About the case of Christos Stratigopoulos

On October 1st, 2009, after a bank robbery in Trikala, anarchists Christos Stratigopoulos and Alfredo Bonanno are arrested in relation to the case. Christos Stratigopoulos from the very start takes on the sole responsibility for this expropriation. On November 22nd, 2010 the two anarchists are tried for the case. Ch. Stratigopoulos is sentenced for armed robbery to 8 years and for 3 misdemeanors to 9 months, without parole. A. Bonanno is sentenced as an accomplice to 4 years of prison and is consequently set free, but is then deported based on a presidential decree as a persona non grata and is forbidden to re-enter the country for 10 years.

In July 2011, while still in prison, Christos receives a new case file in regards to a second bank robbery that took place on the island of Cephalonia in July 2009. The comrade was charged for this robbery based on fabricated evidence that “surfaced” one and a half years after the event. As a consequence of this frame-up Christos was unable to take prison leave, as he was entitled to according to the greek penal law since he had served more then 1/5 of his sentence.

Christos’ Appeal court for the Trikala case took place in February 2012 and his sentence was reduced to 5 years. Accordingly, the comrade should have been released in a few weeks but remains a hostage due to receiving a new detention order for the new pending case.

The court date for the bank robbery in Cephalonia had been set for July 26, 2012 in Patras, then on the 30th was postponed for the 5th of November, meanwhile the comrade was set free under restrictions awaiting for the trial.

-Letter from C. Stratigopoulos on the new frame-up against him by the authorities

Did someone speak of kidnapping?

“The proletariat of the industrial countries has completely lost the affirmation of its autonomous perspective and also, in the last analysis, its illusions, but not its being. It has not been suppressed. It remains irreducibly in existence within the intensified alienation of modern capitalism: it is the immense majority of workers who have lost all power over the use of their lives and who, once they know this, redefine themselves as the proletariat, as negation at work within this society”.
Guy Debord

Since the nineties different people who’ve expressed themselves about postmodern typology wearing a different mask every time (sometimes of the neo-liberal, sometimes of the “middle political scene”, sometimes of the social democrats, sometimes of the ideologists of tepidity and confused multi cultural neo-leftism that mixes everything up, and sometimes the mask of the “anti authoritarian” new-hippie lifestyle ) ruminate/brag about the ideology of the end of history: there is no more proletariat, there is no class war, we can at last without fear head towards the Paradise of Market, where honey and milk flow abundantly. And hamburgers and ketchup too…

Unfortunately for the apologists of legality, the facts are stubborn: a handful of capitalists has organized a criminal gang and kidnapped proletarians demanding for ransoms, their working power, the commercialization of human activity, their time (that transforms into money), even their whole existence. Wage slavery is a permanent crime against human dignity. It’s not just because of the usual ‘casualties’ of work “accidents” of class war. It’s not just because of the dead, wounded and amputated people of the work “accidents”, but also because of the diseases related to the working environment and space. It’s not just because of the strawberry fields, that show us we’ve never escaped the time of slavery. It’s not just because of the sacrificed workers (locals and immigrants, “expensive and cheap” labor hands) at the altar of every “American dream” or “Greek miracle”.
It is the existence itself of waged work that constitutes the permanent crime! And the criminals, the kidnappers and the blackmailers are all the Mylonas. Even if the rats of the media present the leader of thieves Mylonas (the boss of the gang for common thieves of the Federation of Industries of Northern Greece) as an “innocent” victim, as a misunderstood neo-liberal Christian child, as a pain resistant worker, who efforts night and day for the common good.
As for the illusionist tricks that different vampires like Mylonas invent to show their “human face” (for example green capitalism, socialised industry, etc.), only one thing can be said:

SATIRE HAS ITS LIMITS…

Mylonas is no more than the brain of a gang of exploiters. Like all capitalists he too is a parasite: a weight on earth and an obstacle for winds.
So the Mylonas couple should stop pretending raped virgins .

“O gentlemen, the time of life is short! …
And if we live, we live to tread on kings”
W. Shakespeare

The first duty of the proletariat is the conscienceness of itself, of its position and its role. The conscience of being a prostitute in the hands of a capitalist, of producing wealth for the bosses and misery for itself.
The conscienceness on the other hand that produces the whole material life of society. That it is nothing but CAN BE EVERYTHING.
The second duty of the proletariat is the denial of its imposed role, the denial of work, the denial of alienation.
The third duty of the proletariat which arises naturally from the first duties, is the revolutionary action for it’s own suppression.
Only the subjects can ignite the objective conditions and cause the revolutionary explosion for the destruction of the authoritarian/class society.

From: ‘The art of war’, 6th issue of “Asymmetric threat” (under publication…)

Unfortunately in the wild west of capitalism the proletarians lullaby with trash eating over consumerism. Life has involved into a necrophilic survival between cages of cement, cars, billboards, surveillance cameras and cops. The route of survival is assigned: from one concentration camp to another. From school to university, from army to wage slavery. And there the proletarian crosses the same streets of alienation as the night walker: work, home, shopping mall, work. From production to consumption…
Behind the iron curtain of virtual prosperity and spectacular misery lies an unadmitted truth: the miracle of the west walks over corpses. Not only of those in the third world (either way this constant exploitation is the most gigantic crime of human history), but also of those in the third world on the west.
Behind a glance of being high on consumption hides the rot of a slaughtering civilization. But from inside this rot one possibility springs up. A possibility that not even the think tanks of the existent system, not even the bureaucratic certainties of Bolshevism, not even the paleolithic determinism of ideologies can repress: the social entropy, the revolution, the constant struggle for the destruction of the state, of private property and of waged work.
Comrades! Life is short. If we live, we live to step on the heads of bosses and their slaves.

For anarchy and communism!

P.S.1 As in the past also now, in my public speech I will not speak about issues of the penal code. Moreover “innocence” and “guiltiness” are fake distinctions that concern only the legal armory of the state.
The only thing that I want to say about the case, is that I was and I am in solidarity, as anarchist as well as a friend, to an illegal and haunted man, Vasilis Paleokostas. From there on, my speech will be a continuity of my pre-arrest placement and not a whine for “innocence”.

P.S.2 Economical and legal support is good. So are wishes for freedom, but the strongest form of solidarity is the continuation of revolutionary action.
Freedom to the comrades G. Dimitrakis, G. Voutsis-Vougiatsis and V. Botzatzis.
Freedom for the revolutionaries of the revolutionary organisation 17th of November.
Solidarity to the 6 wanted comrades.

-Revolution first and always-

Polikarpos Georgiadis,
Prisons of Ioannina,

01/09/2008