May Day Athens 2012

Two Works by Katerina Gogou

Katerina Gogou: "May 25th"

One morning I will open the door

and I will go out in the streets

as I did yesterday.

And I won't be thinking about anything other than

just one piece of the father

and one piece of the sea

-those two pieces they didn't deprive me of-

and the city. The city which they transformed into a rotting corpse.

And our friends that are no more.

One morning I will open the door

straight into the fire

and I will enter as I did yesterday

shouting "fascists!!"

constructing barricades and throwing rocks

with a red banner

held high, shining in the sunbeams.

I will open the door

and it's time to tell you

-not that I am afraid-

but, see, I want to tell you that I didn't make it in time

and that you have to learn

not to be going out in the streets without weapons as I did

-because I didn't make it in time-

because then you will disappear as I disappeared

"like that" "in the void"

cracked into little pieces made

of sea, childhood years

and red banners.

One morning I will open the door

and I will be gone carrying the dream of the revolution

within the infinite loneliness of the paper-made barricades

bearing the label -do not believe them!-

"Provocator".



Translated by G.Chalkiadakis





I want us to talk together in a coffee house
one where the doors are open
where there's no seaonly unemployed men
silence and dust lit by sunlight
- the sunlight in the brandy -
and the dust and cigarettes in our lungs
and let's not take precautions today, my friend,over our health
and don't give advice
about how I'm tossing it back
and how I'm wasting myself
and let the make-up, snot and tears
on my face
run.
Just look calmly
at my nails, my hair and the years
which are dirtyand me
I don't give a damn about all that
They only care about the Party, for Christsake!
why the Party hasn't been fixed all these years
and you a friend. A real friend
just like Kazantzidis sings it
and the brandy's shit
and the contractor hasn't shown
there's a room above the coffee house
for those on the run
I'll let it all spill out at some point
I do that when I'm drunk - just to throw you -
to see you without your underpants, to see what you'll do
but you, you're not like the others
you'll get up and dance a request
...your hands took a birch rod and thrashed me . . .
and in your cupped hands you'll hold my brain
with love and care
it's ready to explode into a thousand pieces. It hurts.
And when
they come to tell you
that this is not
the time
or place
for such things
draw your stiletto and slash.
The Koemtzis brothers were right.

Translated From Greek by G.Chalkiadakis.

Vassilis Palaiokostas letter to the media
31/01/2010 rioter.info

Vassilis Palaiokostas is on the run, after his escape with a helicopter from Korydallos prison, on Feb. 22/2009, accused for robbing banks and kidnapping industrialists. It is worth to say, he has never harmed human life, not even cop lives to avoid an arrest.

“On the occasion of the upcoming jury on the kidnapping of the industrialist G. Mylonas, that begins on Tuesday February 2, I would like to clarify certain issues.

Through different periods of my life I have been a first line fugitive, nearly 12 years in total an escapee (I hope there’s more of that coming) and 8 years a prisoner.

All those years that I had been and even now that Iam still hunted by the official state, there wasn’t found even one snitch to deliver me to the hands of my prosecutors. Even though, during my first escape, in August 1991, there was also a large reward for that, from the -generous to snitches- Greek state. On the contrary, I met people with troth, honor in their words, and dignity. People that opened their door for me, provided cover and help, often without even minding the risk they took for themselves. People that helped me in hard times for me (as in a prison escape) endangering their own lives, people that prove that in this country there aren’t only resigned, submissive fellows, but also many (so many I am surprised) people that honor the traditions of honor and solidarity to the hunted. Pride people that despise snitching, servitude and the constable.

I publicly express my gratitude to all those remarkable persons for their valuable help and for giving me the joy of having met them.

Two of them are Vaggelis Chrisohoides and Polys Georgiades, each one of them stood by me in his own way, at the time I needed them, without expecting personal gains, but only acted upon their conscience.

Declaring my solidarity to this two young men, the state strangles everyday knowing their only “crime” was their solidarity to the hunted, I would expect to see for once the magnitude the Republic of Greece takes prides in. Because for its petiness, I consider myself more than competent to describe: It’s an Abyss.

I will say nothing more. I only adress to those that care to retain some pleas of justice and dignity. And everyone should do what his sense of honor and his conscience tells him to do.

On 4/14/09, afternoon around 20:00 while driving on the central coastal road of Alepohori, suddenly three cars blocked my way and another two stuck on the back of my own car. Among them was a black Audi A4, a Peugot Rally and an Opel Athens Taxi. Each one of them with three persons (15 in total), all in plain clothes. All of them got instantaneously out, pointing at me, the drivers with H&K MP5 sub-machine guns with double cartridge, nad the other with Glock and H&K U.S.P semi-automatic handguns. I instantly understood these armed mercenaries of the Greek state where on a prowl for blood.

This same moment on my right, through an invisible from the main road, alley, comes another car with the driver standing aghast and stopping on the crossroad with the main road. Without second though I turned the wheels right and let it rip. Slightly hitting the other car (given the alley could barely take my jeap), I got right in the alley without knowing where it gets to. From my initial speeding to getting 20-30 meters in the alley, bullets where dancing on my car’s cabin. Those guys opened fire with their machine guns and handguns aiming right at me (the only thing undamaged was my car’s tires).

From my μeasurable experience in intense conditions, I am more than certain that they shot more than 150 bullets in 15 seconds (the whole scene didn’t last any longer). Most probably, some of them also found the unwary civilian’s car, while he was inside it.

These unscrupulous, blind shooters of EL.AS [transl: the Greek police] where determined to carry out fully the order they had take from their natural and political leaders. Find and kill.

In this case, they can blame their bad luck, since luck is female and cares for the daring. [transl. see latin: "Fortuna Favet Fortubus"]

The reason I refer to this incident is to show the contemptible way the Mass Media report such cases. The car I was riding and left 100 meters from the scene, because the alley was a dead-end, was full of bullets. This fact was not reported and the car never appeared anywhere, it magically disappeared. Just like the other car (hit and possibly with bullet holes), together with its misfortunate owner, the only witness that actually took part in the scene, withous his will ofcourse, watching the whole thing from the begining to the end.

So, instead of inquiring all these important facts to show what exactly happened in that scene, the daring and ingenious reporters of the Greek Mass Media gathered inside the room I was living in, and in exclusive reporting were waving around my unwashed underpants, informing screaming of tension the weak, ignorant, speachless tv-viewer.

This fact reveals clearly the “journalist community’s” compliance to keep silent, essentialy consenting to the criminal activity of EL.AS’ desperados and their head responsibles, in full cooperation with them. “We will allow you to enter the house for an exclusive report, but you ‘ll keep your mouth shut about everything else”. Such was the filthy deal between the two sides. The media would get their money, since underpants worth more in their stockmarket of values than the life of their owner. As long as he is “notorious”. And finally, who cares about how the police acts? If the police and their leadership believe a man just because he is wanted is to be killed, why should we disagree? Whenever we [the Media] needed some information, the police’s head officer provided it -they actually brag about it-. While, the hunted man has no phone. And even if he has one, it will be turned off or without a signal.

This is the way our daring and independant journalists think.

My congratulations, the future belongs to you. May I suggest the two organizations, police and media, could even integrate in own, for functional reasons. It’s both innovative and carries many advantages. Then, it won’t be for nothing that you elected a police correspondent as president of ESIEA (journalists-editors union).

If these ingenious reporters, with the same eagerness the show on mine and not only, underpants, cared to carry a constant control, denouncing to the Greek citizens that:

* 13.000 humans are in a state of captivity (under the pretext of illegality), living a total exploitation of themselves and their families, from the official state. That after passing the symplegades [transl: mythical deadly clashing rock of the argonaut campain] of a corrupt police and an even worst justice system, end up with heavy penalties in medieval conditions, by which this rotten system strives to control and then annihilate whatever dares to make a mockery of it.

* The armed guardians of the Greek state killing in cold-blood citizens (preferably the young) in the middle of the street, in front of the citizen’s own eyes. Humiliating and torturing to death people in the police stations. Setting up wilfully indictments sending “guilty” humans in jail for years. Setting a whole network of criminal activities not controlled by anyone.

* If they really cared to exercise some control over the modern Pirates of the political system, that helped by the gimmickery of the election system and the blessings of the Mass Media take over the Parliament, turning it into the headquarters of full domination on their voters citizens. Into a nest of intertwining interests, dealing transactions, bribes. Into a “terrorist hideout” where the loots from pillaging are divided around. A loot every citizen dares to question, becoming an obstacle in their plans will feel upon him the brutal democratic violence of a blood-thirsty repressive organization. He will feel the revengefulness, the revanchism, and the deep hatred the Greek state has for all those that rejected the status of an obidient citizen that understand his personal liberty as a necessity to do what he’s told to, but remain human with free will and claim an opinion on what’s going on around them with their own actions.

* If they revealed the great responsibility of this criminal organization for the establishment of a police state in Greece, through which they exercise an unbearable psychological violence to the citizen with hundreds of road blocks with cops armed-to-the-teeth with “survivor”-style weaponry, and the same menacing, numb look they had back in the junta days. The thousands of policemen one faces wherever he turns the eye (not to count the undercover ones). The dozens of head-hunters that prowl the mountains acting on their own taste, reminding of the begining of the 20th century, though with a modern name.

* If they denounce these and innumerable other things that de facto cancel the “social state” and “justice state” notions, as their role supposes, then today’s regime, they eagerly guard and name democracy, would be incomparably more humain, qualitative, and certainly more just.

You ‘d now say I am not the most adequate person to give recommendations, even less for matters of the regime.

That’s correct. In the place democracy was born, they can do whatever with her, even burry her if they wish so. It’s a good thing to die where in the place you where born. But, they shouldn’t go hard to the kids when they throw stones to her. They see her old and rotten, it’s stones she’s gonna get.

These insticts are primitive, though inerrable.

Because the kids are more honest and upstanding than the grown-ups.

Nobody would want to grow up just to find a dead body in the closed his parents have been hiding there to eat of her pension. They desire something more than a body in formol, and be sure they ‘re gonna get it, no matter how many dreads you put in their street.

On what concerns me, it is my absolute belief and surely of thousands others conscious people, that the damage caused to the social body by one shiny tv-presenter in one and only news bulletin (preferably the 8 o’ clock one), I can’t make it, even if they give me 10 lives to spare.

What’s the damage my drop-fire gun [transl. use of an old term for light arm guns of the mountain thieves and left-wing insurgents in Greece]. I have never turned it to an other human, much less to an other human’s mind.

Now, why am I with this drop-fire the prosecuted one that risks his life by any enraged death-squad, and those with their lucrative superweapons degenerate and devitalise the spirit of a whole people, leading them to mental necrosis, become my judges and my hunters, is my question too.

On second thoughts maybe the law on weapons should change. Whoever holds a fire-drop gun should be prosecuted for a capital offence!!!

Now, since it’s the first time I intervene with a public statement, I wouldn’t want it to end in a dispiriting way. So, let me add an allegoric enigma-quiz, I find it won’t trouble you much to solve.

What is the name, of a deputy sheriff of some mountainous and remote village of Utah, USA, overjoyed to his award winning by the FBI, for heroically and always risking his life arrested and gave to justice some dangerous elements to the order of his village? Who, apart of that precious award, also fed the ambition to have his triumphous achievement turn into a big Hollywood move, with George Clooney acting as him, something that pissed off his american patrons so that they exiled him, reducing him to the ranks of minister of “Citizens Protection” of some independent Balkan state. Who, to my exclusive information keeps fantacising about and anxiously sweeping for new “troublemakers”!

To make it even easier for you, I can also add some of his favorite words: Democracy, Revolutionary Fund, Ghetto, Communicating Vessels, Destabilization, Zero Tolerance, Organized Crime, They will be arrested and prosevuted.

He is also a devoted fan of snitching and loves “rats” and his hobbies include setting prices for the heads of wanted.

Keeping in mind though, that one of his many qualities is revanchism, I come to clarify that any similarity to real person or events is totally unintended.

Every police reporter that solves the quiz, enters a lottary for an exclusive interview.

My militant regards to all those that don’t surrender the weapons the chose to fight with, for the life they dream of.

PS. Some oil guys, they do rust.”

Vassilis Palaiokostas

European Austerity

Countries Not In Favor of Kosovo Sovreignity and Thier Rational
(69 countries, including the United States and 22 of the EU’s 27 members, have recognised Kosovo....)
-Courtesy of The Economist-
7/29/10


on Orthodox Christian Solidarity
-Russia
-Romania
-Cyprus
-Greece

on Domestic Seccessionist Issues
-Russia
-China
-India
-Romania
-Slovakia
-Cyprus
-Spain

on Non-Aligned Nostalgia
-India
-Brazil
-Egypt
-Cuba
-India

on Geopolitical Concerns
-Russia
-China
-Brazil
-Greece
-Cuba

on Territorial Integrity True Believers
-China
-Brazil
-Romania
-Slovakia
-Cyprus
-Greece
-Spain
-Egypt
-Cuba
-India

A policeman accused of fatally shooting 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos on trial January 20, 2010 in Amfissa 200km nortwest of Athens, Greece. The shooting of Alexis Grigoropoulos was a trigger for the roits in 2008. The trial was relocated from Athens because of security concerns, and Greece's Supreme Court has rejected bids by the teenager's family to move it back to the capital. Photos of recent riots courtest Cryptome.org:

(59) You must couple together things whole and things not whole, what is drawn together and what is drawn asunder, the harmonious and the discordant. The one is made up of all things, and all things issue from the one.

(92) Though wisdom is common, yet the many live as if they had a wisdom of their own.

(104) It is not good for men to get all they wish to get. It is disease that makes health pleasant and good; hunger, plenty and weariness, rest.

(111) For what thought or wisdom have they? They follow the poets and take the crowed as their teacher, knowing not that there are many bad and few good. For even the best of them choose one thing above all others, immortal glory among mortals, while most of them fill their bellies like beasts.

--Heraclitus--

According to an ancient Sri Lankan source, the Mahavamsa, Greek monks seem to have been active proselytizers of Buddhism during the time of Menander: the Yona (Greek) Mahadhammarakkhita (Sanskrit: Mahadharmaraksita) is said to have come from "Alasandra" (thought to be Alexandria of the Caucasus, the city founded by Alexander the Great, near today’s Kabul) with 30,000 monks for the foundation ceremony of the Maha Thupa ("Great stupa") at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, during the 2nd century BC:

"From Alasanda the city of the Yonas came the thera ("elder") Yona Mahadhammarakkhita with thirty thousand bhikkhus." (Mahavamsa, XXIX)

--wiki--

Dharmarakṣita (Sanskrit), or Dhammarakkhita (Pali) (translation: Protected by the Dharma),

--wiki-- was one of the missionaries sent by the Mauryan emperor Ashoka to proselytize the Buddhist faith. He is described as being a Greek (Pali: "Yona", lit. "Ionian") in the Mahavamsa, and his activities are indicative of the strength of the Hellenistic Greek involvement during the formative centuries of Buddhism.

Greek communities had been present in neighbouring Bactria and in northwestern India since the time of the conquests of Alexander the Great around 323 BCE, and developed into the Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kingdoms until the end of the 1st century BCE. Greeks were generally described in ancient times throughout the Classical world as "Yona", "Yonaka", "Yojanas" or "Yavanas", lit. “Ionians".

Darkness falls on Hania
By Nikos Konstandaras
Tuesday January 19, 2010

Something frightening is happening in Hania, Crete. The Etz Hayyim Synagogue has been firebombed twice in 11 days and the incidents met mostly with indifference from the local community – a stance that is at odds with the values of a city that prides itself on its liberalism and tolerance of other cultures. The arsonists have not been identified, but it is believed they belong to far-right circles. In a city that does not have a strong extreme right-wing tradition, the first attack on January 5 could have been an isolated incident. The second, last Friday, shows that the arsonists could strike again with impunity.

There has been a string of recent attacks on monuments commemorating the long presence of Jews in Greece, so brutally wiped out by the German occupation. Every act of anti-Semitism – just like every act against the “Other” – should be cause for concern and should be condemned, but it can also be partly explained by the rise of far-right elements in the past few years and the legitimization of their credo by the media.

The perpetrators seem to enjoy a strange kind of impunity when they turn toward a Jewish target. This too, however, can be explained: Let’s not kid ourselves, hostility between Greeks and Jews dates back to Hellenistic and Roman times. But there were also many centuries of peaceful coexistence. With the destruction of the Jewish community of Crete in 1944, one would have thought that the least the Cretans could do was honor the memories of their compatriots. Instead, driven by anger at Israeli atrocities against Palestinians, “progressive” local leaders and the Church of Greece opposed the renovation of the synagogue.

Hania does not have a Jewish community to “make waves.” The attacks, therefore, are rooted in the Nazi-inspired concept of “collective responsibility” and pure hatred. Whatever damage the stones of the old temple suffer, what will sink Hania into darkness is that so many people are prepared to forget the past and tolerate violence and bigotry.

Kostas Georgakis, died of self-immolation in protest of the fascist Greek junta of the 1970's.

"I am sure that sooner or later the people of Europe will understand that a fascist regime like the one based on Greek tanks is not only an insult to their dignity as free men but also a constant threat to Europe. ... I do not want my action to be considered heroic as it is nothing more than a situation of no choice. On the other hand, maybe some people will awaken to see what times we live in. "

"I cannot but think and act as a free individual"

East meets West

Hellenism and the Indus

courtesy of -wiki-

Alexander in Afghanistan and India

In 326 BC Alexander the Great conquered the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent as far as the Hyphasis River, and established satrapies as well as several cities, such as Bucephala, until his troops refused to go further east. The Indian satrapies of the Punjab were left to the rule of Porus and Taxiles, who were confirmed again at the Treaty of Triparadisus in 321 BC, and remaining Greek troops in these satrapies were left under the command of general Eudemus. Sometime after 321 Eudemus toppled Taxiles, until he left India in 316 BC. Another general also ruled over the Greek colonies of the Indus: Peithon, son of Agenor, until his departure for Babylon in 316 BC.

In 305 BC, Seleucus I led an army to the Indus, where he encountered Chandragupta. The confrontation ended with a peace treaty, and "an intermarriage agreement" (Epigamia, Greek: Επιγαμια), meaning either a dynastic marriage or an agreement for intermarriage between Indians and Greeks. Accordingly, Seleucus ceded to Chandragupta his northwestern territories, possibly as far as Arachosia and received 500 war elephants (which played a key role in the victory of Seleucus at the Battle of Ipsus):

"The Indians occupy in part some of the countries situated along the Indus, which formerly belonged to the Persians: Alexander deprived the Ariani of them, and established there settlements of his own. But Seleucus Nicator gave them to Sandrocottus in consequence of a marriage contract, and received in return five hundred elephants."

—Strabo 15.2.1(9)

Alexander conquered land in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, not to mention Iran, Syria, and the Balkans coast. The Seleucids, successor kingdom of Alexanders would go on to rule the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Eastern Regions of the Indian sub continent. It would then gain Independence from the Persian influenced Seleucid and be run as the Greco-Bactria Kingdom. Finally, the Mauryan empire would invade and begin to form what we know today as modern India, pre-Islamic invasion.

"Yona" is a Pali word used in ancient India to designate Greek speakers. Its equivalent in Sanskrit, Telugu and Tamil is the word "Yavana". "Yona" and Yavana are both transliterations of the Greek word for "Ionians" (Homer Iāones, older *Iāwones), who were probably the first Greeks to be known in the East. In Telugu another word "Yavanika", means drama stage, an invention brought by Hellenistic people. "Yunani", likewise, means medicine from Greeks.

Hadda is a Greco-Buddhist archaeological site located in Afghanistan.

Hadda is a Greco-Buddhist archaeological site located in Afghanistan. The excavation of the site began in the 1920's and proceeded until the 70's. The union of Hellenistic and Buddhist thought began with Alexander the Greats empire. Alexander occupied the lower Mesopotamia, into the Russian Caucus, and on to India. The proceeding empires following the death of Alexander continued to thrive, Hadda being a key to the unlock the past that was this ancient cross road. Regardless of the degree of cultural mutation that took place with the relations of the Greco-Indian peoples. Hadda is most remarkable for its wealth of artifacts on the nature of Greco-Buddhist culture. The theory that the Hellenistic influenced art of this culture, could have been the first representation of a Boddhivista is a contested notion.