“The Tsolakoglou (The collaborationist occupation government established after the Nazi Germany invasion of Greece during World war two) government has annihilated all traces for my survival, which was based on a very dignified pension that I alone paid for 35 years with no help from the state. And since my advanced age does not allow me a way of dynamically reacting (although if a fellow Greek were to grab a Kalashnikov, I would be right behind him), I see no other solution than this dignified end to my life, so I don’t find myself fishing through garbage cans for my sustenance. I believe that young people with no future will one day take up arms and hang the traitors of this country at Syntagma square, just like the Italians did to Mussolini in 1945″ – Dimitris Christoulas. [1]
We claim full responsibility for the arson attack against the political office of Adonis Georgiades, the representative of capital, the politician responsible for the poverty and misery suffered by the people.
From the economic crisis of 2009 from which the country never emerged, to the socialization of the losses of capital from the Covid 19 pandemic, the latest increases in the price of electricity, fuel and almost all essentials are added to the already unbearable cost of survival for the working class and the people, to the pre-existing queues of the Employment Agency, to the pension cuts, to the crumbs of the basic wage. The “development” invoked and evangelised by the domestic bourgeoisie is reflected physically and materially in people who die trying to keep warm, who look in the garbage for food, who commit suicide for economic reasons. It is reflected in workplaces that are graveyards for people of our class, where dozens of workers do not return home because a few extra euros were not “wasted” for the safety of the workers. Their growth translates into slow death in the corridors of hospitals. To the nearly 27,000 deaths from Covid 19, to the blockade of care in public hospitals amidst the increasing privatisation of the NHS. Their deployment amounts to a daily battle for the survival of the next day for the majority of society at the same time as a handful of industrialists, shipowners and contractors continually speculate on our backs, reap the rewards of the toil and slavery we produce, extracting surplus value from our starvation wages, continually devaluing the value of our labour power.
This particular bastard is among the main supporters and exponents of these policies, using his institutional/political position to implement them. His story is known throughout society. From the party of the fascist Karatzaferis’ LAOS [The Popular Orthodox Rally] party, to the Papademos government as Deputy Minister of Development, executing to the letter all the government’s memorandum dictates and policies. Then to the Ministry of Health, with the budget mismanagement of public health spending, the Novartis scandal and the systematic attempt to dismantle the NHS, until today in the position of Minister of Development. Society has felt the results of his policies in its own skin. The irony and mockery against the people. “First of all, the people are not cold” he used to declare while the people were burning alive from the mangals they were lighting to keep warm.
With the accuracy soaring and no measures being taken to protect the poor, with rents no longer affordable for a working person, while local and foreign investors are literally fleecing the people through the floodgates of the banks and tourist investments. A typical example is the neighborhood of Exarcheia, where the redevelopment of public space is methodically attempted (e.g. privatization of the Strefis Hill, metro in the neighborhood square) and the expulsion of residents from their homes to create houses, apartments, airbnb, hostel and hotel units for the benefit of tourism capital, aiming at the same time to uproot the ideological and political character of the neighborhood.
At the same time, within the borders where poor people cannot afford the increased cost of living, for almost two months now we have had another imperialist war in Ukraine knocking at our door and we are probably on the verge of a generalized World War III. Threats of nuclear weapons are being launched with incredible ease, increasing insecurity for peoples. The antagonisms between the Euro-Atlantic bloc of the USA NATO EU on the one hand and imperialist Russia on the other, which is setting up similar mechanisms such as the Euro-Asian Economic Union and the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, can only bring death, poverty, hunger and misery to the peoples. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is the culmination of the imperialist conflict to control spheres of influence, sources of wealth and trade routes. The ferocity that underlies imperialist rivalries could in no way be resolved without war. The US-led coup in Maidan in 2014 resulted in the prevalence of fascist groups, fully trained and equipped by NATO (Azov battalion, etc.). Nazi executions and persecutions against militants and Russian-speaking populations followed, culminating in the burning of the Trade Unions House in Odessa. At the same time the peoples of the wider region were being targeted by attacks and bombing and forced into poverty and refugeeism. While the energy and predicted food crisis will hit the poorest social strata in many countries of the world. At the same time that thousands are becoming “meat for their cannons” the Greek state seeks to upgrade its geostrategic position. We, for our part, being a NATO state, must turn our arrows to our own country, to the NATO bases that become bases of war, to the prevention of sending military material, to the cancellation of agreements on the purchase of military equipment (Rafale aircraft, frigates, etc.).
At the same time, Greek shipowners are rubbing their hands, seeing the war as another opportunity to increase their profitability. “Crisis breeds croissants” said the bastard Onassis, the most tangible example of Greek shipowners. Current geopolitical developments make it necessary to “switch” to the liquefied natural gas (LNG) market in European countries. Greek shipowners have already announced the purchase of ships for the transport of LNG, reinforcing their already large fleet, at a cost of almost €4 billion. At the same time, it continues to transport Russian oil to Europe without stopping, thus profiting from the war many times over and proving once and for all that capital has no home.
In this context in which we are living, with the ever-increasing impoverishment of our lives on the one hand and the war trumpets of imperialist antagonisms sounding ever closer and closer to us on the other, our only response must be the political and organisational upgrading of the movement, which is the only road that will lead to a social revolution which will smash the rotten capitalist system into a deep crisis and bring the peoples back to the centre of history.
Solidarity with political prisoners
April 2022
Proletarian Cell Dimitris Christoulas
[1] Translation Note: Dimitris Christoulas was a Greek pensioner who committed suicide in Syntagma Square in Athens on April 4, 2012. The quotation at the beginning of the responsibility claim is the suicide note he left behind before shooting himself in the head a few metres away from the Greek Parliament.
Machine-assisted translation of the following Greek-language post from the Athens Indymedia website: https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1618102/
Via Raddle