Letter to G8

phone for press releases: XXXXXXXX??

Epigraph
'' These are the souls of the broken factories| The subject slaves of the broken crown | The dead accounting of old guilty promises | These are the souls of the broken town (Sting).''|

First P
Dear G8,

It's very difficult to write this letter...But we'll take the plunge, because your business is no longer merely your business: once again, mankind is your business. Let's talk, then, not only about what you're doing to other people, but about what you're doing to yourselves.

Para
You're gutting our Constitutions. Already your home can be entered without your knowledge or permission, you can be snatched away and incarcerated without cause, your mail can be spied on, your private records searched. Why isn't this a recipe for widespread business theft, political intimidation, and fraud? We are told all this is for our own safety and protection, but we don't want to be slaves.

Para
You want to possess our souls as well as our bodies, in a totalitarian state unknown of in any democracy, parallel only to the so-called (by yourselves) dictatorships you are intent on fighting for the sake of "freedom". Indeed. Your terror bills and new legislation are aimed at reducing even more our discrimination powers: what was food and circus for the Romans is consumerism and soap for us. But even if we agree to be subjects to a crown, we don't agree and will never agree to be your slaves.

Para
You may have thought you were right in choosing to hold your summit in a nation where another high percentage of population did agree to go to war; you thought –but you were wrong—that such a nation would not wake up and rebel and dissent against further surveillance in the new imperialist-fascist state, because we wouldn't see the need. But you were wrong: We don't want your wars, neither in the past, the present or the future.

Para
We reject your program of infinite progress for a few and unsustainable poverty for most. As we believe that a better world can, should and will be possible if only we will let it.

Para
We reject your policies of insanity-driven arrogance, of greed before people's needs, and profit before Nature's survival. In fact, we want to live in peace and freedom, but neither in your freedom that means slavery, nor in your peace that means fear inside and endlessly waging war on other peoples.

Para
We don't want this or the other G8 countries to be coordinating spaces for your military actions and airports for your military aircraft --as we believe that a better world can, should and will be possible if only we will let it.

Para
You are not generating any extra sustainable development either for the countries where you decide to hold your "summits" since you are travelling already equipped with every kind of service or good you'd need. On the contrary, you are causing great disturbance with your enforced security and safety measures, checks and IDcards for neighbours, children included.

Para
And so people in this country are calling on you, G8, to disband, we are calling for you to stop your deadly itinerary throughout Great Britain, to not come to Sheffield nor to Gleneagles: to leave and get out.

Para
And please... never to come back. --

Acknowledgements
Thanks to Margaret Atwood, Noam Chomsky, Umberto Eco, Jacques Lacan, Liberty UK, Greenpeace, No2ID, DefyID, Make Poverty History, Save Local Works, Dissent, /Peace in the Park, UK Social Fora, European Social Forum, World_Social_Forum, the SWP, /Stop the War Coalition, the Green Party, People & Planet, the people of Venezuela, the people of Fallujah, Trapese, Circa, the Infernal Noise Brigade, the Samba_Band, Rhythms for resistance, Seeds_for_change, the Creative Network, International Women Social Forum, the NATO (Northern Artist Tactics organization), No a la Guerra, Indymedia, the British Communisty Party,

(this list is to be continued ... please add names known to adhere to the PGA hallmarks),

(this Acknowledgement section (not an endorsement section, please) ensures that significant endorsement to the petition is provided, persons do not necessarily need to sign the letter, but of course it should also be circulated or displayed for anybody to sign, had you thought how to do it?)

Sheffield Indymedia is a part of the UK and global network of Independant Media Centres established since the first one was set up in Seattle in 1999.

Sheffield Indymedia has a open publishing news website, http://sheffield.indymedia.org.uk/ and an events site, http://www.protest.net/imcsheffield/ and organises stuff using an open email list, http://lists.indymedia.org/imc-sheffield and the Indymedia wiki, http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/ImcUkSheffield.

There is an overview of Indymedia on the Wikipedia.

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(I have tried to follow the hallmark below about confrontational approaches (different from "violent", applied to writing).

(PGA).

The Hallmarks are as follows:

1. A very clear rejection of capitalism, imperialism and feudalism; all trade agreements, institutions and governments that promote destructive globalisation.

2. We reject all forms and systems of domination and discrimination including, but not limited to, patriarchy, racism and religious fundamentalism of all creeds. We embrace the full dignity of all human beings.

3. A confrontational attitude, since we do not think that lobbying can have a major impact in such biased and undemocratic organisations, in which transnational capital is the only real policy-maker.

4. A call to direct action and civil disobedience, support for social movements' struggles, advocating forms of resistance which maximise respect for life and oppressed peoples' rights, as well as the construction of local alternatives to global capitalism

5. An organisational philosophy based on decentralisation and autonomy.

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