Relief
Center – Sanayeh17/7/2006 

The Israeli offensive against
Lebanon is an act of aggression against the whole Lebanese people. The IDF claims to be attacking an “infrastructure of terror”, but the attacks on bridges, roads, airports and ships are cutting the country into pieces, threatening to create a disastrous situation by impeding the transportation of food and medicines, and terrorizing everyone. Besides the hundreds killed and injured, thousands of people are fleeing the country, and thousands of people are fleeing from the areas where the bombing is heaviest into central
Beirut. Even here in the “safe” parts of the city we can hear the bombs throughout the day and night, and electrical and water supplies are tenuous.Political and civil society organizations here are organizing to help people deal with the effects of the invasion, but there is only so much we can do on our own. We are calling on our brothers and sisters in the rest of the world to do two things to help us.First we call on you to protest at Israeli embassies and consulates, as we hear some groups are already doing. The Israeli government must be held accountable for its criminal and terroristic actions here and in
Palestine. We also ask you to send us information about any such protests you carry out.Second, we are asking you to help us with our work with displaced people here in
Beirut. The group we are part of, the Relief Center – Spears, is working in 32 displacement centers in the central areas of Beirut, which were housing more than 6,000 people as of the night of July 16th (we don’t know how many thousands more are in other areas). People there are sleeping 10 or 15 to a room without enough mattresses, and they are only receiving food and water irregularly from the government. Many are children or elderly.Besides the humanitarian aspect of the situation, helping displaced people is crucial to the reconstruction of
Lebanon after this crisis ends. One aspect of the Israeli offensive is an attempt to foment tensions between different cultural groups in
Lebanon. This is the only way they can hope to achieve their goals without an all-out war, but in the end it would do more damage to Lebanese society than any amount of physical destruction. A broad relief effort is an essential part of avoiding such a disaster.We urgently need money to buy the supplies we need to help the internally displaced population here. We ask everyone who can to send donations, however small, the

Relief
Center – Spears in the care of the following two people by bank transfer. Please contact your bank to find out how to do this. 

CLIENT NAME: GREENLINE ASSOCIATIONACCOUNT NMBR: 6189003BANK: BANK OF
KUWAIT AND THE ARAB WORLDSWIFT: BKAWLBBE 

Greenline Association address: 

3rd floor, Yamout building, Spears 174,Sanayeh,
Beirut, LebanonTelefax: (+961 1) 746 215 or (+961 1) 752 142E-mail greenline@greenline.org.lb 

These are difficult days for everyone in
Lebanon, but we are confident that with your support we can overcome this situation as we have others before. 

For more information, please contact: +961 3 647 605, +961 3 670 783, sanayeh.center@gmail.com 

http://sanayehreliefcenter.blogspot.com/http://lebanonupdates.blogspot.com/An Open Letter From Naomi Klein 

I urge all who are horrified by the Israeli government’s inflicting of collective punishment on the people of
Lebanon to join me in supporting the

Sanayeh
Relief
Center. It is a remarkable coalition of a grassroots activists in
Beirut who have rapidly joined together to provide emergency relief to many victims of this human-created disaster. I have researched their work and feel confident that all support we send is going to the urgent task of distributing basic supplies such as food and medicine to people suffering under the Israeli bombing, including thousands of internally displaced refugees being housed in 32 displacement centers. 

Virtually the only response from western governments to
Israel’s sickening decision to wage all out war on the people of
Lebanon has been to send helicopters and boats to rescue their own citizens. Millions of people without such precious passports are left behind without aid, trapped by Israeli bombs that have systematically targeted roads, bridges and the airport. 

There is no “international community” that is coming to save the day, only our own anti-war networks that we have built in our communities and online. So at the same time as we raise our voices to demand an immediate end to Israeli aggression, we must also offer our financial support to trustworthy, on-the-ground activists like those at the Sanayeh ReliefCenter. In a world increasingly governed by brute force and indifference, the

Sanayeh
Relief
Center is a beacon of humanity and mutual aid, please do what you can to increase its strength. It is a concrete act of peace. 

Naomi KleinWednesday, July 19^th 

In the face of the official “no-comment,”come and raise your voice and lend yourbody in response to the killings in the
Middle East 

Tuesday 25 July
London (and a simultaneous action in
Glasgow)

Mothers                                                                                                                                              Motherssons                                                                                                                                                     sonsdaughters                                                          are invited to                                                   daughterswives                                                  Symbolically Die                                                              wivescousins                        AT 4.30PM, MARKS & SPENCERS,

            cousinsuncles                       in solidarity with the                                                                               unclesgrandmothers                                                                                                                                 grandmothers and fathers                                                                                                                                       and fathersWho are Dying in Lebanon Now 

Then A COLLECTIVE SCREAM AGAINST WAR

5pm

LEBANON

The War Crimes

“How soon must we use the words “war crime”? How many children must be scattered in the rubble of Israeli air attacks before we reject the obscene phrase “collateral damage” and start talking about prosecution for crimes against humanity?……The child whose dead body lies like a rag doll beside the cars which were supposedly taking her and her family to safety is a symbol of the latest
Lebanon war…. Because her parents were apparently killed in the same Israeli air attack, her name is still unknown. Not an unknown warrior, but an unknown child…. 

…I lived here through 15 years of civil war that took 150,000 lives, and two Israeli invasions and years of Israeli bombardments that cost the lives of a further 20,000 of its people. I have seen them armless, legless, headless, knifed, bombed and splashed across the walls of houses. Yet they are a fine, educated, moral people whose generosity amazes every foreigner, whose gentleness puts any Westerner to shame, and whose suffering we almost always ignore…”

The Western Response

“But what are we saying of their fate today as the Israelis – in some of their cruellest attacks on this city and the surrounding countryside – tear them from their homes, bomb them on river bridges, cut them off from food and water and electricity? We say that they started this latest war, and we compare their appalling casualties – 240 in all of Lebanon by last night – with Israel’s 24 dead, as if the figures are the same……And this is the same Israeli air force which was praised last week by one of Israel’s greatest defenders – Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz – because it “takes extraordinary steps to minimise civilian casualties”…The power comes back at home at 11pm and I watch Israel’s consul general, Arye Mekel, telling the BBC that Israel is “doing the Lebanese a favour” by bombing Hizbollah, insisting that “most Lebanese appreciate what we are doing”. So now I understand. The Lebanese must thank the Israelis for destroying their lives and infrastructure. They must be grateful for all the air strikes and the dead children.” (Robert Fisk, over the last week) 

The Corporate Profiteers

“The rocket that killed them is believed to have been a Hellfire missile made by Lockheed Martin in
Florida.” (Robert Fisk, 24 July 2006)“The clothier [Marks & Spencer] bought about $325 million worth of merchandise from
Israel last year. That figure includes products produced in
Jordan and exported via
Israel.” (Richard Allen Greene, ‘British store shrugs off boycott threat from Muslims’, JTA, 13 December 2000)“Almost all of the weapons used by
Israel are from the
United States. There might be a couple French fighter planes that they’re using, but it’s F-16s made in
Fort Worth, Texas; it’s Apache helicopters; it’s Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles; it’s all from the
United States.” (Frida Berringan, Democracy Now! Interview, 21 July 2006)“A recently published economic analysis has concluded that
U.S. support for the state of
Israel has cost American taxpayers nearly $3 trillion ($3 million millions) in 2002 dollars.” (Christopher Bollyn, 6 July 2003) 

Saturday, 22th of July, marks one year since Jean Charles de Menezes was shot at Stockwell Tube Station. Last year, we held a Roda de Capoeira there, in memory of this tragic event. Without speech, banners or flags, we showed to our community that we are here! In the most peaceful way: with the empowering history inside Capoeira
Angola. Let’s do it again. Singing our laments for justice and freedom, using our bodies to turn oppression and violence upside down. Stockwell tube, from 5.30pm Call  020 7733 6220 for info

more outdoor rodas in Stockwell are being planned

Parliament Square Writing into Performance workshop for everyone COMING SOON

Darwin, British Biologist, said that natural selection occurs through competition and the survival of the fittest.

Kropotkin, Russian Biologist, said that natural selection occurs through cooperation and that the species who are most able to cooperate will survive.

This is a writing into performance workshop on Parliament Square during the weekend of events to mark on year of the Serious Organised Crime Prevention Act (SOCPA), which makes demonstrations which haven’t been filtered through the police system illegal.

The aim of this workshop is to embody non-hierarchial ways of becoming through writing, performance and flying in the face of normality on Parliament Square.  More info: openbracket@riseup.net

the Lambeth Band of Solidarity has got a gig on Wednesday 2nd August 2006, 2 – 5pm at the South London Gallery. If you’re under 5, come along to the Utopia creche, a party celebrating afro-futurism and launching the next generation into the outer space of their imaginations!

http://www.southlondongallery.org/docs/edu/event.jsp?id=129 

Watch out also for tandem bike rides, a campaign against the removal of nuclear waste through Lambeth, information about ID Cards, solidarity with Mumia Abu-Jamal on death row in the US and a conscious film night starting in Lambeth in September!!!!   

((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( 3 women required to work on video piece about women, ideology and race

Three women (one white, one black and one asian) with different political traditions and interests (all from the left) have been chosen to ask and answer questions which interest them politically. The answers will be sound recorded.

Now I need 3 other women (one white, one black, one asian) to lip-synch (mime) the words which have been sound recorded. This technique allows for the possibility to avoid racial and ideological stereotyping by representing words with the face of someone of a different race.  I think it also means that the piece is more interesting than a party political broadcast, by adding another element which leaves the question of race and ideology wide open.

If you are interested in enlarging the space within art for women’s political voices to be heard, please get in touch. I can’t pay you but I can pay your travel and give you lunch!  Filming should be towards end of July 2006.

Please contact Ceri Buck

 07963 446605  020 7733 6220   openbracket@riseup.net    www.openbracket.org.uk

(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

SOMA is a series of physical workshops, which are based on principles of self-organisation. It seeks to recover communication skills and encourage solidarity, which are being lost in today’s highly competitive, branded world. Social and psychological well-being are so interlinked that it is possible to both change the way we organize our lives/ activities and maintain our mental and physical health in the process. SOMA is always conducted in groups with an emphasis on the autonomy of the individual within the support of the group. SOMA is concerned with the politics, not of institutions but of everyday life. Capitalist values of competition, profit, aggression and sacrifice of pleasure contaminate our belief in the possibilities for freedom, equality and peace. With so many blatant and latent repressive forces in society, the search for your own health, pleasure and happiness can be a highly political act. At the beginning of the 1970s, SOMA was created in Brazil by Roberto Freire as a means of resistance to help people fighting against the military dictatorship. SOMA uses drama games, sound and movement exercises and Capoeira Angola to help salvage spontaneity, playfulness, communication, creativity and awareness of anarchist organization where no one is boss. Capoeira, like SOMA, was created under a repressive regime. As the African slaves were developing Capoeira to withstand the inhuman conditions they were subject to under the system of slavery in Brazil , they were also freeing their bodies and minds so that demands for freedom could no longer be ignored. The body is the material to resist and create with in the world. The pleasure of being yourself challenges the body forgotten, develops new skills and turns the capitalist reality upside down.

Introductory Workshop Tuesday 18th July (and further dates) 7pm Venue: Limehouse Town Hall Donations Info: 020 7733 6220 or 07722003465 or jorge.goia@bol.com.br By Tube Limehouse DLR from Bank or Tower Gateway, then a 5 minute walk (see below). By Bus 15 From Trafalgar Sq. 115 From Aldgate D6 From Hackney D3 From Bethnal Green Walk/drive/cycle Get onto Commercial Road and travel East from Aldgate or Whitechapel. Keep going until you pass Limehouse DLR on your right (under the DLR train bridge) and you’ll see a modern red brick church also on the right, lots of sickening property developments, then an ex-library with a statue of Clement Atlee in front of it, then you’ll see the Town Hall with St Anne’s (Hawksmoor) church behind it. If you need to park, there is a pay and display area behind the town hall (go right onto Three Colt Street after the church, and weave your way to the back of the hall), but there are no parking wardens on weekends. map: http://www.streetmap.co.uk/newmap.srf?x=536720&y=181065&z=1&sv=536750,181250&st=4&ar=Y&mapp=newmap.srf&searchp=newsearch.srf

Beware of card tricks

Henry Porter / Harry  Potter the G2 11.07.06

You have no right to take my photograph without my consent. And you most certainly don’t have it.

What bothers me is when someone puts my image, my name, the place and time together. That is information of a personal nature, and is an invasion of my privacy.

National Identity Register (NIR)

I have no objection to identifying myself when it is my choice. I don’t mind taking my passport along to the bank or showing my driving licence to collect a parcel from the post office but I am preternaturally against the state forcing me to supply biometric measurements and 49 separate pieces of information about myself to a database

I am genetically incapable of submitting to such a process.

The government is selling the ID card scheme to the public on a false prospectus. The government began by saying it would prevent terrorism. When that wasn’t tenable, it said it would prevent ID theft. When that didn’t work, it said it would prevent benefit fraud and when that didn’t work it resorted to claiming that it would help control illegal immigration.

The Spanish ID card did not stop the
Madrid train bombers and a British ID card wouldn’t have stopped the
London July bombings of 2005. ID cards will not deter home-grown terrorists or suicide bombers. Martyrdom is pointless when it is anonymous.

Ministers stirred up fears about ID theft as the great scourge of modern society. It is a problem but nowhere near as large as the government has been making out. In January 2006 when the Home Office published a report which said that ID theft cost the public 1.7b, this figure was exaggerated by almost 50% because it included 396m for money laundering and 504m for total lost of plastic cards.

Rather than stopping ID theft, ID cards are likely to increase the problem, because this single unified and trusted identifier will be something really worth forging.

In Feb 2004, the government published a report saying that a campaign against benefit fraud had cut losses by 400m. the report said the government was on target to slash fraud and error by half by this year. Then the boasting suddenly stopped.  Because the government’s success at meeting its own targets militated against the argument for ID cards.

Like crime, benefit fraud has decreased. But it suits the government to keep us in a state of near frenzy about both.

Anyway, benefit fraud is generally people exaggerating their sickness and the extent of their disability rather than organised individuals using multiple identities.  The ID card will do nothing to stop someone faking depression or lower back pain.

Finally, the ID card won’t stop illegal immigrants. It will make their lives more difficult but it won’t deter people smugglers and desperate migrants.

Dragoon – coerce

And of course, the ID card scheme will not remain voluntary. This is like saying

The system only works if everyone is forced to carry a card and submit their details to the NIR. Already, 55m has been granted in contracts to set up 69 enrolment centres across the country. The bill includes provision for a system of heavy fines for non-compliance.  The government intends to enforce its will.

If you don’t give the authorities 49 pieces of information about yourself. If you don’t, you may be fined up to 2,500

If you fail to inform the police or the Home Office when you lose your card, or it if becomes defective, you face a fine of up to £1,000.

If you find someone else’s card and do not immediately hand it in, you may be imprisoned for up to 2 years, or pay a fine, or both.

And you will be fined £1,000 if you fail to inform the NIR of any change of address.

If you don’t inform the register of significant changes to your personal life, or any errors they have made, you will face a fine of up to £1,000.

And you will have to pay for this, between £30 and £93 to be registered, with further charges to change your details and to replace a lost or stolen card.  The government is charging you so that it can charge companies that wish to confirm your identity

Badge of citizenship embodying the idea of a contract between citizen and state bollocks

Terrible potential for intrusion and control. The idea of a contract is ridiculous when one party is being forced to sign or face penalties. You are too impressed by authority and too weak to oppose it.

When reading the ID card bill I am constantly struck by its minatory (threatening) tone – the threats of fines and the general contempt for the average citizen

Every time you,

Get a library card

Make a credit agreement

Buy a piece of property

Apply for a fishing or gun licence

Withdraw a small amount of money from your bank

Take a prescription to your chemist

 Apply for a resident’s parking permit

Buy a plane ticket

Pay for your car to be unclamped

You will be required to swipe your card and the database will record the transaction.

From the moment the database goes lives, we will become subjects not citizens and each one of us will be diminished in relation to the state’s power.

Something enormous and revolutionary is about to happen to us. We are giving the most precious part of ourselves to the government, allowing it complete freedom to roam through our privacy.

And it’s not just to this government, but to the governments of the future, the nature of which we cannot possibly know.

And it’s not just our privacy, it’s the rights and privacy of future generations.  We have a duty to those people.

The prime minister asks us to trust him and implies that abuse of a database would be unthinkable in
Britain. But after the lies before the invasion of
Iraq, the revelations of the Hutton inquiry and the evidence about rendition flights using British airspace, I would suggest that we treat these sorts of assurances and appeals with the utmost suspicion.

Nor do I trust the government’s competence. The past decade is littered with failed government IT project, the child support agency, the immigration records, the working tax credit database, the farmer’s single payment scheme

The NIR will have thousands of entry points where the information on your file can be assessed.

A few weeks ago, the Criminal Records Office wrongly identified 2,700 people as having criminal records; people’s reputations were damaged, many were turned down for jobs as a result and could argue for a serious loss of earnings.

But the Home Office didn’t even apologise. It is exactly the arrogance that I fear will come to charaterise all government dealings with the person in the street once this database is operational

I am politically opposed because as the government database grows, I believe there will be a commensurate lessening in the state’s respect for each one of us.  The government will gradually become less accountable and less responsive to the needs of the people

Philosophically, in a free country, I believe that every human being has the right to define him or herself independently and without reference to the government of the time. This is particularly important in a multi-cultural soc like ours

It will remove the right of those who for whatever reason wish to withdraw from society, to enjoy solitude and privacy without inspection from a centralised authority.

Privacy, anonymity and solitude are rights, and we are about to lose them forever.

The register will take on a life of its own. Once you set up a system like this it becomes ineluctably compelled to find out more and more about your. That will be its hardwired purpose.

As Planned
After the first glass of vodka
you can accept just about anything
of life even your own mysteriousness
you think it is nice that a box
of matches is purple and brown and is called
La Petite and comes from Sweden
for they are words you know and that
is all you know words not their feelings
or what they mean and you write because
you know them not because you understand them
because you don’t you are stupid and lazy
and will never be great but you do
what you know because what else is there?

Frank O’Hara
 

The creative marginal doesn’t walk down central corridorsThe creative marginal doesn’t have a main entranceThe creative marginal doesn’t have a career The creative marginal doesn’t like regular jobsThe creative marginal will never find a job in the GuardianThe creative marginal is not going to be a regular on the bbcThe creative marginal goes on holiday during weekdaysThe creative marginal earns a living in many waysThe creative marginal doesn’t have a reward cardThe creative marginal knows how to maintain his bikeThe creative marginal uses alternative routesThe creative marginal is not worried about retirementIf the creative marginal spends 8 hours at work, she’ll spend as many of them as possible doing her own thingsThe creative marginal doesn’t act through convenienceThe creative marginal doesn’t try to keep everyone happyThe creative marginal tricks the authorities, not his friendsThe creative marginal knows why a career will make her unhappy The creative marginal won’t get an ASBO The creative marginal has had a CRB checkThe creative marginal is going to die young … even if he’s 90The creative marginal has lots of nicknamesThe creative marginal exists in the USB keyThe creative marginal can be accessed 24 hours a dayThe creative marginal won’t go offlineThe creative marginal won’t ask you to join now

The creative marginal is unusual combinationsThe creative marginal carries a thermos flaskThe creative marginal drinks Zapatista coffee in a starbucks mugThe creative marginal is weird and nakedThe creative marginal uncovers desiresThe creative marginal disturbs closed mindsThe creative marginal says welcome!The creative marginal sees the world in movement from the windows of the busThe creative marginal converses with people who are still in transformationThe creative marginal is warts n allThe creative marginal is always falling in loveThe creative marginal suffers PANGSThe creative marginal likes a cuddleThe creative marginal will make a fool of himself for loveThe creative marginal is single & availableThe creative marginal sings out of tuneThe creative marginal knows that dribbling past someone with the ball is better than scoring goalsThe creative marginal fails and tries againThe creative marginal travels to the dark corners of her mindThe creative marginal is a hard hat areaThe creative marginal is fragile but hard to breakThe creative marginal knows that the art of losing isn’t hard to masterThe creative marginal doesn’t reactThe creative marginal grafts an answer into a longer term strategyThe creative marginal knows that once you’ve said it, it existsThe creative marginal is a figment of my imaginationThe creative marginal is a dialogue with a friend The creative marginal won’t make tactful interventions into a tower of cards that is about to collapseThe creative marginal is a becoming, not a beingThe creative marginal likes to think of the gift modelThe creative marginal doesn’t say I’m right!The creative marginal knows who the gurus areThe creative marginal is not going to heavenThe creative marginal is no HerculesThe creative marginal feels the coldThe creative marginal is coming on inThe creative marginal is a hopeful creatureGod doesn’t love creative marginals

There is always someone complaining about the creative marginal

this text was written and performed at: DISPEL the night of the creative marginal in Brixton, June 2006