A letter from the special cell of Lamia Hospital – Giannis Michailidis

Write an anarchist prisoner today!

From Dark Nights

The scorpion is an insect that differs little from its ancestral species, which were among the first animals to walk on land hundreds of millions of years ago. It has been observed that individuals of this species, when trapped among the flames with no visible escape route, do a remarkable thing: they turn their sting on themselves and commit suicide! A behavior that offers no evolutionary advantage, as on the slim chance that the fire would go out, the surviving animals could continue to reproduce. A behavior that contradicts the theory that insects are biological robots because they exhibit standardized behaviors.

The simplest way I can explain this behaviour is that the evolution of life does not build robots, but instead creates neural systems for information processing and decision making. Recurring patterns of behaviour emerge from the complex operation of self-organised neural circuits, which in most cases do indeed favour maximum reproductive potential. So then, these tiny nervous systems with several orders of magnitude fewer neural synapses than our brains produce a behaviour that betrays evidence of their internal functioning:

  1. These animals experience pain, meaning pain as a stimulus that the animal tries to eliminate.
  2. These animals experience fear, meaning fear as an internal mental projection of a future situation.
  3. They have knowledge that they possess a murderous tool with which they kill their prey and defend themselves from their predators: the stinger.
  4. They associate the feeling of pain with their body as they point the stinger at themselves.
  5. The association of pain with self-consciousness, since pain is an elementary form of mental state, and consciousness is thought upon thought, constitutes a primitive form of consciousness. So pain is in a sense conscious.

Since the anthropocentricity of the majority of our society attributes the above mental attributes exclusively to humans, I will probably be accused of anthropomorphism (you will tell me of all you have been accused of, did that bother you?). However, I do not attribute characteristics to scorpions that are not inferred from their behavior, such as rational thought. It is encouraging that newer neuroscientific research suggests that the architecture of neural circuits associated with the function of consciousness in humans and other mammals is even detectable in insect brains.

How does this relate to the current situation? A few hundred million years after the appearance of scorpions, a being walked the earth that constructed permanent enclosure structures for other living beings, including its own kind: cages and guardians.

Many intelligent animals in captivity stop eating and are driven to death (e.g. of the dolphins that are captured, few survive). Countless people in captivity, (since so long ago that the beginnings have been erased) have gone on hunger strikes in prisons to gain their freedom or dignity. This is the equivalent of self-centering by beings with enough intelligence to try to provide a way out of the impasse. That is why nowadays, the hunger strike is internationally recognized as a historically powerful means of struggle, especially for prisoners.

In Greek circumstances (where even the junta of the colonels backed down on hunger strikes) modern judges and prosecutors are governed by a different perspective. The majority are driven by ultra-conservative views and, having caused untold pain to tens of thousands of prisoners who have been deprived of their long-term freedom, they work for a torture industry entrenched behind obvious lies such as correctionalism. Like slaughterhouse workers, or like fighter pilots bombing the enemy’s cities, they have killed any trace of empathy in themselves and can eat their lunch by convincing themselves that they are doing something useful. That is why they see the hunger strike as a means of challenging their omnipotence and show zero tolerance.

How else to interpret, what judges and prosecutors write, up to the 46th day of my hunger strike, when the prosecutor’s proposal of the court of appeal for my release was issued?

I was preceded by two councils where I was tried for what the judges believe I will do and I was held on remand as a “risk of committing further offences”. In the second even theirs they didn’t ask me a single question, not even about the facts and just issued a predetermined decision after 40 days (30 of which already on hunger strike). Without even a rationale, it took them 40 days to write “in accordance with the prosecutor’s proposal, to avoid unnecessary repetition”. I was treated with defiant indifference.

In the face of this squalor, I started a hunger strike. And in the announcement of its opening, I listed both the arbitrary acts against me and numerous examples where the judges have opened wide the doors when it comes to children of the system (cops – murderers, prison guards – torturers, fascists, big capitalists).

Meanwhile, in the midst of my strike, Alexandros’ killer, one of Zack’s killers who did as much jail time as I do hunger strike time, and rapist Filippidis have been released early on the improbable grounds that the potential victims are not at risk because he is now known for his actions and will avoid him. And I who completed 3/5 of my sentence 7 months ago “have not yet been corrected as not enough time has passed” according to the prosecutorial reasoning! Unrepentant murderers are enjoying what I have been fighting to earn for 50 days risking my life, what I have been entitled to for 7 months, freedom.

Seemingly unrelated, and yet relevant, is the murder of the chimpanzee that escaped from Jean-Jacques Leshwar’s wild animal prison. I wonder if Greek ‘justice’ will deal with a serial killer and torturer of wildlife? Too much money…

Anyway at this moment, my own stinger has already pierced my body and is spreading poison destroying its vital organs, probably irreversibly. However, it will inevitably pierce, even if only temporarily, the murderous order that sustains this system of generalized enslavement and exploitation of nature (human and otherwise)…

THE ONLY DEFEATED STRUGGLE IS THE ONE NEVER GIVEN

FREEDOM OR DEATH

11/7/2022,

Giannis Michailidis

There are 4 Comments

It's interesting to contrast this justification for a hunger strike with this critique of hunger strikes from https://creekerzine.files.wordpress.com/2022/07/creeker-2.2-web-color-cl...

Let’s Attack Our Enemies, Not Our Bodies! A Critique of Hunger Strikes

I support diversity of tactics, including hunger strikes. a given tactic has varying effects depending on the situation. it's up to us as individuals and collectives to make those assessments. Ppl starving themselves makes me feel uncomfortable in a triggering way with regard to the issue of eating disorders. there's much more to be said about that, but that's the essence of it from that aspect.

I'm not asking anyone to cease action cuz it triggers me or makes me uncomfortable. I just haven't seen this raised anywhere, other than privately with friends who feel the same. I suppose there are many tactics which could be triggering to others, for various reasons. The hunger strike seems like an especially conspicuous form of self-harm though.

In the context of fairy creek & adjacent movements which still valourize and ennoble civil disobedience – which often involves some kind of “non-violent” sacrificial use of one’s body, instead of combat or self defense – it feels like the hunger striker is the ultimate sacrificial lamb.

These quasi-suicidal people are presented to us as heroes to be honoured, supported, and proselytized for (write a letter! Call a politician! Beg for media coverage! Spread the word on your socials – have you heard that dozens more have joined
the strike & are now starving themselves too?). They perform the most sacred ritual of nonviolence culture, offering their lives via highly visible, protracted public suffering for the greater good.

I want no part of this death cult, with its deeply internalized abrahamic morality plays masquerading as resistance. I struggle to find sound reasoning for use of the hunger strike beyond specific contexts, e.g. prisoners whose freedom is restricted to a degree that it’s among the last, or very last tactic they can use. In such a circumstance, they are using it to fight for their dignity and their life, to regain agency that is being denied them thru violence and coercion. People who have comparatively broad agency & control of their bodies, choosing to do such violence to their bodies, is as repugnant to me as watching someone torture or cut themselves, while they ask everyone to support/campaign for them/ etc.

States routinely kill their enemies to maintain social control... they are killing machines. they're always killing, they can’t function without it. killing ourselves is doing that murderous – yet structurally & economically normalized to the point of near invisibility – routine for them.

As an act of blatant self-violence, while one still has other options, to me the hunger strike is amongst the most myopic and disempowering of all tactics: killing yourself, in the hope that a system based on killing, will value your life more than you do. Self-immolation, as someone recently did to themself in washington d.c. on earth day, is more abjectly suicidal... but at least it’s a quick death compared to the slow torturing to death of starvation.

“The important thing is to find a rhythm we can sustain and thus not become the very ones to destroy us [...] We shouldn't continue building a martyrology that teaches the hasty path, the suicidal path [...] We are going far.” – Josep Gardenyes: Social War, Antisocial Tension

I appreciate how passionate the hunger strikers are, and that they may feel as though they are prisoners on this dying planet, and running out of options. I propose that instead of harming our own bodies, let's promote healthy bodies & self defense of those bodies, and the ecosystems they are a part of.

The gov’t has shown its willingness to see hunger strikers whither away in recent years, with a stop site c hunger striker (2016) and a save old growth hunger striker (2022) both hospitalized with potential organ damage about 3 weeks into their strikes. both ended their strikes without their demands met by gov’t. The stop site c hunger striker was camped outside the head office of bc hydro during their strike and was ignored by them & by gov’t. Instead of meeting with the save old growth hunger strikers during their strike as was their demand, bc forests minister katrine conroy met with the bc truck loggers association, and attended the annual convention of the bc council of forest industries.

A few mortalities for the sake of industry is what capitalists euphemistically dismiss as an 'externality'. at least 5 loggers have died on the job on Vancouver Island in the last few years, due to increasingly profitable, horrifically unsafe work conditions, such as “multi-phase logging” (heavy machines working above fallers). WFP paid some token "WorkSafeBC fines” which might as well have been called "murder your worker fees".

I was further troubled to see a save OG hunger striker telling the media of their plans to attempt "citizens' arrests" of bc politicians. why replicate the criminalizing logic of the colonial, carceral society that puts land defenders in jail?

"Every order is founded on a crime against the preceding order—the crime that dissolved it. Afterwards, the new order comes to be perceived as legitimate, as people begin to take it for granted. The founding crime of the United States of America was the rebellion against the authority of the king of England. The founding crime of the society to come, if we manage to survive this one, will do away with the laws and institutions of today. Can we imagine an order not premised on the division of life into legitimate and illegitimate, legality and criminality, rulers and ruled?" -- To Change Everything: The Last Crime by CrimethInc. Ex-Workers' Collective (crimethinc.com/tce)

Contrast the state's indifference towards civilian hunger strikers, with incarcerated hunger strikers -- who are often force-fed. the slow death of the free striker's body poses no threat to the social order that governs them, whereas the caged striker's action subverts the ability of the state to cage them. There are many examples of prisoners whose hunger strikes gain them better conditions or freedoms. a recent example are Mapuche prisoners in colonial Chile, who militantly defend their land from logging & mining (much of it perpetuated by Canadian corporations) with acts of mass sabotage and armed resistance.

“March 23, 2022: José Tralcal Coche and Luis Tralcal Quidel have decided to end their hunger strike after the gendarmerie granted the benefits of weekly day parole and quarterly week parole. We consider it necessary to protect the physical and spiritual health of our pu peñi, pu lamgen, since they have been on three different hunger strikes now, for which it is necessary to continue advancing toward better conditions. As Mapuche people we are repressed and imprisoned...but as Mapuche
people we will free ourselves!” – Earth First Journal: Mapuche Political Prisoners José and Luis Tralcal End Hunger Strike After Winning Concessions

Those of us fortunate enough to be on the outside of the prison walls (for now) have the freedom to die, or to be subversive and fight for our survival against the extractivist death machine that will kill us all. I support the freedom to choose to end one's own life for whatever reason. but dying is surely no way win the war that we find ourselves in.

yeah, that distinction of being in prison or not, that's the linchpin. incarcerated folks have extremely limited bargaining options. appeals to the compassion of an enemy who obviously has none are desperate and if any other options are available, it's very strange to choose your tools this way.

outside of the context of literal prison, these type of tactics can be safely categorized as liberal morality plays. at best, it's about the "personal journey" of the person doing the self-harming, usually with lots of selfies, or worse, it's recuperation of more effective forms of struggle. or why not both?

No! Its actually easier than that. The scorpion, when engulfed in flames, does NOT "turn the sting upon itself". This requires a cognitively derived choice,,,,which is impossible for insects.
Rather, the induces a contraction within the shell and connective tissues therein causing the sting to be forced back into the creatures already dying body. This is NOT suicide.

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