Sheffield Terror War Newswire Archive

The arrival of the Obama administration will not fundamentally alter the course of military expansion accelerated during the Bush era. The origins of these policies do not lie uniquely in neoconservative ideology. While the election of President Obama may offer new opportunities for progressive forces to delimit the damage, their space for movement will ultimately be constrained by deep-seated structural pressures that will attempt to exploit Obama to rehabilitate American imperial hegemony, rather than transform it.

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Support The EDO Decommisioners
Resisting War Crimes Is Not a Crime
www.decommisioners.wordpress.com

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Photos from the march from Ellesmere Green to Devonshire Green held on Saturday 24th January 2009 to protest against Israel's Attack on Gaza.

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Lloyds TSB threatens Islamic Bank of Britain with withdrawal of its services as a clearing bank unless they agree to closure of Interpal's account. Chairman of LLoyds TSB, Sir Victor Blank, has some interesting interests! What you can do to protest.

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On Tuesday 20th of January 2009 the Cageprisoners "Two Sides, One Story -- Guantanamo From Boths Sides of the Wire Tour" -- a tour to mark seven years of unlawful detention, abuse and torture, came to Sheffield. Christopher Arendt (former Guantanamo guard, Iraq Veterans Against War,  http://ivaw.org ), Moazzam Begg (former Guantanamo prisoner, spokesperson for Cageprisoners,  http://cageprisoners.com/ ) and Omar Deghayes (former Guantanamo prisoner,  http://www.save-omar.org.uk/ ) were introduced by Jillian Creasy on behalf of the Sheffield Guantanamo Campaign. It was an outstanding and very moving event and the audio of the meeting is attached and some photos follow.

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The action was marred when a placard held by AWL supporters at the protest against the imperial genocide in Gaza in Sheffield on 17th January 2009, which read, "No To IDF No To Hamas" was taken down by the Chair of the Sheffield Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

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There was another protest and march in Sheffield on Saturday 17th January 2009 in opposition to the ongoing massacre in Gaza.

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CALL FOR A CEASEFIRE IN GAZA: peace-building for the Palestinians and Israelis.

CAAB and York Palestinian Solidarity Committee are planning a gathering - at Menwith Hill at 1pm on TUESDAY 20 JANUARY, the day of the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the US.

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White Phosphorus (P4) is a waxy fat soluble colorless or slightly yellow solid with a garlic smell that is not naturally occurring but is produced in the laboratory. It is highly reactive with oxygen (ignites spontaneously upon drying and exposure to air) producing compounds like P4O6 (phosphorus pentoxide) and P4O10 which upon contact with water becomes oxophosphoric acids (aslternatively direct reaction with water can lead to phosphoric acid HPO4 through some intermediate compounds)

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On March 24, 1999, an emotional Tony Blair appealed to the House of Commons and to the people of Britain:

"We must act to save thousands of innocent men, women and children from humanitarian catastrophe."

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The following letter was posted on the very excellent  http://www.kabobfest.com/. Written in 1956, within a decade of the creation of the Israeli State, it provides a painful reminder of the fact that todays events are far from isolated incidents…

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Reports from Vittorio Arrigoni, in Gaza with Free Gaza/ISM. More reports (in Italian) on  http://guerrillaradio.iobloggo.com/

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PRESS RELEASE
Mounting evidence is emerging that Israel is experimenting new non-conventional weapons on civilian population in Gaza . "It is happening again what we saw in Lebanon two years ago", says Paola Manduca , genetics teacher and researcher at the University of Genoa and member of New Weapons Research Committee (NWRC), "where Israel used white phosphorus, Dense inert metal explosive (DIME), thermobaric bombs, cluster bombs and uranium ammunitions and experimented novel weapons and delivery modalities. Still today there are unexploded bombs and radioactivity on the ground".

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Protesters gathered outside Sheffield Town Hall on 10th January 2009 to oppose the slaughter in Gaza.

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Israel claims it is fighting in Gaza to stop Hamas rocket-fire against Israel, the continuation of which constituted a flagrant breach of the six-months ceasefire. Hence, the objective of the military operation is limited by the aim of putting an end to the rocket-fire. In fact, the current outbreak of violence cannot be understood without analysing the asymmetries in military violence between the two parties; the structural dynamic of the conflict in the context of the character of the Israeli occupation; the central role of recent discoveries of substantial natural gas reserves in Gaza; and joint Anglo-American and Israeli attempts to monopolise the lucrative (and strategic) energy resources through a political process tied to a corrupt Palestinian Authority run by Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Party. Hamas' unprecedented victory in democratic elections in 2006 fundamentally threatened these plans. Operation Cast Lead, the concurrent Israeli military venture, was operationalised as a war plan in early 2008, and already finalised in detail as far back as 2001 by Israeli military intelligence. Its execution in late December 2008 into January 2009 is designed to head-off not only domestic Israeli elections, but more significantly, the outcome of further incoming Palestinian democratic elections likely to consolidate Hamas' power, to permanently shift the balance of geopolitical and economic power in its favour. The long-term goal is the "cantonization" of the Occupied Territories making way for increased Israeli encroachment, and ultimately the escalation of Palestinian emigration.

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"When the truth is replaced by silence," the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko said, "the silence is a lie." It may appear the silence is broken on Gaza. The cocoons of murdered children, wrapped in green, together with boxes containing their dismembered parents and the cries of grief and rage of everyone in that death camp by the sea, can be viewed on al-Jazeera and YouTube, even glimpsed on the BBC. But Russia's incorrigible poet was not referring to the ephemeral we call news; he was asking why those who knew the why never spoke it and so denied it. Among the Anglo-American intelligentsia, this is especially striking. It is they who hold the keys to the great storehouses of knowledge: the historiographies and archives that lead us to the why.

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Supporters of the Sheffield Palestine Solidarity Campaign gathered outside Sheffield Town Hall on 7th January 2009 before going into the public gallery to raise the issue of the massacres in Gaza at a full Council meeting.

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Dates and times for Manchester Gaza vigils

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Just when you thought the attacks on privacy couldn't get worse... If you still need a reason to switch to Linux then read the following extracts from a Sunday Times article:

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3rd January 2009: thousands march through central Manchester in protest against Israeli air strikes on Gaza, and a feared ground offensive. For a pertinent critique of such marches, see  http://dwighttowers.blogspot.com/2009/01/i-aint-marchin-anymore.html

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