Sheffield Analysis Newswire Archive

Why is the Obama administration hell-bent on continuing rendition, and covering-up torture? Why are Western states complicit in these illegal activities? How can the systematic perpetuation of such criminal practices under the rubric of the 'War on Terror' be conducted by the very states who claim to be the guardians of 'international law' and 'human rights'?

Read more >>

Addressing a national television audience in his first White House press conference, President Barack Obama, promoting his economic stimulus plan, used unprecedented language to characterize the deepening economic crisis. He described conditions of rapidly rising unemployment, growing demand at food banks, widespread foreclosures, the collapse of consumer spending and the failure of small businesses.

Read more | 1 comment >>

Imagine yourself within the mind of Barack Obama, the first African American president of the United States of America. You are a man who knows how 'the system' works. This knowledge has been accrued at hard struggle, and by a remarkable and unique ability to adapt to any environment because you spent a lifetime as an exotic specimen in every environment, from Kansas to Kenya -- both African and American, Muslim and Christian, black and white. But you always displayed your native nobility -- tribal nobility on your father's side; nobility of spirit on your mother's -- and you were, with rare exceptions, accepted on your own terms. You were born under the sign of Leo, the lion, the natural leader; and your intelligence was honed with great discipline, under the influence of strong women.

Read more | 9 comments >>

Condi Rice: “What we’re seeing here, in a sense, is the growing birth pangs of a new Middle East.”

Jon Stewart: “Birth pangs? Yes, I believe today’s contraction took out a city block.”

Read more | 1 comment >>

I've said all along that whatever good changes might occur in regard to non-foreign policy issues, such as what's already taken place concerning the environment and abortion, the Obama administration will not produce any significantly worthwhile change in US foreign policy; little done in this area will reduce the level of misery that the American Empire regularly brings down upon humanity. And to the extent that Barack Obama is willing to clearly reveal what he believes about anything controversial, he appears to believe in the empire.

Read more | 1 comment >>

Neoconservatism thinking, according to E.D. Kain (via Sullivan), goes like this: The Islamic world is nothing like the Western world. We have few, if any, of the same values and virtually no historical commonality save our shared, centuries-old conflict with one another. The Islamic world, by and large, has none of the laws or customs necessary to develop an organic democratic society the way Western nations have. Therefore, the only way to achieve peace with the Islamic world is for them to adopt our notions of plurality, democracy, and humanism. They won’t do this on their own because of their lack of shared values, and so it follows that we must intervene on their behalf to impose these values, and fashion democracies for them in our image.

Read more | 1 comment >>

'I have some good news and some bad news,' the sergeant in the joke tells his men. 'The good news is that you are going to change your dirty socks. The bad news is that you are going to exchange them among yourselves.'

Read more | 2 comments >>

++++ 2009 SEMINAR SERIES ++++

All @ Geography Lecture Theatre, East Building
 http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/info/school/contact.html

No need to book.

Wine reception and book sales will follow each seminar

Read more | 3 comments >>

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.

Read more | 2 comments >>

Marching amid the 50,000 protesters in London bearing witness against the Israeli offensive on Gaza, I spotted a hand-made placard inscribed with the words of the radical Brazilian educator Paolo Freire: “Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”

Read more | 1 comment >>

The merciless Israeli bombardment of Gaza has stopped -- for now -- but the death toll keeps rising as more bodies are pulled from carpet- bombed neighborhoods.

What Israel perpetrated in Gaza, starting at 11:30am on 27 December 2008, will remain forever engraved in history and memory. Tel al-Hawa, Hayy al-Zeitoun, Khuzaa and other sites of Israeli massacres will join a long mournful list that includes Deir Yasin, Qibya, Kufr Qasim, Sabra and Shatila, Qana, and Jenin.

Read more | 7 comments >>

A placard held by Alliance for Workers Liberty (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.

Read more | 126 comments >>

Following is a review of The Transition Handbook written by Carolyn Baker. The first version of The Transition Handbook is available on paper, the second version is being developed through open revisions of the first version, see The Transition Handbook 2nd edition. Previous articles on the Transition Initiative on UK Indymedia include, Rob Hopkins on “The Rocky Road to a Real Transition”: A Review, Keith Parkins on Transition Towns and John Michael Greer: Transition Towns movement: Premature Triumphalism?.

Read more >>

The following article was originally published in Fourth World Review - A Transition Journal., see also this talk by Nafeez Ahmed, Food Crisis & Peak Oil (Audio).

Read more | 1 comment >>

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.

Read more >>

One thing is absolutely clear about the current situation in Palestine: the Israeli state is committing acts of horrific violence against the Palestinian working class, and this needs to be stopped immediately.

But that's not all there is to say about the situation...

Read more | 9 comments >>

Around the beginning of the twenty-first century, there began a clash of two gigantic forces: overpopulation and oil depletion. The event went unnoticed by all but a few people, but it was quite real. As a result of that clash, the number of human beings on Earth must one day decline in order to match the decline in oil production.

Read more | 3 comments >>

The official National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Final Report on the Collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 admits that the top of the building accelerated at the rate of gravity for 2.25 seconds into it's own footprint -- 8 stories worth of collapse.

Read more | 2 comments >>

Sustainable Energy — without the hot air is an book about the UK's energy crisis, it's essential reading.

Read more | 1 addition | 2 comments >>

The Climate Safety report which has just been released is essential reading.

Read more | 2 comments >>