2009-02-25

www.antirrisies.gr




Statement from the Athens Anti-Authoritarian Movement on the attack against the Network

The building that hosts the Network for Political and Social Rights, Immigrants, the Association of Conscientious Objectors and other collectives was attacked on the evening of 24 Feb. The hand grenade was intended to commit the mass murder of people inside the hall and the only obstacle was the second plate of glass against which the hand grenade was thrown.

This murderous attack is not symbolic but is absolutely real. It is the assassin's hand of reaction that decided to make its bloodstained face evident. Reaction is not only the state, the para-state and the fascist gangs. It is also the lackeys and followers of statism, nationalism and bigotry. The conclusion one may arrive at is clear. It is a murderous attack on Exarhia and that is what it symbolizes. It is a murderous attack against the resistance movement. It is a murderous attack against the December uprising. It is a murderous attack against those who stand in solidarity with [Konstantina] Kouneva. It is a murderous attack against the lives of people whom these reactionary gangs hate so much, having proven this repeatedly in the past.

As far as we are concerned, we feel that it fell on our window and that the vigilance of all the revolutionary movement's forces must now be taken for granted. Brothers, be on your guard: reaction murders.


THE ATHENS ANTI-AUTHORIATARIAN MOVEMENT

Jurors say soldier not guilty of murder, mutilation

A Fort Bragg soldier accused of killing an unarmed Afghan and then cutting off the man's ear has been found not guilty on all counts.

The jurors deliberated about four hours before announcing their decision.

Lawyers in the trial of Master Sgt. Joseph D. Newell gave their closing arguments Wednesday morning. The panel began deliberating around 1 p.m.

Newell, 39, of Tecumseh, Mich., was charged with premeditated murder and mutilating a dead body. He could have faced up to life in prison if he had been convicted.

The charges stemmed from an incident during combat operations outside Hyderabad, Afghanistan, on March 5. Newell was a team sergeant with the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group when the incident occurred.

The man he shot had been detained after a vehicle stop when Newell discovered a picture of a Russian machine gun commonly used by Taliban forces on the man's cell phone.

Newell testified that he shot the man twice because the man lunged at him during questioning.

Military judge Col. Patrick Parrish instructed jurors that if they found Newell not guilty of premeditated murder, they would need to consider the lesser charge of non-premeditated murder.

Capt. Seamus Barry, a lawyer for the prosecution, said the defense's assertion that Newell acted in self-defense could not be taken seriously.

Barry said eye witness accounts proved the man did not constitute a threat and that if he had lunged, he would have been seen by the witnesses, who were standing three feet and five meters away, respectively.

“This case is about murder. This case is not about a developmental mistake, a close call or self-defense,” Barry said. “The accused had it in his mind that he was going to kill that man.”

Barry said the man was unarmed and defenseless. He told jurors that Newell's actions were discrediting to the Armed Forces and a burden on fellow soldiers, who had to deal with the situation between missions.

“And as if the shooting wasn't bad enough... he severed the man's ear,” Barry said.

Newell was a good man and a good soldier, Barry said, but on March 5, he was a murderer.

“This isn't the movies, where every killer is a monster in a hockey mask,” Barry said. “Good people and good soldiers do bad things.”

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Musical Innerlube: Moby - 'Disco Lies'

The Oscar for Denial

'And the winner is – The American People'

"...Rosenbaum incorrectly accuses The Reader of claiming that most Germans were ignorant of the The Holocaust.  The film's underlying assumption is far more damning: everybody knew, but nobody acted on that knowledge.  Of course, as Samantha Power recounts in her Pulitzer-Prize winning study of genocide, A Problem From Hell, the United States was also well aware of Hitler's extermination of European Jewry before and during World War Two and also chose to do nothing.

Power's book is a shocking indictment of American neutrality in the face of evil, during the Holocaust and other systematic programs of genocide all around the world - in Turkey, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq and elsewhere - over the past hundred years.  "The key question" writes Power, after presenting hundreds of pages of documented evidence, "... is: Why does the United States stand so idly by?  The most common response is, 'We didn't know.' This is not true."

"Because the savagery of genocide so defies our everyday experience, many of us failed to wrap our minds around it," Power's says.  "Bystanders were thus able to retreat to the 'twilight between knowing and not knowing.'"  It was easier not to probe for certainty because uncertainty did not demand action.  Power concludes that America failed to act against genocide not because the country lacked knowledge or influence but because it did not have the will to act.  U.S. officials "were not prepared to invest the military, financial, diplomatic, or domestic political capital needed to stop it."

Now the United States faces a new moral crisis, the subversion of our own legal and moral values by high officials of our own government.  We are, in this moment. as awash in complicity and willful denial as the principled middle-class denizens of the Third Reich.  We are the Good Germans of the new millennium in Bush America because we knew about the illegal kidnappings and tortures, the self-serving legalisms that subverted the Geneva accords and papered over Constitutional lapses, the lies that led us into conquest and occupation.  Starting well before the invasion of Iraq - which millions around the globe protested in unprecedented numbers before it occurred - we knew the "weapons of mass destruction" and Saddam's connections to al-Qaeda were bullshit excuses.  But many millions of us tried to pretend that we really weren't sure.

In his Sunday column entitled: "What We Don't Know Will Hurt Us," Frank Rich remarked upon this "American reluctance to absorb, let alone prepare for, bad news.  We are plugged into more information sources than anyone could have imagined even 15 years ago... Yet we are constantly shocked, shocked by the foreseeable."  Or as Bob Dylan put it, in the context of race relations a generation ago, "How many times must a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see?"

We know, deep inside us we know, as the Germans who kept their heads down and tried to lead 'normal' lives as genocide exploded all around them, in their name, by their own government, knew, that our government has committed terrible atrocities at home and abroad.  If we do nothing to bring these crimes to light and their perpetrators to justice, then we are as guilty and worthy of moral condemnation as the war generation of silent Germans whom Ron Rosenbaum rightly abhors..."

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