Inflation

Argentina: A wave of looting across the country

Posted on 2023/09/01 - 2023/09/01 by darknights

Plagued by inflation, Argentina is facing a wave of looting

In Argentina, a wave of looting of supermarkets and shops over the past four days has put the country on alert, reviving traumatic memories of the “Gran Crisis” of 2001 [See here the brochure Recueil de textes argentins (2001-2003), ed. Mutines Seditions, 2003], against the backdrop of presidential elections scheduled for October. Although the government denies any causal link, the wave comes at a time when the Argentine peso has just been devalued by around 20% in mid-August. Latin America’s third-largest economy is grappling with endemic inflation, which has been in double digits for over twelve years, and is now running at 115% year-on-year. JPMorgan even expects inflation to reach 190% by the end of the year. Inflation is so high that in May, the government launched a 2,000 peso banknote, the largest ever in circulation.

The looting, which has occurred in the southern Patagonian city of Bariloche, around the capital Buenos Aires and in the Mendoza wine-growing region, is the work of small groups who break into shops to steal food and other goods. Gangs of 20, 40 or more people descend on a supermarket or other business in “piranha attack” mode, or smaller groups, driven by last-minute appeals via social networks, sometimes force their way into closed stores. The assailants grab food, but also whatever they can find: alcohol, cigarettes, various and sundry objects, as evidenced by the full supermarket carts abandoned when the police arrived. Sometimes, as in Moreno on Tuesday, the store is set on fire.

In all, almost 200 people – many of them minors, sometimes aged 12 or 14 – have been arrested in four days, following looting or attempted looting, often halted by the police, in the provinces of Cordoba (central), Mendoza (west) and Neuquen (south), and more than a hundred since Monday in the “Conurbano”, the huge suburbs of Buenos Aires. On Wednesday August 23, the Buenos Aires government reported that in the capital, there had been more than 150 looting attempts at the same time, with 94 people arrested.

Today, August 24, the Argentine press announced that the national government has formalized the creation of unified commands to prevent looting. These Unified Commands of the Federal Police and Security Forces will be made up of the National Intelligence Directorate and the Secretariat of Security and Criminal Policy, the Argentine Federal Police, the National Gendarmerie, the Naval Prefecture and the Airport Security Police, as well as representatives of the police forces of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires and the provinces.

Buenois Aires cops deployed to prevent supermarket lootingDitto Patagonia, August 23, 2023

[Quick summary of the Argentine & French-language press, August 24, 2023]

Source: Sans Noms

Patras, Greece: Responsibility claim for attacks on supermarket chains

Posted on 2022/12/08 - 2022/12/08 by darknights

At dawn on Monday 5 December, we attacked supermarkets of large chains in the city of Patras, with sledgehammers, causing damage. We chose the supermarkets:

Sklavenitis on the El. Stratiotou

Sklavenitis in Notaras

Market In on Souda Street

It is known to all that accuracy and the unbearable cost of living are not “sky-high” concepts that “happened” to be created by the war in Ukraine and the revaluations it brings, as the Greek state sells as a narrative. On the contrary, they are the result of an increasingly deepening crisis that capital has been in for at least 15 years. In the midst of this crisis, and the opportunity it presents to the world’s rulers, wealth is being redistributed, geopolitical balances are being redistributed, new energy hubs are being created and overall competition is intensifying. In this context, the effect on everyday life for the vast majority of society is more brutal than ever. More and more impoverishment and misery, the imposition of a working dark ages and modern slavery.

In this crisis, the state and capital are attempting ever harder, more totalitarian changes in their functioning, imposing ever harsher conditions on our lives, creating the necessary conditions and situations for the further plundering and exploitation of our lives and the natural world for the sake of their profitability.

The Greek state is certainly moving in the same direction. Only in the last 10-15 years we can mention the memoranda, the neglect and dismantling of the public health care system for the benefit of private interests, the continuous subsidizing of banks from state funds, costs that fall on the backs of society, financial scandals in every sector, bills for the exploitation of the environment, the dismantling of the remaining public character in education and health, the anti-labour bill – the infernal Hantzidakis bill, the tightening of repression and criminal treatment especially of those who struggle and so much more. Continue reading “Patras, Greece: Responsibility claim for attacks on supermarket chains” →

Does the enemy lie to the right? A discussion about the current series of attacks on Green offices in the Federal Republic of Germany

Posted on 2022/11/15 by darknights

Does the enemy lie to the right? A discussion about the current series of attacks on Green offices in the Federal Republic of Germany

The following text was prepared and published by the new German-language website “Aufstand! “, the birth of which we had communicated with the translation of their introductory text, and refers to an uninterrupted series of attacks and defacements against the offices of the governing coalition party “Die Grüne,” the Greens, that are taking place all over Germany; the latest attack in chronological order dates back to November 7, 2022 when, during the night, the windows of two offices of the Greens and an office of the Social Democrats of the SPD in three different districts of Berlin were attacked with hammers.

A series of attacks on the offices of the governing party, the Greens, is sweeping through the Federal Republic of Germany these days. Sometimes windows are smashed, sometimes the facade is defaced with paint, sometimes there are communiqués, sometimes political slogans are left behind, sometimes not. All of these attacks have something in common: They are an attack against a party that in recent months has increased arms spending, exported weapons, supported wars, but whose policies have also further impoverished people, continued to poison and destroy the environment in which we live-especially through wind turbines, continued to operate nuclear and coal-fired power plants, built liquefied natural gas terminals, and so on. All of this with the arrogant smiles typical of those who are warm and full-bellied, dispensing people with the classic hypocritical advice from politicians who evidently live on another level outside of reality regarding what to do to save on shower, heating and electricity consumption. Meanwhile, these political Greens have not been sparing themselves, signing contracts for new colonial energy projects, further strengthening European borders, persevering with their murderous practices and continuing to promote investments in domestic militarization. The consequences of the Greens’ policies are proving once again (nothing to be surprised at) far more dramatic than the conservative policies of recent years. Faced with a predominant focus on the part of militant antifascism in siding against the populist right wing represented by the AfD (in fact among other things politically less influential than its leftist counterpart currently in power)-and at the same time, however, not hesitating in the face of broad “antifascist” alliances with Green organizations and their youth structures-, these “antifa” should certainly ask themselves the question whether, in fact, they are nothing more than a para-state bastion along the lines of the various communist and fascist thugs of the late 1920s. That then fundamentally this question should be asked by many among those who in fact only wish for a state with a slightly different and agreeable political form. Continue reading “Does the enemy lie to the right? A discussion about the current series of attacks on Green offices in the Federal Republic of Germany” →

Berlin, Germany: “You are the crisis” – Now it has hit Denn’s Biomarkt + “Everything just stolen!” Expropiation

Posted on 2022/10/22 - 2022/10/22 by darknights

We are not friends of big speeches and sometimes there is therefore not too much to write. The Denn’s Biomarkt on Antonplatz in Berlin is certainly not the largest, nor the most beautiful of its kind. Nevertheless, we took the trouble – from Tuesday to Wednesday the 19.10. – to leave a few stones and spray “You are the crisis” on the entrance.

Denn’s Biomarkt we can populistically call the extended arm of the Greens in the neighborhood. Those who have long had to turn over every penny can’t afford to buy supposedly fair-trade, socially acceptable and carbon-neutral lavender-apple smoothies. Denn’s oh-so-worldly appeal makes us lose our appetite. Good for the wallet, bad for the soul. We have remedied the crisis mood for a short moment.

Greetings to the “Everything just stolen!” people (translated below), who have taken heart and have quite obviously had a good bite, and also to the everyday criminals, who naturally take their lives in their own hands, bypassing the state and capital!

Source: Kontrapolis

Everything just stolen!

Hey,

we were today at denns plundering, have captured and distributed goodies worth 900Euro. Others have done it before us, hopefully more will do it after us. Here’s to the hot autumn of looting!

Everything only stolen! Whether heating costs, rent, gasoline or food: Everything becomes daily more expensive! The inflation eats our wages. The relief packages of the policy are in view of the price explosions only a drop on the hot stone. While large corporations are being supported with billions, the only option for us is to do without. For the many people in Germany who were already struggling to make ends meet before the current crisis, this sacrifice has long been part of their everyday lives. And while we now have to consider whether we can still afford the butter on our bread, the owner of Lidl has been able to triple his fortune since 2020. No more price explosions and doing without! We have decided to no longer grudgingly accept the ever-increasing prices. We take what is rightfully ours! We don’t let them take the butter off our bread (lol) – a sandwich without butter is no sandwich, I always say.

Source: de.indymedia

Toulouse (Haute-Garonne), France : Stop paying, make pay !

Posted on 2022/10/12 by darknights

Originally published : 24/09/2022

Source: lille.indymedia

On the night of the 23rd to the 24th september, in Toulouse, Frédéric Mistral alley, 2 LCL banks have been painted and attacked with hammer hits. Austerity, misery and inflation don’t fall from the sky.
Some take everything, and leave their crumbs. In echo to the calls to stop paying*, to burn our bills, to the 29th september demos** and those to come, let’s also take the night.

Against end of the month anguish, some hits in the face of the war profiteers.
Against the end of the world anguish, some hits in the face of those financing it.
We know it’s not mad, mad, mad to make bang, bang, bang on banks windows.
But when prices rise, windows fall, and it’s already something. Strike is coming, may it comes with fracas.

And a solidarity salute to Boris***

CCA (confédération des copaings d’avant)

*https://dontpay.uk
**Interprofessional strike and demo called by big french syndicate against inflation and pension reform
***https://bureburebure.info/solidarite-avec-boris/

Italy: ‘The winter of capital’

Posted on 2022/10/01 - 2022/10/14 by darknights

The winter of capital

This weekend’s elections were very important for the fate of Europe. No, we are not talking about the miserable staging of the Italian round of elections, but about the referendums held in some occupied territories of Ukraine for annexation to the Russian Federation.

With them, the proxy and regionalized “world war” being fought between Russia and NATO takes a formal turn with important practical consequences. From the moment the Donbass, Kherson and Zaporozhye officially become part of Russia, Putin’s regime can claim that any Ukrainian attack in these territories will be read as an attack on Russia itself. The result is the order for general mobilization, the proclamation of martial law, and the transformation of its industry into a war economy to defend the homeland.

With this strategic shift, the Russian government moves away from the rhetoric of Special Military Operation – a neologism taken in inspiration from “international police missions,” “peacekeeping missions,” “humanitarian wars,” and other fanciful Doctor Strangelove sorties of the much-hated West – to the declaration of outright war. Demonstrating the farcical nature of any electoral mechanism, which always photographs the power relations between dominants and never an abstruse as non-existent “popular will,” Putin ordered partial mobilization even before knowing the referendum outcome, recalling the first three hundred thousand reservists.

From now on, all those states that have been arming the Kiev regime for months and that have enabled it to resist so effectively and to counterattack with unexpected successes become cobelligerent. Those who arm a state to which war is formally declared are also (almost) at war. Europe and the United States will now have to take responsibility for a conflict that they have fueled by all means, with the aim of bleeding the Russian enemy dry, hoping to achieve maximum results with minimum effort, i.e., by sending Ukrainian ascari1 to their deaths.

Rather than expire in the partisan readings of the court pen-pushers and opposing supporters, which as internationalists and enemies of every state we cannot but reject, reiterating our hostility against all sides in the war, it is worth dwelling on a couple of thoughts. Continue reading “Italy: ‘The winter of capital’” →

Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for the arson of the luxury car of a high-ranking DEI executive at noon in Koukaki

Posted on 2022/07/22 by darknights

The day starts well with hatred for the bosses

It is provocative for the golden boys of the electricity companies to think that they will show off their wealth through their luxury cars, worth thousands of euros, which were granted to them for free thanks to an amendment by the Ministry of the Environment, and to believe that they will remain immune to the public’s anger.Nowadays, the cost of living is increasing geometrically. Electricity, water and gas bills come inflated by hundreds of euros. Basic foodstuffs such as bread, rice, pasta and vegetables have become luxury items. House repossessions and power cuts are on the increase. Rents are constantly rising. While the fake ‘electricity subsidy’ to the social base presented as a financial relief, in fact it is a scam of just a few euros, so few that sometimes they are not paid into our bills, is a communication weapon in the quiver of the criminals and crooks of the ND government. In the face of this constant devaluation of our lives, we are not prepared to simply watch journalists announce how much inflation has increased. Impoverishment and destitution are a consequence of the political choices of those who administer power. The economic crisis has demonstrated most emphatically that the ‘value’ of life depends on whether you are rich or poor. The rich enjoy their bloody privileges and have freepasses to rooms and intensive care units when needed, while the poor are left to die stained in the corridors of understaffed and underfunded hospitals. The only freepass the poor are to be given is for the front lines of imperialist wars. The state officials who organize our exploitation, the banks, the big bosses and the goldenboys who plunder our nature and our lives, the “parrots” of power who turn white into black and instruct us, as the new Antoinettes, to eat sponge cake if we have no bread, must be put in the crosshairs of the oppressed and the exploited. For all these reasons, at noon on Friday 8 July, we handed over to the flames a luxury car of large capacity parked outside the offices of the Public Power Corporation and belonging to a major executive of that company.To our plundering and impoverishment we must respond with assemblies, occupations, strikes, expropriations, conflicts, arson, demonstrations

Anarchists – Communists

PS: Solidarity with the hunger striker G. Michailidis since 23/5, who is putting his body as a barricade to the regime of exception that is attempting to impose once again, on another political prisoner, aiming at his isolation, as well as his political, psychological and physical extermination.

Source: athens.indymedia

Spoleto, Italy: The premeptive class warfare of the Italian state

Posted on 2022/07/22 by darknights

THE PREEMPTIVE CLASS WARFARE OF THE ITALIAN STATE

The arrests that took place in the early morning of Tuesday, July 19, on a warrant from the Piacenza prosecutor’s office are indicative of the repressive climate in Italy and the authoritarian turn underway. Four SI Cobas trade unionists were placed under house arrest for the long cycle of struggles that inflamed logistics from 2014 to 2021. Along with them, two USB unionists were also placed under house arrest and two others are the recipients of other precautionary measures. Prosecutor Grazia Pradella’s charges are of criminal conspiracy, private violence, resisting a public official, sabotage, and interruption of a public service, finalized by extortionist intent in order to obtain better wage conditions for workers.

We do not believe that we should be outraged, as is happening in these hours, by this repressive operation, but rather point out that it is an open manifestation, a true confession, of the mentality of the bourgeoisie in this historical period: for the gentlemen of GLS, Amazon, FedEx-TNT, as well as from the arrogant statements that are being uttered every day by the leaders of Confindustria, everything must be granted, everything must be permissible for them. Even putting up a tough fight for a wage increase becomes extortion. The whole loot belongs to them by right, one must not dare to ask, one must not struggle. The charge of extortion is thus not a scandal, if anything, a sign of the times.

This repressive operation stands in open complicity with the murders of Abd El Salam, which occurred, moreover, in Piacenza itself in 2016, and Adil Belakhdim, who was murdered last year in the province of Novara. In both cases, the murders occurred during a strike picket, the same pickets that have been attacked repeatedly in recent years by police charges and assaults by corporate henchmen. Therefore, judicially attacking self-defense practices means acting basically in concert with the picketers and murderers. Continue reading “Spoleto, Italy: The premeptive class warfare of the Italian state” →

Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim – Arson of a National Technical University vehicle

Posted on 2022/05/27 - 2022/05/27 by darknights

ANNOUNCEMENT – CALL FOR A CAMPAIGN OF ACTION AGAINST THE UNIVERSITY POLICE

WHY WE BURNED THE OFFICIAL CAR USED BY THE RECTOR ANDREAS BOUDOUVIS FOR HIS INTERNAL MOVEMENTS WITHIN THE UNIVERSITY PREMISES

On May 12, the Council of State effectively upheld the law on the University Police since, as stated in its decision, neither academic freedom nor the autonomy of Higher Education Institutions is violated. The Council of State’s decision argues, inter alia, that there are important reasons of security and public order according to which it is deemed necessary to have the universities guarded by the police. Is the Council of State competent to admonish and defend values such as freedom and morality? Would the Council of State do well to resolve its internal issues first and foremost and leave aside the public security issues at a time when its former Vice-President and President of the Third Department, Panagiotis Efstratiou, is involved in a case of cocaine use and trafficking among minors? We do not expect anything different from the Council of State, the Supreme Court and their courts, which are rife with corruption and scandals, which wash away businessmen, politicians, big business and other scoundrels without a trace of shame at the same time as society is sinking into poverty and misery. The most recent and striking example, moreover, concerns the – beyond all provocation – cover-up of the rapists of Georgia Bika, where the scum of the well-known multinational rushed to cover up in the most blatant way the rape of the militant Georgia. Words are superfluous. An instrument of cynical execution of governmental dictates, the judiciary is humiliated in the courtrooms, the corrupt system rules them undisturbed and the fairy tales about separation of powers just make the big picture even more provocative.Surely the answer for the University Police Corps will not be given by the Council of State. The best and most targeted answer will be given by the student movement itself, the world of struggle, the anarchist and radical space, the parts of the militant left and the part of the progressive space that must finally put a brake on arbitrariness and authoritarianism. We are convinced that a mosaic of actions will unfold in the coming period, from symbolic actions to more dynamic actions that will cancel this bill in practice and why not put on the table the issue of self-organization and subversion not only within the universities but also in the whole society as a whole. Let all the schools be closed with occupations, let students and teachers with basic self-respect abstain from classes, let mass demonstrations take place all over Greece, let all the cops who will staff the new body be targeted. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim – Arson of a National Technical University vehicle” →

Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for the incendiary attack on the political office of Development Minister Adonis Georgiades by Proletarian Cell Dimitris Christoulas

Posted on 2022/04/14 - 2022/04/19 by darknights

“The occupying government of Tsolakoglu literally annihilated my possibility of survival, which was based on a decent pension which for 35 years I alone (without state support) had been paying for it. Because I am of an age that does not give me the individual possibility to react (not excluding of course if a Greek would take the kalashnikov the second would be me) I find no other solution than a decent end before I start to look in the trash for my alimony. I believe that the young people with no future will one day take up arms and hang the national traitors upside down in Syntagma Square, as the Italians did to Mussolini in 1945 (Loreto Square in Milan)” Dimitris Christoulas*

We take responsibility for the incendiary attack on the political office of Adonis Georgiades, the representative of capital, politician responsible for the poverty and misery suffered by the people through poverty.

From the economic crisis of 2009 from which the country never came out, to the socialization of the losses of capital from the pandemic Covid 19, the latest increases in the price of electricity, fuel and almost all essentials are added to the already unbearable cost of survival of the working class and the people, to the pre-existing queues of the ΟΑΕΔ (Employment Insurance) , to the pension cuts, to the crumbs of the basic wage. The “development” invoked and evangelised by the domestic bourgeoisie is reflected physically and materially in people who die trying to keep warm, who look in the garbage for food, who commit suicide for economic reasons. It is reflected in workplaces that are graveyards for people of our class, where dozens of workers do not return home because a few extra euros were not “wasted” for the safety of the workers. Their growth translates into slow death in the corridors of hospitals. To the nearly 27,000 deaths from Covid 19, to the blockade of care in public hospitals amidst the increasing privatisation of the ΕΣΥ (National Health Service). Their deployment amounts to a daily battle for the survival of the next day for the majority of society at the same time as a handful of industrialists, shipowners and contractors continually speculate on our backs, reap the rewards of the toil and slavery we produce, extract surplus value from our starvation wages, continually devaluing the value of our labour power. Continue reading “Athens, Greece: Responsibility claim for the incendiary attack on the political office of Development Minister Adonis Georgiades by Proletarian Cell Dimitris Christoulas” →