March 2004
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Book Review: Friends, Washingtonians and Countrymen… By William Bowles
What an irony. For decades the left has been talking of the US as an empire, identifying the ring of military bases that surrounded the former Soviet Union and China, its destabilisation and overthrow of countries that defied US power; the Cold War and the nuclear arms race, also instigated by the US; its control… Continue reading
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Information Clearing House Archive 29-31 March 2004 Part 5
March 2004 — Information Clearing House Digest March 29-31 2004 Part 5 Date: 31 Mar 2004 332 DAYS … AND STILL NO WMD FOUND IN IRAQ. === Three dead in Parliament suicide bombing: An angry miner blew himself up in Bolivia’s Congress, killing two police officers and wounding 10 others. La Paz police chief Guido Arandia Continue reading
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Just the facts Ma’am, just the facts By William Bowles
If nothing else, the farce surrounding Andrew Gilligan’s/Dr David Kelly inadvertent revelations concerning British government’s dissembling and lying over the invasion of Iraq has revealed the true nature of what the British establishment likes to foist on an unsuspecting public as ‘objective’ journalism. But what is objective journalism and is there such an animal? Continue reading
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Information Clearing House Archive 20-25 March 2004 Part 4
March 2004 — Information Clearing House Digest March 20-25 2004 Part 4 Date: 26 Mar 2004 327 DAYS … AND STILL NO WMD FOUND IN IRAQ. === Three children among eight civilians killed in Iraq: U.S. forces fought running battles with insurgents in the Iraqi town of Falluja on Friday and a television cameraman and eight Continue reading
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Whose culture is it anyhow? By William Bowles
26 March 2004 Despite a background and involvement in the arts for most of my life, I rarely, if ever write about such things here on I’n’I (although for another side of me, check out the now defunct MusicSA). Well that’s about to change not only because the arts and especially music, are a part Continue reading
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May Day – May Day! By William Bowles
So apparently the Anarchists and the BBC have joined forces and cancelled May Day at least according to BBC TV News London (24/03/04). The nightly ‘news’ show carried a report that shifted the goalposts on May Day by presenting it as something that ‘belonged’ only to the Anarchists, and to compound this outrageous reordering of… Continue reading
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Blaming the Victim By William Bowles
Underlying the coverage of Haiti is a common theme that views all poor countries as incapable of managing their own affairs, intrinsically corrupt and pathologically unable to deal with western ‘democratic ideas and institutions’. The message is clear (if embedded), ‘You had your chance when we ‘gave’ you your independence and you blew it’. Without… Continue reading
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Is the Media Public Enemy #1? By William Bowles
Over the past twenty years media ownership has been concentrated into a handful of giant global conglomerates. But even more telling is the fact that the ‘digital revolution’ has seen media, IT/communications, weapons companies and the state fuze together to the point whereby, their interests and objectives have become indistinguishable. Continue reading
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Bend Over Infidel! By Edward Teague
22 March 2004 — The New Dark Age First an apology. I suggested as background reading GK Chesterton’s “White Horse Inn”, I got confused between “The Flying Inn” and “the Ballad of the White Horse”. I meant “The Flying Inn”, published in 1914 when Mohammedism or the Islamic Faith was barely known as a living Continue reading
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“Why the little yellow bastards!”: Imperialism, nationalism and racism By William Bowles
It should be pretty clear to most right thinking people that there is a direct link between the imperialist project and the rise of racism and as the excerpts above illustrate, it is neither an accident nor is it a new phenomenon. And whilst Blair’s ‘theatrical’ approach may not be as explicit as those of… Continue reading
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Information Clearing House Archive 14-19 March 2004 Part 3
March 2004 — Information Clearing House Digest March 14-19 2004 Part 3 Date: 19 Mar 2004 320 DAYS … AND STILL NO WMD FOUND IN IRAQ. === Bin Laden’s right-hand man slips net: A BULLETPROOF LandCruiser at high speed bursting out of a tribal compound in Pakistan’s South Waziristan region was just the latest infuriating setback Continue reading
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Book Review: The New Imperialism By William Bowles
For most, mention the word economics and eyes glaze over and turn elsewhere, but without some basic understanding of economics, making sense of our world is all but impossible. The corporate media rarely, if ever, mentions economics as intrinsic to politics in its coverage of events unless it’s about interest rates, taxes or employment. Delving… Continue reading
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Information Clearing House Archive March 8-13 2004 Part 2
March 2004 — Information Clearing House Digest March 8-13 2004 Part 2 Date: 13 Mar 2004 ‘The Matrix’ Neo asks? You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes; it is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth’ Continue reading
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Will the real global terrorists please stand up By William Bowles
International ‘conspiracies’ have a long history extending back to the 1919 US ‘Palmer Raids’ that resulted in the arrest and deportation of hundreds of Italian ‘anarchists’ who were purportedly planning the overthrow of the US government. And of course ‘red plots’ of one kind or another have been used by Western governments as a pretext… Continue reading
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They Shoot Journalists, Don’t They? By Norman Solomon
To encourage restraint in war coverage, governments don’t need to shoot journalists — though sometimes that’s helpful. Thirteen journalists were killed while covering the war and occupation in Iraq last year, says a new report by the Committee to Protect Journalists. The deaths were a subset of 36 on-the-job fatalities related to journalistic work across… Continue reading
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‘News’ Central By William Bowles
Might is right as they say, except when it’s wrong that is, but of course who is to gainsay the powerful? With the media and the education system as the main vehicles for maintaining the status quo, piercing the veil of propaganda is more than just the production of counter-propaganda, it requires a mind-shift in… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Haiti — No News is Bad News
The beauty of news for a society like ours is that it doesn’t have to make sense. If we were introducing students to modern physics, we would feel obliged to explain Newton’s Laws and Einstein’s famous theorem, E=mc2; we would naturally point to issues raised by quantum mechanics. There would obviously be no prospect of… Continue reading
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More Lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction By Edward Teague
10 March 2004 — The New Dark Age WMD lies persist for over 50 years Group Captain Kenneth Hubbard died on 22nd January 2004 current obituaries credit him incorrectly with having dropped the first UK H bomb. The UK never had, and so never dropped the ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction. Continue reading
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Emergency of State By William Bowles
There’s something truly scary about Tony Blair and the crew he has assembled around him. This guy is on a ‘mission’ and it is yet another example of serendipity at work insofar as the needs of the moment always throw up someone with the right mentality for the dirty job of building an empire. Enter… Continue reading
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Haiti as a ‘Failed State’ and the US programme of ‘destructive engagement’ By William Bowles
The overthrow of the democratically elected government of Jean Bertrand Aristide of Haiti is the latest example of the power of the corporate media to influence – through its presentation of events – the outcome. Over the past several weeks, Aristide and his supporters have been consistently portrayed as ‘gangsters”, drug dealers, out-of-control mobs and… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 