Meanwhile, the struggle in Thessaloniki by the workers of ‘Banquet’ restaurant and other workers than stand in solidarity continues after the end of the summer. The boss wants to re-open the place, as this month is normally one of the best for this luxurious restaurant, due to the International Fare of Thessaloniki, that takes place next week in the city. The boss, though, will not hire the workers that mobilized the last months, protesting against the firing of one worker for syndicalistic reasons. Some gatherings outside of the shop have taken place the last days, and the police has arrested other syndicalists. Their court, which was planned for last week, was postponed for next January. For any serious updates, we will keep informing.

Sofoclis Nigdelis, another prisoer that lived in the same cell for long, has published a note that talks against the journalists, that have published false information about the case of Vaggelis Pallis, and send his regards to the recently murdered journalist Socratis Giolias and his family. “Solidarity and comrade collectiveness are our destructive weapons. Regards and strength to the comrades in solidarity of Vaggelis Pallis, inside and outside the walls” ends his note.

Vaggelis Pallis is a prisoner that in in jail not for political actions and is not anarchist, but was one of the first prisoners that has taken part in revolts inside the prison, and has faced unbelievably hard charges and penalties, while he was already inside the prison. The last years many actions of solidarity have taken place by the anarchist scene towards him.

On 4th of September a gathering and demonstration towards the hospital were he is held is organised by comrades in the city of Trikala.

Wednesday 8th of September

CRISIS
the outlet from the crisis

18.00 : Crisis in the workplace. From the traditional trade unionism to
the autonomous workers’ struggles.
Lars Rφhm (Freie Arbeiterinnen-und Arbeiter-Union, FAU, Germany)
Thodoris Theodoropoulos (antiauthoritarian newspaper “Babylonia”)
Kostats Haritakis (newspaper “Drasi”)

20.00 : Global Crisis and Economical crisis. A crisis in the meaning of
capitalism.
Epaminontas Skiftoulis(Antiauthoritarian Movement of Athens)
Peter Bohmer (Economist, ZNet, Evergreen State College, USA)
Jelle Bruinsma (Griekenland is overall, Netherlands)

Thursday 9th of September

EXODUS FROM CAPITALISM
antiauthoritarian economy

18.00 : Agriculture & Energy of emancipation. Horizontal relationships in
production and consumption process.
Federico Demaria (Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain)
Giorgos Foufas (Libertarian Movement of Corinth)
Κ. Hatoupis (Farmer, Zemeno of Corinth)
Claudio Cattaneo (Occupied Farm Can Masdeu, Barcelona, Spain)

20.00 : De-growth, Antiauthoriatarian Economy and the Exodus from
Capitalism
Dimitris Konstantinou(publisher of the magazine “Nihtegersia”)
Peter Bohmer (Economist, ZNet, Evergreen State College, USA)
Μarisa de Fatima Luz(Secretary of the landless movement in Brazil, MST)
Spiros Marketos (Asst. Professor of History, School of Political Sciences
AUTH)

Friday 10th of September

DIRECT DEMOCRACY
local self-institutions

18.00 : From the local self-institutions to the generalised
self-management.
Nikos Ioannou(Nationwide movement against the diversion of the river
Achelous)
Eirik Eiglad (Editor of the journal Communalism, social ecologist, Norway)
Marc Tomsin (Editions Ludd and Rue des Cascades, France)
Juan Manuel Sanchez Gordillo (Mayor of Marinaleda, Andalusia)

20.00 : Direct Democracy and Social Overthrow.
Sergio Ghirardi (Essayist, editor and translator, Italy)
Berhouz Safdari (Sociologist, Iran)
Grigoris Tsilimantos(Antiauthoritarian Movement of Thessaloniki)
Raoul Vaneigem (he will be present and will intervene by text)

The public meetings/discussions that begin at 18:00 will take place in the
ampitheatre of the new wing of the Philosophy Department and the other ones
which start at 20:00 will take place in the Theology Department of the
Aristotle University.

MARCH
SATURDAY 11th OF SEPTEMBER 2010
RALLY
18:00 SINTRIVANI SQUARE
(intersection of Egnatia Str. – Aggelaki Str. – Ethnikis Aminis Str.)

The website of the festival:
<<< http://www.ablocfest.gr/?lang=en >>>

More updates in english will be posted here as well
<<< www.resistance2003.gr >>>

(Scroll down for Spanish version.)

A sticker circulating around public  transportation (metro, buses) in Athens:

“Passengers are requested, in the name of elementary class dignity, should they have validated their ticket, to hand it over to passengers without a ticket, once they have completed their journey. In this way, possible quarrels will be avoided with those sad leeches, the ticket inspectors”

Signed, the “Conspiracy of the Equal”

A little bit of background: tickets in Athens’ public transportation are valid for 1,5 hour once validated and so, a huge impromptu movement has started with people passing on tickets to fellow passengers once they’ve completed their journey. This has prompted OASA, the transport authority, to issue “legal warnings” in the format of the sticker above, on the back side of tickets, warning that this action is illegal. And so, the sticker above has come as a response…

Download the Dublin II Deportation Diary (pdf, 700kb)

Why did you want me back in Greece?, ask the refugees being returned due to the Dublin II regulation from different other European countries. The deportation diary carrying the same name evolved out of a short visit in Athens, where activists from the newly founded infomobile project conducted interviews with refugees affected by this European regulation.

The findings, based on interviews with the people affected, are shocking and deeply disturbing. For although every story of flight to and within Europe is different, if we were to summarise, there are two main conclusions that need to be drawn.

In Greece, despite numerous announcements and communications of intent by the relevant authorities of the PASOK government, the situation has only worsened for refugees. There still is no support system for refugees providing even the most basic necessities, while the impact of the economic crisis has hit refugees the hardest: they are in an even more precarious situation by now. Frequent police raids have made their stay in Greece even more volatile and have increased the risk of repeated and prolonged detention under the same inhuman conditions documented countless times. At the same time, the Greek asylum system is still dysfunctional and only existent by name.

The Dublin II-regulation, on the other hand, destroys all hope refugees might have to reach their final destination and to escape the conditions in Greece by moving on to another European country. As the regulation stipulates that the responsibility for an asylum application lies with the country of first entry, many refugees that manage the journey onwards are simply deported back, without any examination of their situation. This leads to refugees straying around Europe, searching for protection and rest, sometimes even for years, only to find themselves deported back to Greece. Given the current situation of refugees in Greece, we contend that the human rights of refugees are fundamentally violated in Greece. Under this perspective, the Dublin II-regulation is a systematic violation of the non-refoulement principle laid down in the Geneva Convention on Refugees and needs to be abolished at once.

We invite you to follow the kaleidoscope of stories assembled in the report and to spread the word about it. The Dublin II-regulation is already under intense legal scrutiny by highest national and European courts, and it is the facts that you can read in this report that need to be brought to the public attention all over Europe: the state of the European asylum system in 2010 is a state of organised irresponsibility and violation of fundamental principle of human rights and international
laws.

We invite you to read, not to freeze but to get involved: it is an invitation to join the refugees’ struggles for freedom of movement. It is not enough to report. Convince your government to accept more refugees and stop sending them back here! was one of the instructions we received at Attiki Square in the centre of Athens.

**
network welcome to europe

http://w2eu.net blog
http://w2eu.info independent information for migrants coming to europe

Will the Public Power Corporation’s syndicalists win or lose?

It is not quite clear where the idea for privatising 40% of the PPC came from. Was it the Ministry of Finance, the interested private parties, or the troika? [Translator's note: the word "troika" is widely used in Greek media these days, referring to the representatives of the IMF, the EU and the ECB overseeing their agreement with the government in the country]. Yet it is a fact that after this idea went public, an entire front of specific political and financial interests is being formed. This front clearly sees a clash with PPC’s powerful syndicalist union, GENOP-DEI, as pivotal in the contest over the ownership of PPC. The aim of this clash is to lead this union to a retreat and defeat, which would practically complete the permanent weakening of organised waged labour in Greece.

In order to have any chance of confronting this ambitious and dangerous plan for the world of labour, we must understand both the political plan of overturning all social balances (a plan incorporated in the IMF/EU/ECB Agreement) and the complete, by now, consonance of the government with it. In other words we must abandon the simplistic analysis which talks of a “full-on attack” and expects to see the rising up of the united “people”. Rather, we must expose the well-thought political machinery of the International Monetary Fund which after all comprises (following some swinging about in its early days in the country) the only strategic choice of political authority. The said strategy has been transformed from a suggestion of “foreign” organisations which would supposedly overturn promises and understandings of the governing party, into a coherent proposal that has now become the only way out for this political party itself (Trans – the social-democrats of PASOK).

Generally speaking, the strategic attack against waged labour is taking place in three phases. In the first phase we had the decrease of the wages of public sector employees which was based on the admittance that particularly in periods of crisis these employees are safer and have higher wages compared to the private sector – and so, the cuts could be presented as a measure of equational nature. In a second phase, which concerned the public sector, priority was given to measures which were not so much about attacking wages directly but rather, of mid-term or long-term consequences – such as challenging insurance rights and the further deregulation of labour agreements, a zig-zag which found SEV (the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises) in full agreement. From the nineties onward, SEV has developed and used a tactic which gives priority to the worsening of the balance in the workers’ expense, rather than end-on attacks.

The third front now concerns the so-called “guilds”, that is, the organised professions or categories of waged workers. What is hiding behind the IMF’s dogma-like insistence upon the abolition of these “closed professions” and the privatisation of public corporations is of course a strategy aiming at transferring to the private sector activities which are now dominated by professionals (whether scientists or not) with recognised, established rights or with strong trade unions. The line of thought here is simple and redistributive: should we transfer part of the compensation reserved by law or trade union power to businessmen of a given sector, then we create some lucrative business activity, along with the reduction of the income of the professionals or waged workers of that sector in question. There is absolutely no argument to convince that the competition that will emerge between professionals or corporations will lead to any reduction in prices. What will definitely happen, however, is that the fixing of the prices will now be out of any public control, entering instead the fields of cartels and informal negotiations with political authority.

The proved inability of syndicalist organisations to resist the dramatic redistribution of income in the public and private sectors has created adequate conditions for the attacks against the “closed professions” and public corporations to be presented as equational attempts: why shouldn’t an unavoidable (due to the crisis) generalised reduction of incomes reach out to these sectors too? In such concurrence, what was previously an advantage for these categories of professionals and waged workers (that is, the fact that they were those favoured by authority) now turns into a disadvantage. Even the same state or government members who previously administered the advantageous relationships with them have now turned into protagonists of the ideas and values of the troika. The change about to occur in this balance of social forces, with the questioning of the legality of the relationship between authority and these middle layers of professionals or waged workers is of a historical level and should by no means be underestimated by any of the interested parties or their representatives.

During the nineties, amidst the triumph of “modernisation”, the Greek model of the relationship between the state and social classes and groups was exposed in its fullest. The historical reproduction of a clientilist state was confirmed, a state managing advantageous relationships with business interests and with particular social interests alike. A balance was kept, continually refreshed, between formal and informal practices, which could never lead to a broad social contract but that would combine an overall business-oriented strategy with the social legitimation of the regime through its special relationships with middle-strata professional groups or groups of waged workers.

The vision upon which today’s [state] strategy is based is a vision aiming at the legitimation of the political regime through the relationship of the state and business interests alone. This vision can materialise thanks to practices of the state mechanism already functioning, yet it overturns a previous balance between private and public/social interests. It is heading in the direction of a Third World-model, that is, of cooperation between the state and the strongest business interests and policies aiming at the weakening of social resistances and organised social interventions. This new condition can only stay in balance with the entering of the country into a permanent social crisis. But this, too, is a type of a legitimation of a regime.

As the materialisation of this vision takes place each professional grouping finds itself standing (almost alone) against the government but also against the inertia of the rest of the society. We can learn some lessons from the lorry-drivers’ case. The force of this sector, its ability to bring the country to a standstill turned from a strength into a weakness since its mobilisation was presented as turning against a society living through conditions of serious financial and social crisis – and so the utilisation of the weapon of civil conscription was easy and efficient. It is not hard for one to imagine that [the syndicalists of] GENOP-DEI will find itself in a similar situation: able to paralyse the country but unable to overcome the environment of social inertia or/and disapproval as well as the determination of the troika and the government.

In order for a syndicalist or professional organisation to effectively resist this plan it must attempt alliances with society, overturning the tradition of a favourable relationship with the state and the each given government. It must first put a lot of effort in convincing that it truly defends public interest, by presenting proposals for one and each other sector and making a consistent effort to spread these proposals. Attempts must also be made to connect syndicalist or professional mobilisations with the mobilisation of other citizens or categories of workers, through common targets. Finally, true gestures of social contribution must be made, able to dispute the image of advantageous social groups fighting their own interests and needs alone. If these categories of professionals or waged workers do not manage to turn toward the creation of new social alliances and practices, to turn in other words toward society as a whole, they stand no chance of resisting the remorseless political machinery that has been set in motion._

The number of those unemployed has increased by 181.784 compared to May 2009 (an increase of 43,2%) and by 5.206 compared to April 2010 (0,9% increase).

Source: Eleftherotypia Athens Daily

Translator’s note: the above figures concern the officially employed and those registered unemployed. Since the unofficial labour market is huge in the country and since there are little benefits coming with registering unemployed, it is widely acknowledged that the true number of those unemployed is, in fact, much larger.

The sign reads: “Cemetery for illegal migrants, Moufteia, Evros”

Full text and photos here.

During the first seven months of the year 2010, 28 human beings dies while attempting to cross the heavily guarded Turkish-Greek border. The corpses of the dead are being transferred to the department of forensic medicine of the university clinic of Alexandroupoulis. Since they can often not be identified, only a DNA-test is being carried out so that relatives can still gain certainty.

On 25th of June 2010 19 people drowned in the river Evros/Meriç. 14 corpses washed ashore on the Greek side and were brought to the university clinic by an undertaker from Orestiada. After the dead had been examined and registered, the undertaker brought them to a village of the Turkish minority on the mountains above Souflí for them to be buried on muslim cemetery.

However, the corpses can now be found in a mass grave outside the village of Sideró, in inaccessible terrain. Only a sign, riddled by many gun-shots, tells that this is the cemetery of the illegal immigrants where the corpses are buried. It is not immediately obvious that it is a mass grave. Upon closer inspection, one can however see holes that were excavated and again filled up by bulldozers and that can contain up to ten corpses.

Further investigation by w2eu, currently in the area to look for the corps of the father of a family who died in the incident on the 25th of June and whose family is currently in relative security shows that this practice has been ongoing for years. It is believed that between 150 and 200 dead have been buried in the mass grave. Although the local government ordered an ablution and burial according to muslim rite, the dead have merely been buried in the mass grave. This practice fundamentally lacks any respect for the dead as well as their relatives. Even an exhumation for the dead to be buried in a more dignified way is not possible anymore.

The existence of this mass grave at the external border of the EU fits the image of constant and continued humiliation and degradation of refugees. It is with a systematic brutality that refugees and migrants are stopped from crossing the borders, a brutality that even puts up with the death of those looking for protection. Even after their death, those human beings remain second class people that seemingly not even deserve a burial of human dignity.

We protest the abominable treatment of refugees and migrants and the contempt that is shown to them, no matter if dead or alive.