Attacks Against Amazon in Berlin and Munich

Berlin, 23^th november 2017

We do not want to be governed by information – and to the satisfaction of the managers‘ faces, blissfully grinning at the thought of the dull masses who are storming the shops on Black Friday like controlled zombies. In solidarity with amazon’s fighting workers and in support of Block Black Friday, we attacked three express vans labeled with „AZ Amazon“ and „drs amazon“ in various ways during the night of November 23 – burned down, stabbed tires, smeared with paint and left the call: „strike!“.

There was this side note in the media, as once again a „terrorist“ was arrested – Amazon proposes the potential terrorist customers in the search for hydrogen peroxide already the next ingredients for the big bang – thanks to the algorithm …

The basic bet of Amazon and Co. is that with all the feedback-loops, the sensors, microphones, cameras and data, you can not only add value but end up with the technological attack on your body and your actions. There is a twofold of constantly consuming and steering on the one hand and the control and delimitation on the other: let it be the emotion detection with cameras, which take already place in the shops, smartphones as perceptual aids, Google Home or the scary spy dolls in the nursery.

Consumers of the global flow of goods are supposed to be rewarded for unsolicited emotion capture with personalized and controlled advertising. While on the faces of all those who are up to doing something criminal, the tension may become apparent before the impending shoplifting or shearing, out of the rut of normalization.

In this game, Amazon is at the forefront of poker. So last year Amazon was the company with the most research expenditure worldwide. So there are already test phases with supermarkets without staff. „Amazon Go“ relies on customers being registered via app when entering the store, as well as the products that are removed from the shelves – the working customer in the panoptic shop. So soon will also burst the service bubble, the reservoir for the countless industrial workers.

So we end up with the fighting workers of Amazon, which are already monitored in the panoptic factory at every turn by means of permanently connected with wireless devices in the warehouse.

If it is primarily about the „optimization“ of the work processes, it is about two things in the supervised supermarket: on the one hand, to reduce the costs: the working customer, who serves itself, bravely pays independently, does not need a service staff. On the other hand, it‘s about the information which get generated. Who will stand in front of which shelf and how long? What emotions can be read off the pace? From when do I shop myself happily, when I was previously depressed and slowly walked through the passage?

This is about much more than marketing and product placement, because the online giants are already making almost as much profit through sales and advertising, as with the personal data they are collecting diligently and suggesting life-saving technologies for the whole humanity. While labor exploitation is almost on a perfect level, profits are now generated through generated data and information of the customers – through access and control of human behavioral patterns and their generated needs: the working customer.

We do not want to be governed by information – and to the satisfaction of the managers‘ faces, blissfully grinning at the thought of the dull masses who are storming the shops on Black Friday like controlled zombies.

So we also participate in a labor dispute, although we actually insist on refusing vehemently custom work and trying to keep each other away from it.

The conflict of the striking workers at Amazon represents for us only a part of the gigantic problem of the change of the working world, the isolation of the battlefields and the isolation of the fighting.

And also the strikers will suspect that in ten years there will be no picker and packer anymore, because Amazon is already working on computer-controlled drones to edit the warehouses.

Let’s disconnect the cables -Let us be more than a zero and a one

In solidarity with amazon’s fighting workers and in support of Block Black Friday, we attacked three Express vans labeled „AZ Amazon“ and „drs amazon“ in various ways during the night of November 23 – burned down, stabbed tires, smeared with paint and left the call: „strike!“. The white transporters are certainly still in your streets.

– autonomous groups & others –