Sheffield Analysis Newswire Archive

They came, they camped, they conquered (well, almost). During a soul-searching Dorset retreat, Climate Camp have decided to suspend tent-centred activism - citing the “radically different political landscape” of 2011. Having been through Drax, Kingsnorth, Heathrow, RBS, Copenhagen and one helluva lot of hummus, the group are now turning their attention to coordination with the wider anti-cuts and anti-austerity movement.

Updated after the jump

On the Newswire: Statement | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010

In SchNEWS: 736 | 696 | 689 | 642 | 641 | 600 | 558

Links: www.climatecamp.org.uk/2011-statement

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As the wave of popular uprisings has spread across the Arab world, a flurry of articles have appeared suggesting Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez could be the next “dictator” to be overthrown.

Such arguments follow a pattern in the corporate media of slandering the Chavez government and the revolutionary process it leads.

They aim to conceal the real threat that haunts imperialism: that the Arab world may follow the example of Venezuela and other countries in Latin America — and break away from Western hegemony.

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George Monbiot is an award-winning investigative journalist with a regular column in the Guardian, has published several books and a screenplay to boot. His writing spans topics such as the environment, political corruption, corporate misdeeds and the ideologies behind current economic thinking. Perhaps his most insightful work describes the complex webs connecting these concepts. A tireless campaigner, advocate for human rights and never one to shy away from a thorny issue or controversial argument, we were happy to catch up with him ahead of his upcoming debate tour.

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It's time to talk honestly about collapse.

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Starts with a rant welcoming the new business Master of Washington. Then to Greenpeace Brazil, interview with Kiko Brito on the climate floods there. Feature interview with Nafeez Ahmed, author of "A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization." Ends with a speck of hope. Radio Ecoshock 110128

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In the space of a few weeks, Australia and the world have been rocked by devastating weather events, from huge snowstorms across the US to flash flooding and cyclones in Australia. Many of these events have not just been catastrophic, but have set new records for weather.

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Yesterday evening, after it was announced that Hosni Mubarak had met the first demand of the revolution and left office, I headed toward the Egyptian embassy in Amman. The joy on the streets was something I had never experienced before.

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The next Sheffield Humanist Society meeting will be "Population 101 - An introduction to global population dynamics" with Mike Freedman, director of the documentary Critical Mass (  http://www.criticalmassfilm.com/ ). You will also be hearing soon about the Sheffield Humanist Society campaign for Census 2011 and the April meeting on Secularism with Terry Sanderson from the National Secular Society.

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A detailed overview of Mark Kennedy's actions between 2002-2010, in different countries. It will no doubt generate more information, so please comment or email the address included.

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In 1886, Tolstoy wrote:

‘Slavery has long been abolished. It was abolished in Rome, and in America, and in Russia, but what was abolished was the word and not the thing in itself.’ (Tolstoy, What Then Must We Do?, Green Classics, 1991, p.104)

In 2011, ‘the thing in itself’ is alive and well in Egypt. What an extraordinary spectacle it is - a dictatorship behaving as though an entire people were its personal property. Henchmen aside, the people have spoken, almost as one, and their demands are very clear. The blunt government response, in effect: We react as we want. If we don’t want to, we don’t have to. Why? Because we have a monopoly of violence.

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This week we hear two scholars on the profound roots of separation, firstly within the structure of the brain itself, secondly between individuals in modern society. Ian McGilchrist sets the scene in our first hour with The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. In our second hour we replay one of the deepest talks from earlier Unwelcome Guests episodes - The Roots and Ramifications of our Culture of Hierarchy and Control by Marvin Bram.

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The population of Egypt doubled since 1980. Mexico, India too. Dr. Jack Alpert says it is time for extreme measures, before civilization falls. With three responses by Rex Weyler of Greenpeace fame, Dr. William Rees (co-inventor of "ecological footprint") & ecologist Vandy Savage.

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This week, 2 contributions by Peter Dale Scott, a long established researcher into what he calls 'deep politics'. We begin with a talk on Continuity of Government from the 2010 Santa Cruz 'Understanding Deep Politics' conference, and conclude with a 90 minute interview on the contents of his new book, "The American War Machine - Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and The Road to Afghanistan", interspersed by 8 minutes of Dwight Eisenhower's valedictory address from half a century ago in which he warns of the military industrial complex.

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It’s not hard to spot the scientists in commercial advertising: they’re the ones wearing white coats. Whether hawking toothpaste, skin cream, or even cigarettes, the white coat vouches for the presence of a highly-trained, disinterested expert ensuring product safety and effectiveness.

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The looting of Cairo’s world-famous Egyptian Museum over the weekend seems to have engendered the desired news headlines.

‘Looters smash ancient treasures’, ‘Looters decapitate mummies’, ‘Looters rip off heads of artifacts’ etc., read a rash of headlines, following the apparent breaking into the country’s national museum, which is said to house the world’s biggest of Pharaonic antiquities.

However, it has since emerged, although with much less headline coverage, that some of the would-be looters apprehended by protesters outside the museum were identified as working for the state’s interior ministry.

The incident may be just a foretaste of a wider range of propaganda stunts or false flags, including atrocities and fatalities, that the Mubarak regime will enact in order to discredit the protest movement sweeping that nation.

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In the media’s coverage of climate change, are we really still stuck on square one of some ghastly board game?

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The horrific killing of six people in Arizona, and the wounding of a dozen more, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, generated a wave of discussion on the impact of violent political rhetoric.

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Did you know that in Livermore, California a bulb has been lit constantly since 1901 and is still going strong? This week's headline piece is a radio adaptation of The Lightbulb Conspiracy, a film about how the first international cartel not only increased prices but to decreased the lifetime of lightbulbs. We also hear Juliet Schor on overproduction and radio adaptations of Annie Leonard's The Story of Bottled Water, The Story of Cosmetics and The Story of Stuff, plus Heather Rogers' The Hidden Life of Garbage.

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The attacks on WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, are a response to an information revolution that threatens old power orders in politics and journalism. The incitement to murder trumpeted by public figures in the United States, together with attempts by the Obama administration to corrupt the law and send Assange to a hell-hole prison for the rest of his life, are the reactions of a rapacious system exposed as never before.

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This week we hear a range of voices on False Flag terror attacks by national 'security forces'. After an introduction by James Corbett, an insider's account from 2007 by Annie Machon of why she and David Shayler quit MI5. Next we look at the '9-99' apartment bombings in September 1999 by the Russian FSB, whose director, Putin, was swept to power, and which served as a pretext to attack Chechnya. After reports from Iraq of false flag terror attacks by the occupying forces, sections on the 2009 'underwear bomber' and the '7-7' London bombings of July 7th, 2005.

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