(This text – signed by ‘Participants in alternative information, in solidarity and athens.indymedia.org collective - was distributed during the direct action against the Hellenic Telecommunications Organization(OTE) yesterday July 17 2009.)
 
 
OTE: THE LAW-ABIDING SLAVEOWNER
‘When they came
for the Leftists, I didn’t react because I wasn’t a Leftist. When they
came for the Anarchists, I didn’t react because I wasn’t an Anarchist.
When they came for the immigrants, I didn’t react because I wasn’t an
immigrant. When they came for me, there was nobody left to react.’

Since the beginning of July, ‘a spectre has been haunting’ Internet and the free movement of ideas: The spectre of authoritarianism and tyranny over the Internet’s flow of information. The Hellenic Telecommunications Organization (OTE) – the country’s largest telecommunications operator, in conjunction with the fascistic gang of the Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) and the suppressive crescendo of the last months on the part of the political and economic authorities – has attacked Athens and Patras Indymedia by legislative means via 2 consecutive extrajudicial summons (3 and 7/7/2009) to the National Network for Research and Technology (EDET).

In the summons, the contract that was signed with the company in question regarding the administration of fiber optics as concerns the National Technical University of Athens is revoked. With the fabricated argument, pulled out by the teeth, that the company is not fulfilling the contract’s agreement since the fiber optics are being granted to third parties without ‘research’ or ‘educational’ purposes, the telecommunications’ deputy in compliance with established law threatens to take all due ‘legal’ measures if EDET continues to grant EMP fiber optic network for ‘non-research or educational’ usage. For OTE’s German and Government bosses, the matter at hand has two aspects: On the one hand is the economic issue – since the cancellation of the contract with EDET would create a monopoly in the financial utilization of the country’s fiber optics. On the other hand is the political issue – since an effectually res judicata proceeding would throw the door wide open to an asphyxiating control of Internet content and thus a one-way regimented information.

This attack is not fortuitous. It is the legislative expression of a generalized suppression cultivated for some time now. The extrajudicial summons, LAOS Members of Parliament’s continuous questionings, fascist thugs’ charges against actual individuals (such as the dean of EMP) for moral complicity in unrelated matters, the recent consultations with the Supreme Court of Appeal Former Chief-prosecutor regarding the withdrawal of anonymity for blogs and websites – set the scene indicating something simple and explicit: The authorities’ totalitarian control over communications and information in society’s affairs ‘roars’.


During this last period, we have been living a polemic reality in which the State and the bosses are attempting to chain society in view of the general crisis in the econo-political system. The reverberative enormity of a wide resistance Movement is not simply a natural development but is chiefly a setting of values against this fascistic transformation. Alternative information (of which Indymedia is a fundamental portal), the dialectic of the Movement (against authoritative imposition), the ‘from below’ organization of the resistance in society and the workplace (against the paternalistic sellout of social and labor struggles), the solidarity and dignity (towards racist hatred), are what unite us and, simultaneously, are what terrify the authorities.

Workers in ‘information’, the cogwheels of the Mass Media and telecommunications system, ought to take part in this front – as should also members of society as a whole. When a part of freedom (the freedom of speech) is struck down, freedom itself is struck down in its entirety.

Social struggles are not gagged, are not suppressed.

Hands off Indymedia.