Sheffield History Newswire Archive

As the world awaits the celebration of the birth of the Christ child -- and as, on the eve of this celebration, municipalities around the United States clear out Occupy encampments, pepper-spray peaceful protesters, and threaten them with felony convictions and two-year jail sentences -- it is worth remembering what the historical Jesus actually told people to do: he told them precisely to behave like Occupy protesters.

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Now is a critical time for 'Occupy', as repressive forces bear down on them. This article puts out a few ideas to help us regroup, in order to carry the struggle forward.

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Ten years ago terrorists used hijacked aeroplanes to destroy the Twin Towers in New York City, killing nearly three thousand people. This was a crime which Stop the War Coalition condemned at the time, and it reaffirms that condemnation today.

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An event co-organised by the University of Sheffield’s Centre for the Study of Democratic Culture and the Centre for Peace History.

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The attack on the British Council in Kabul on 19th August, resulting in twelve deaths and many injuries, further underlined how unwelcome the occupiers are, in a country in which they should never have been in the first place. Further tragedies, heaped on tragedies, also illustrated how out of touch those both on the ground in country - and those in high places abroad are. The day of the attack was both the Sabbath (Friday) and national holiday marking the 92nd anniversary of Afghanistan's independence from Britain in 1919 and of course, the 19th: 19 -1919.

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With few exceptions – like some salacious rumor about the Kennedy family – the mainstream U.S. news media has little interest in historical stories. Such was the case when an ex-White House terrorism official accused a former CIA director of withholding information that might have prevented a 9/11 attack, Ray McGovern reports.

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The former chief White House counterterrorism adviser in both the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations charges in a recently released interview that the CIA deliberately concealed the presence in the United States of two Saudi members of Al Qaeda who subsequently participated in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

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In a new documentary, ex-national security aide Richard Clarke suggests the CIA tried to recruit 9/11 hijackers—then covered it up. Philip Shenon on George Tenet’s denial.

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With the tenth anniversary of 9/11 just a month away, the intelligence failures leading up to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have started to attract fresh scrutiny from former counterterrorism officials, who have called into question the veracity of the official government narrative that concluded who knew what and when.

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Seventy-six years ago today the city of Hiroshima was ravaged by a US nuclear bomb. Within days Nagasaki too had been torn apart by this terrifying new weapon of mass destruction.

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As the British government's toothless torture inquiry is abandoned by ten NGOs and lawyers for the former Guantánamo prisoners, who have long recognised that it was nothing more than a whitewash, but have now given up on even trying to engage with it, politicians n the Tory-led coalition government are not the only ones feeling the heat. Yesterday, in a world exclusive, the Guardian's Ian Cobain exposed a top secret document, entitled, "Agency policy on liaison with overseas security and intelligence services in relation to detainees who may be subject to mistreatment," which "reveal[ed] how MI6 and MI5 officers were allowed to extract information from prisoners being illegally tortured overseas."

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For the record: Around June 17 or 18, both Edward S. Herman and I each began submitting manuscripts to the Guardian of London, prompted by false and misleading claims that had been made by the British writer George Monbiot on June 14, in his weekly commentary for this prestigious newspaper. "Left and libertarian right cohabit in the weird world of the genocide belittlers," was the title the Guardian had given it. At Monbiot's own website, the title he had chosen was more direct: "Naming the Genocide Deniers" (June 13).

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"The only thing that will save millions more Afghans from death will be that America can no longer afford to kill them."

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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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Attached is a recording of the Q&A session that followed a 6th July 2011 screening of After The Apocalypse at the Showroom Cinema, Sheffield.

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'After The Apocalypse', is showing at the Showroom Cinema, Sheffield on Tuesday 5th of July at 18.30.

It's a 65 minute documentary about a pregnant woman's battle to keep her unborn baby against the wishes of a hostile medical profession, in Kazakhstan.

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When I was a child, I read the Guinness Book of Records, and marvelled at the stories of the people who, in ancient times, removed themselves from everyday reality, like Saint Simeon Stylites, a Christian ascetic who lived on a tiny platform on top of a pillar in Aleppo, Syria for 37 years in the 5th century AD.

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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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Civil liberties advocates are raising alarm over news the FBI is giving agents more leeway to conduct domestic surveillance. According to the New York Times, new guidelines will allow FBI agents to investigate people and organizations "proactively" without firm evidence for suspecting criminal activity. We speak to former FBI agent Mike German, who now works at the American Civil Liberties Union, and Texas activist Scott Crow, who has been the focus of intense FBI surveillance from 2001 until at least 2008. Using the Freedom of Information Act, Crow received 440 pages of heavily redacted documents revealing the FBI had set up a video camera outside his house, traced the license plates of cars parked in front of his home, recorded the arrival and departure of his guests, and observed gatherings that Crow attended at bookstores and cafes. The agency also tracked Crow’s emails and phone conversations and picked through his trash to identify his bank and mortgage companies. “It’s been definitely traumatizing at different points,” says Crow. “But if we don’t come out and be open about this, then they’ve already won, and the surveillance and the ‘war on terror’ wins against us.”

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Celebrating the 200th Anniversary of the Luddite Uprisings: Technology Politics Then and Now

Date: Wednesday June 8th, 7pm

Venue: Feminist Library meeting room, 5a Westminster Bridge Road, London SE1 7XW, Nearest tube Lambeth North,

 http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=154817494584557

Organised by:
Luddites200 Organising Forum
 luddites200@yahoo.co.uk
 http://www.luddites200.org.uk/

No admission charge, donations welcome. Please contact organisers about disabled access.

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