Three events for CCS – Write Now – Deleuze – No Borders.

Three near overlapping events in thee next 10 days for Centre for Cultural Studies people at Goldsmiths: . Write Now! BER-CPH-LON PhD Symposium (Feb 9-11 2012) You have to, you want to, you need to Write Now! But how do you publish?  In an atmosphere of loneliness, alienation, rejection, competition, anxiety, hierarchy, nepotism and jealousy, how does the “early career [...]

Born Free – MIA’s Poetry After Guantanamo

A piece written before this week’s release of Bad Girls, coming out soon in Social Identities. Abstract: The recent work of the Sri-Lankan-British musician and sonic ‘curator’ known as M.I.A. (real name: Mathangi Arulpragasam) is considered as a commentary on atrocity and read alongside the well known essay ‘The Storyteller’ by Walter Benjamin and comments [...]

The Border at Night

A vicious wound that demeans us all –  Enis alerts me to this image from the film Abendland (see the trailer here) – its the aptly named Frontex border at Ceuta, Spain (between the EU and Morocco)

NEW YEARS EVE NOISE DEMONSTRATION – SOLIDARITY WITH IMPRISONED PROTESTERS

Saturday, 31 December 2011 - 4pm-6pm outside HMP Holloway Prison, Parkhurst Road, N7 0NU, closest tube station Holloway Rd. Since student protests last year, when thousands took to the streets to demand an education accessible for all, and the large scale riots this summer in response to the police murder of Mark Duggan, hundreds of our [...]

meanwhile, in Cairo…

  “Activists are under the threat wherever they go, Dina (17 yrs old) and Israa (19) Abdallah Abo El-Azm, two sisters detained by the army three days ago for distributing flyers are now to be sentenced in front of a military court. In reality they were only walking down the street in Cairo at midday. [...]

Bradley Manning

SUNDAY March 20th. 2pm *U.S. Embassy/London- Join Us to Demand they “Stop Torturing Bradley Manning! WHY? To demand the end of the torture pf Bradley Manning in Quantico U.S. Marine Base, Virginia USA. Although 23 year old Bradley Manning is a U.S. Army intelligence officer he is being held without explanation in the largest U.S. [...]

Internal Security

Meanwhile, in some countries, they even have a debate about Detention and the Internal Security Act (which has been mentioned before on this blog, here, and in the Weekly Worker, here). SUARA RAKYAT MALAYSIA www.suaram.net Press Statement by SUARAM: 7th March 2011 Mission Report on Malaysia by Working Group on Arbitrary Detention: Implement Recommendations Now! [...]

Protest Sri Lanka Detention

Buzz Coupland

Douglas ‘Buzz’ Coupland’s new novel, ‘Generation A’, takes as its premise the disappearance of bees, much discussed in the press in the wake of hive collapse. The tale is told in an unfolding multi-part personal/police statement/autobiography mode. It works mostly well until the storytelling parts in the second half, which are really OK in themselves, [...]

Scouting Shame NYT.

“‘There is no document of civilization that is not simultaneously a document of barbarism‘” (Benjamin p. vii) A photograph of five young Americans in combat gear beside a ‘Homeland Security’ bus graces the front page of the New York Times on May 13 2009. This image catches my eye on a day when newly discovered [...]

Theatre-Border

Slowly the form of our meeting in Berlin has been taking shape, via disparate (and desperate?) emails, haphazardly. That will no doubt continue, but I think it good to gather it together here (in dialogic form): John: I’ve no idea yet as to just what the Berlin workshop should be in April (week of 20th) [...]

Free Lex Wotton – Australian Injustice (International Actions)

Free Lex Wotton: Aboriginal Political Prisoner International Day of Solidarity London Rally 12 noon Thursday November 6th Australia House, Strand, WC2B 4LA On October 24th an all white jury found Lex Wotton, an Aboriginal man from Palm Island, guilty of ‘rioting with destruction’ for his involvement in the 2004 Palm Island uprising. On November 26th [...]

Raja Petra Kamaruddin given two-year ISA detention order

Detention without trial, the Internal Security Act raises its very ugly head again in Malaysia.  GERAKAN MANSUHKAN ISA ISA Updates: 23 September 2008 Raja Petra Kamaruddin, editor of the popular political blog, Malaysia Today, today (23 September 2008) received a two-year detention order under Section 8(1) of the Internal Security Act 1960 (ISA). The detention [...]

Police Detention facilities in Southwark, Walworth Rd and Peckham

Our good friends at the Institute of Race Relations provided a link to this report recently released by the HM Inspectorate on Police Detention facilities in Southwark, Walworth Rd and Peckham. It condemns the condition of the holding cells (used for detaining a range of people on suspicion of offences or immigration irregularities, with Southwark [...]

Abolish Malaysian Detentions/Internal Security Act

I have written on this before, here, and now it really is time Malaysia decided to lead the world and abolish their outrageous ISA (holdover from the anti-communist Emergency, and legacy of British colonialism). Seriously guys, get rid of this embarrassment, even if it means getting rid of Badawi as well. GERAKAN MANSUHKAN ISA Press [...]

Torture Taxi

I like the fact that Trever Paglen and A.C.Thompson write in such a clear forthright style in their book “Torture Taxi: On the trail of the CIA’s rendition flights” (2006 Melville House New Jersey). Classified as ‘current affairs/military history’, I think this is compulsory reading for so many reasons. Not least of all the way [...]

Migrating University Goldsmiths to Gatwick

No Detention, No Deportation; No Borders in Education: Freedom of Movement for All Migrating University, at Goldsmiths, September 14-15th 2007; From Goldsmiths to Gatwick. General enthusiasm for this event is very high. A feeling of frustration, and therefore energy for exploring activist options, is strong on campus. This is the joint result of the ongoing [...]

Murder-death-kill on the TV news

In order to feed Goldsmiths people and enthusiasm into the No Borders Camp at Gatwick (19-24 Sept), we want to organise a workshop at Goldsmiths the weekend before, called Migrating University (14-15th Sept). It will include a session which will be a walk along the route of the Battle of Lewisham 1977 30th anniversary of [...]

Comedy Terrors

Working out a new angle for a paper for Germany. Feeling like I need to do something with a few laughs. Hence, this opening… A new figure of fun in British media has an ominous underside, and yet on reflection I think does more politically than the mischief of the usual court jesters. The television [...]

The Politics of Cats.

Cat, n. Small mammal with an attitude problem. I imagine that cats are aphorists, composing dialectical koans and licking their whiskers at the elegance of their arabesques. Though I recognise that Adorno himself noted that aphorisms were not admissible in dialectical thought, which should always abhor isolation and separateness (1951/1974:16), I concede that cats are [...]