Book Review: Friends, Washingtonians and Countrymen… By William Bowles

March 31, 2004Leave a comment

31 March 2004

“The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic” by Chalmers Johnson, Verso Books, 2004.

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 of trade and energy; the rise of the military-industrial complex; its cultural imperialism.

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Information Clearing House Archive 29-31 March 2004 Part 5

March 31, 2004September 23, 2018Leave a comment

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.

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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 said the bomber stormed into Congress around midday on Tuesday. www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/03/31/1080544553992.html

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Just the facts Ma’am, just the facts By William Bowles

March 30, 2004Leave a comment

30 March 2004

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?

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Information Clearing House Archive 20-25 March 2004 Part 4

March 26, 2004September 23, 2018Leave a comment

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.

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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 civilians, including three children, were killed, a hospital official said.
story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040326/ts_nm/iraq_clashes_dc

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Whose culture is it anyhow? By William Bowles

March 26, 2004Leave a comment

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 of my life but because as the American empire extends its reach, it gobbles up everything in its path (what I call gobbleisation), transforms it into a pale reflection of its origins, spews it out, dumps it and moves on, picking its way through the cultures of our planet like some automaton searching through our lives and leaving behind a vast garbage heap.

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May Day – May Day! By William Bowles

March 25, 2004Leave a comment

25 March 2004

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 reality, showed us videos of the various and sundry scuffles that have occasionally broken out, but nothing else of this historic celebration of workers’ rights.

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Blaming the Victim By William Bowles

March 24, 2004Leave a comment

24 March 2004

Virtually all of the headlines in the corporate press about Haiti and Jean Bertrand Aristide centred on his failures: corruption, economic collapse, Aristide’s use of thugs and gangsters: Continue reading →

Is the Media Public Enemy #1? By William Bowles

March 22, 2004Leave a comment

22 March 2003

The press of course have always been a critical component of maintaining state power and through it, the preservation of the capitalist system, so what is different about the situation now?

“[The number of media corporations has shrunk] from fifty…in 1984 to twenty-six in 1987, followed by twenty-three in l990, and then, as the borders between the different media began to blur, to less than twenty in 1993. In 1996 the number of media corporations with dominant power in society is closer to ten…. [T]he newest dominant ten are Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, News Corporation Limited (Murdoch), Sony, Tele-Communications, Inc., Seagram (TV, movies, cable, books, music), Westinghouse, Gannett, and General Electric.”
“The Media Monopoly” 5th edition (1997) by Ben Bagdikian

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Bend Over Infidel! By Edward Teague

March 22, 2004February 17, 2019Leave a comment

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 faith in the UK – indeed its acceptance has only just been recognised by Eton who are reported today to have just employed their first imam.

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“Why the little yellow bastards!”: Imperialism, nationalism and racism By William Bowles

March 19, 2004Leave a comment

19 March 2004

“It is that out of the shadow of this evil, should emerge lasting good….

This is a moment to seize. The Kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us.”
Tony Blair @ the Labour Party Conference, October 1st 2001

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Information Clearing House Archive 14-19 March 2004 Part 3

March 19, 2004September 23, 2018Leave a comment

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.

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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 in the US’s quest to bring down the top of the al-Qa’ida tree.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5896.htm

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Book Review: The New Imperialism By William Bowles

March 17, 2004Leave a comment

17 March 2004

‘The New Imperialism’ by David Harvey. 2003, Oxford University Press

“Military interventions are the tip of the imperialist iceberg”

“Almost certainly those European governments, such as Spain and Italy, that have supported the US against the clear wishes of their peoples will fall”
David Harvey, “The New Imperialism”

“It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup…We are to continue to generate maximum pressures toward this end utilizing every appropriate resource. It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that United States Government and American hand be well hidden.”
CIA cable to the US State Department cited in “Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire” by Chalmers Johnson

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Information Clearing House Archive March 8-13 2004 Part 2

March 13, 2004September 23, 2018Leave a comment

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’

And Neo asks, ‘What truth?’

“That you are a slave Neo, like everyone else, you were born into bondage; born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch; a prison for your mind. Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to experience it for yourself.”
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1543.htm

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Will the real global terrorists please stand up By William Bowles

March 12, 2004Leave a comment

12 March 2004

Predictably, ‘terror experts’ are suggesting that ‘Al-Qu-eda’ could be involved in the Madrid bombings, although the Spanish government are still insisting that ETA, the Basque separatist group are more than likely responsible for the carnage. But does it really matter who is responsible? In the age of the security state and engineered hysteria, anything is possible when secrecy rules the actions of government.

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They Shoot Journalists, Don’t They? By Norman Solomon

March 11, 2004September 29, 20182 Comments

11 March 2004

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 the globe in 2003.

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‘News’ Central By William Bowles

March 11, 2004September 29, 2018Leave a comment

11 March 2004 — 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 those we aim to reach. Not so easy to do for not only does it require a deal of courage, it quite often requires some serious critical thinking, and critical thinking is not something that is generally encouraged by the ruling elite.

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Media Lens: Haiti — No News is Bad News

March 10, 2004September 29, 2018Leave a comment

March 10, 2004 — Media Lens

“You cannot hope to bribe or twist, thank God! the British journalist.

But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there’s no occasion to.” (Humbert Wolfe, 1930)

Haiti – Ignorance Is Strength

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 students understanding, much less tackling, the latest problems in modern physics without first achieving this basic understanding.

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More Lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction By Edward Teague

March 10, 2004February 17, 2019Leave a comment

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.

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Emergency of State By William Bowles

March 8, 2004Leave a comment

7 March 2004

Blair5

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 Tony, crusader for the imperium.

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Haiti as a ‘Failed State’ and the US programme of ‘destructive engagement’ By William Bowles

March 8, 2004Leave a comment

8 March 2004

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 to have generally degenerated to the level of the previous decades of Haitian dictators (all propped up by the US of course).

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