Month: August 2003

Information Clearing House Archive August 2003 Part 4

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August 2003 — Information Clearing House Archive

For the Month of August 2003 – Part 4

[From the Archives. I’ve been archiving ICH digests since 2003. Unfortunately, an unknown number of the links are now dead, so I can’t guarantee that the link will take you where you want to go. WB]

U.S. military may be needed for Israel-Palestinian stability, key Republican says:

The Bush administration “has to figure out who is going to go after the terrorists,” Lugar said, adding that U.S. military involvement “has to be a potential possibility.”

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=
/news/archive/2003/08/24/national1457EDT0489.DTL

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Information Clearing House Archive August 2003 — Part 3

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August 2003 — Information Clearing House Archive

For the Month of August 2003 – Part 3

[From the Archives. I’ve been archiving ICH digests since 2003. Unfortunately, an unknown number of the links are now dead, so I can’t guarantee that the link will take you where you want to go. WB]

Blair’s 45-minute claim on Iraq was hearsay:

Tony Blair’s headline-grabbing claim that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes of an order to do so was based on hearsay information.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1020033,00.html

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Information Clearing House Archive August 2003 Part 2

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August 2003 — Information Clearing House Archive

For the Month of August 2003 – Part 2

[From the Archives. I’ve been archiving ICH digests since 2003. Unfortunately, an unknown number of the links are now dead, so I can’t guarantee that the link will take you where you want to go. WB]

Christmas shopping? Don’t forget your George W. Bush – U.S. President and Naval Aviator – 12″ Action Figure

Can you believe this?

http://www.kbtoys.com/genProduct.html?PID=2431939&ctid=17&ls=toys&_ts=y

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Information Clearing House August 2003 – Part1

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August 2003 — Information Clearing House Archive

For the Month of August 2003 – Part 1

Al Qaida wins a battle:

Although Islamic terrorists may eventually lose the War on Terrorism, they have clearly won the most recent battle: Operation Iraqi Freedom.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4320.htm

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Off the Hook? By William Bowles

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29 August 2003

Well predictably the media here in the UK has, by and large, given Blah a clean bill of health, not because he didn’t lie but because he did such a good job of lying. Apparently, the more articulate you are at the business of dissembling, the more kudos you acquire. This is the ‘post-modern’ world where form takes precedent over content.

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Trust- Belief – Exaggeration By William Bowles

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28 August 2003

Blair, Campbell, Goebbels and the Word
As the state is increasingly exposed as fraudulent, so the media has created a barrier that absorbs direct attack by deflecting criticism into the ‘nooks and crannies’ of the management of the state machine. How it does this is revealed by the nature of the relationship between the state and the media and the use of language, where the grammar and syntax becomes critical to the process of persuasion.

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A marriage made in hell By William Bowles

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23 August 2003

The media’s complicity in putting spin on the spin
The media’s response to the ‘revelations’ of the Hutton inquiry reveals more about the nature of corporate journalism than it does about the role of the government’s propagandists. And especially, the back-peddling being performed in an attempt to justify the complicity of the media in not seeing what was patently obvious to anyone who cared to look, namely that the government lies and lies on a consistent basis about its reasons for invading Iraq.

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Mission Impossible By William Bowles

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22 August 2003

Never has the meaning of the global village struck home in quite the way as in the present circumstances. Past empires have been able to hide behind distance and disinformation, but the current imperial project is, in spite of all the efforts to hide it, being built inside a goldfish bowl, where every move, every stratagem is immediately subject to scrutiny from a myriad of observers.

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End Game? By William Bowles

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21 August 2003

What’s an empire to do when it’s barely started on its ‘mission’ (ordained by a God no less) and the damn thing starts falling apart? Blame the ‘international terror network’ of course. And of course, that’s what the Imperium is doing as it casts about for suitable suspects. And there’s no shortage on which to pin the ‘blame’. But is anyone buying it? Not judging by the media’s reaction. Today’s Independent (21/08/03) for example, had this to say: Continue reading →

The Media’s killing fields…and so it goes By William Bowles

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18 August 2003

Channel 4 TV broadcast a ‘documentary’ “Congo’s Killing Fields” (17/08/03) that purported to be a report on the current situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The hour-long doccie had me hopping mad from the very beginning to its very end and cursing the box sitting in the corner of the room.

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The verdict? Guilty, sort of By William Bowles

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19 August 2003

One is tempted to hold off saying anything until the loathsome Alistair Campbell, chief propagandist for the Blair government does his pitch at the Hutton ‘enquiry’ today. However, of far more importance than what he does or doesn’t say (after all, the cat’s out of the bag anyway), is how will the Blair government deal with this mounting crisis of confidence in its reign and indeed the potential challenge to the credibility of the state that Blair’s cockup represents?

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Dr David Kelly, the real deal: preserving the integrity of the state By William Bowles

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17 August 2003

It is instructive as well as fascinating to follow the convoluted trail of disinformation and hyperbole in the government and the media’s attempts to transfer the blame from one individual to another in the agenda of diverting attention from the central issue, namely why we went to war.

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Duck and Drakes By William Bowles

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16 August 2003

“The American empire passes the duck test: it not only looks like a duck and walks like a duck, it also quacks like a duck.” — The Economist (14/08/03)

If you want to know what the ruling class (at least in the UK) really thinks, you have to go to the horse’s mouth or, in this case, the duck’s beak, the Economist, to get the inside dope.

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Dr David Kelly, loyal foot soldier of the state By William Bowles

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14 August 2003

Far from being troubled about the impending invasion, Dr David Kelly could just as easily have been troubled by the use of ‘evidence’ that “takes away from the case for war.” In other words, Kelly’s statements can be interpreted as continued support for the war but that he objected to the way it was being sold through the crass intervention of the Downing Street propaganda machine, headed by Alistair Campbell.

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