Sheffield Analysis Newswire Archive

A show on the 'developed' world's fundamental disconnection from the soil that ultimately sustains us all, with an emphasis on the insanity of modern US food laws. Julian Cribb on the global famines ahead, Ivan Illich on soil and virtue, David Gumpert on why FDA agents went undercover for a year to catch an Amish farmer accused of selling raw milk. Then Frederick Kaufman on global food market profiteering by Goldman Sachs and Patrick Holden from the UK soil association on organic food and use of direct action to escape the market model of food provision.

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The Guardian, along with the rest of the MSM have so far managed to ignore the elephant within the room in the Murdoch press hacking scandal. One would have thought given the latest revelations about Gordon Brown and his family, someone might have asked the question exactly what was the British Secret Intelligence Service doing whilst News International hacked into the British prime ministers private life.

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How does political censorship work in liberal societies? When my film, 'Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia', was banned in the United States in 1980, the broadcaster PBS cut all contact. Negotiations were ended abruptly; phone calls were not returned. Something had happened. But what? 'Year Zero' had already alerted much of the world to the horrors of Pol Pot, but it also investigated the critical role of the Nixon administration in the tyrant’s rise to power and the devastation of Cambodia.

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This week, a two part show on the US Police State. In our first hour, recordings from last month's meeting of the National Committee to Reopen The Rosenberg Case, including Robert Meeropol's Eulogy to his parents, by whose 1953 killing the US government intensified the red scare. In our second hour, we hear from the Chicago civil liberties community on the September 2010 FBI raids there and subsequent use of grand jury proceedings in an effort to chill dissent.

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The headline of last Sunday’s Observer article on Venezuela set the tone for the slanted and opportunistic piece of political ‘reporting’ that followed:

‘Noam Chomsky denounces old friend Hugo Chávez for “assault” on democracy’.

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Mindless, violent thugs, hell-bent on sowing chaos.’ That’s the kind of press anarchists often get. Uri Gordon provides a more sympathetic take on a growing yet still little understood political movement.

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There is nothing more sacred to the maintenance of democracy than a free press. Access to comprehensive, accurate and quality information is essential to the manifestation of Socratic citizenship - the society characterized by a civically engaged, well-informed and socially invested populace. Thus, to the degree that access to quality information is willfully or unintentionally obstructed, democracy itself is degraded.

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The week's show features two important thinkers on the idea of the world as system. First, a radio adaptation of episode 2 of the new documentary by Adam Curtis, All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace about the social role and flimsy scientific basis of the idea of an 'ecosystem', followed by a short comment by Curtis on the film's main message. Next, Ivan Illich on the institutionalization of society and the loss of people's personal power in the 1980's when people started to see the world as a system.

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The Media Blank Amnesty's Failure To Find Evidence In Libya

In the Independent on June 24, Patrick Cockburn reported a vital development countering official propaganda on Libya:

'Human rights organisations have cast doubt on claims of mass rape and other abuses perpetrated by forces loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, which have been widely used to justify Nato's war in Libya.

'Nato leaders, opposition groups and the media have produced a stream of stories since the start of the insurrection on 15 February, claiming the Gaddafi regime has ordered mass rapes, used foreign mercenaries and employed helicopters against civilian protesters.'

Amnesty and Human Rights Watch (HRW) have checked the claims and found flat zero evidence.

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June 30th marks a very considerable mobilisation of industrial action in Britain, in the shape of a large public sector strike. The Trades Unions are making their first tentative steps towards politically motivated action for a generation, with a massive withdrawal of workers labour in response to government plans for pensions reform; whilst the pensions dispute is the legal justification for industrial action (under Britain’s strict, Thatcherite anti-strike legislation), in reality the issue is the tip of the iceberg. The consensus behind the strikes is that of a political fight against the cuts in general. The range of action we will see on June 30th will stretch far beyond those “directly” affected by pensions plans, with a cross-section of those worst hit by the cuts expected to engage with the day of action– the disabled, those who face massive reductions to vital welfare benefits, students, schools pupils and parents and other public-service users.

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The revolutionary movement that began in Tunisia at the end of last year has now sparked mass movements in Europe; principally, to date, in Greece and Spain. On the surface, these movements have little in common. In Tunisia and Egypt, the people came out in vast numbers to overthrow the hated dictators who, for decades, had strangled their economies and presided over police states, whereas in Greece and Spain, the protestors are not seeking the overthrow of dictators, and are not rebelling against a police state (although both countries can draw on their relatively recent experience of dictatorship).

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The show this week looks at 'human needs' - a concept so deep as to go largely unquestioned by ideologues of economics and economic 'development'. We start with a reading from an anthropology professor which challenges ideas of 'primitive' people's poverty, before some of an essay by Illich on "Needs". In our second hour, some easier listening - a radio adaptation of a film on consumerism, Shop Til You Drop.

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This week we challenge modern ideas about wealth and poverty. Our main piece is by two English professors, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett on their 2009 book, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better. But first, we conclude the Ivan Illich reading from episode 554.

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'Libya has some of the biggest and most proven oil reserves — 43.6 billion barrels — outside Saudi Arabia, and some of the best drilling prospects.'

So reported the Washington Post on June 11, in a rare mainstream article which, as we will see, revealed how WikiLeaks exposed the real motives behind the war on Libya.

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The latest Working Class Bookfair will take place in Sunderland on Saturday the 18th of june, 11-5pm, followed by early evening music from the Summer Tumblers.
Books, barbecues, beer, soft drinks and good company should make for a good day out.

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Or: Our Problem With Mainstream Dissidents

Working on Media Lens has given us ten years of first-hand experience of just how tightly discussion can be controlled in an ostensibly democratic society. No matter how carefully we have formulated our questions, no matter how politely we have delivered them, we have been branded angry, irrational, unworthy of attention.

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I have now ploughed through all 120 pages odd of the Government’s new Prevent Strategy, which manages to be even more illiberal and more turgid than the original. It claims that the last Prevent Strategy was misguided – but for all the wrong reasons. Rather amusingly, it starts with a message of endorsement from Lord Carlile – who also endorsed the last strategy which it criticises so strongly. The truth is, Carlile will endorse anything for any government which gives him status – he loves status – “It has my considered and strong support” he concludes his endorsement – you have to imagine saying it with marbles in your mouth and a degree of insufferable pomposity – “It has my considered and strong support”- wanker.

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This week we hear a pair of perspectives from earlier this month on US foreign policy, both from seasoned critics of the US Imperial Strategy. Firstly, Tariq Ali reviews the historical record, from the genocidal expansionism of US colonists up this month's exploits in Libya. Secondly, Noam Chomsky speaksin Syracuse, NY on "What Drives US Foreign Policy & What We Can Do To Change It".

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This post is a response to Charlotte DuCann’s beautiful and heartfelt post over on the Transition Norwich blog arguing that Transition needs to more explicitly embrace activism.  It is wonderful to see, whether through that blog, through Transition Voice, or through the emerging social reporting project, new voices coming through in the Transition blogosphere.  Charlotte speaks powerfully to the split that some of those engaged in Transition feel, that they almost need to keep their activism ‘in the closet’ in order to remain engaged.  She states that she sees her post as a ‘working document’, and invites reflections, so here are a few of mine.

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This week's entire show is devoted to a recent speech by the pioneer of the free software movement, Richard Stallman. He gives a history of copyright law, and how it has become a tool of corporations to maximize profit by creating scarcity. He explains the technical and legal sides of some recent battles about DRM, and the moral and pragmatic reasons why people should refuse to use proprietary software.

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