Month: August 2004

Plus câ Change? By William Bowles

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31 August 2004

Being incapacitated for the past couple of weeks has had one positive effect, namely, I’ve been able to think and read without being constantly pressured to produce and edit for the site at my usual frenetic pace. And indeed, as I lie here, propped up in bed, my shoulder nagging away in the background and the monitor of my laptop now held open by a piece of string and gaffer tape, quite a few ideas, long in gestation have coalesced. Whether I’ve got it right is of course, still an open question, but if nothing else, the events of the past year prove one thing: the more things change, the more things stay the same.

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Information Clearing House Archive Part 4 August 28-31 2004

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August 2004 — Information Clearing House

[I’ve been archiving ICH digests since early 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]

Information Clearing House
Digest August 20/26/28-31 2004
Date: 31 Aug 2004

1 YEAR & 144 DAYS … AND STILL NO WMD FOUND IN IRAQ.

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Revenge bombers kill at least 16 in Israeli bombing:

Palestinian suicide bombers on a revenge mission blew up two buses seconds apart in southern Israel today, killing at least 16 passengers and wounding more than 80.
212.2.162.45/news/story.asp?j=116060752&p=yy6x6y458&n=116061512

tinyurl.com/4u3vw

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Information Clearing House Archive Part 3 August 13-18 2004

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August 2004 — Information Clearing House

[I’ve been archiving ICH digests since early 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]

Information Clearing House
Digest August 13-18 2004
Date: 18 Aug 2004 20

1 YEAR & 130 DAYS … AND STILL NO WMD FOUND IN IRAQ.

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Fighting rages in Najaf :

The director of Najaf’s main hospital, Falah al-Muhana, said 29 people had been brought in killed or wounded from the clashes.
tvnz.co.nz/view/news_world_story_skin/442656?format=html

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Crunch Time in Caracas By William Bowles

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13 August 2004

Never even in Latin American history has the media been so directly involved in a political coup. Venezuela’s ‘hate media’ controls 95% of the airwaves and has a near-monopoly over newsprint, and it played a major part in the failed attempt to overthrow the president, Hugo Chávez, in April [2002]. Although tensions in the country could easily spill into civil war, the media is still directly encouraging dissident elements to overthrow the democratically elected president – if necessary by force.
Maurice Lemoine, Aug 2002, Le Monde Diplomatique[1]

This coming Sunday 15 August, the infamous Recall Referendum takes place in Venezuela. For those of you not familiar with the situation in Venezuela – fifth largest producer of oil on the planet and 10% of it going to that insatiable guzzler of the stuff, El Norté, the US – in 1998, the country voted into power a president, Hugo Chávez Frias who incurred the wrath of the imperium by daring to promote the interests of the poor and the dispossessed of the country who constitute some 80% of the population.

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Information Clearing House Archive Part 2 August 12 2004

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August 2004 — Information Clearing House

[I’ve been archiving ICH digests since early 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]

Information Clearing House
Digest August 8-12 2004
Date: 12 Aug 2004

1 YEAR & 124 DAYS … AND STILL NO WMD FOUND IN IRAQ.

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Slaughter as US forces attack Najaf:

Violence across Iraq since Wednesday morning killed at least 172 Iraqis and injured 643, the Health Ministry said
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6724.htm

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Iraq: Illusion and Reality – Media coverage reveals the Imperial Mindset By William Bowles

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11 August 2004

The Western media made a great play of the ‘sovereignty’ that Iraq allegedly achieved a little over a month ago when CIA/MI5 ‘asset’ Allawi was installed ‘Diem-style’ by his US paymasters. And indeed, ever since then, the media in direct collusion with the state has tried to foist on an extremely sceptical public the illusion of a ‘benign occupier’, the USUK, backing the new ‘sovereign’ state of Iraq. Press coverage, almost without exception plays down the role of the occupation forces, by creating the illusion of the existence of an Iraqi army, when in the months preceding ‘sovereignty’ the constant cry was that was no Iraqi army to takeover the role of the occupiers once the ‘handover’ was achieved.

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Depoliticising Death By William Bowles

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9 August 2004

Today’s (9/8/04) Independent has the headline:

“A race against time
“Darfur is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Read the statistics, and then find out how to help”

With of course, the obligatory photograph of an emaciated baby, followed by the also obligatory round-up of ‘statistics’ on the plight of the Sudanese. Strange that the “race against time” is a story that has been on-going for the past twenty years, so why the sudden ‘concern’ for the Sudanese when the media has all but ignored the story for the past two decades? And what makes it the ‘world’s worst humanitarian crisis’?

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Flirting with Terror By William Bowles

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7 August 2004

Buster Hi There Suckers!

If you enter the keywords “terror” into Google, you’ll get over 6.5 million hits. Enter the word “terrorism” and you’ll get almost 5.5 million and “terror” will return almost 5 million. “Terrorist” will get you 4.3 million and the “war on terror” returns a little over a 500,000.

A search for “Islamic fundamentalist” returns 53,900, “Muslim fundamentalist” 16,100, “Muslim fanatic” a paltry 1940, “Christian fanatic” a pathetic 617 but “Christian fundamentalist” a modest 25,500.

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Information Clearing House Archive Part 1 August 6 2004

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August 2004 — Information Clearing House

[I’ve been archiving ICH digests since early 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]

Information Clearing House
Digest August 1-6 2004
Date: 6 Aug 2004

1 YEAR & 118 DAYS … AND STILL NO WMD FOUND IN IRAQ.

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US planes strike Najaf amid fierce fighting:

Nearly 50 people were killed and more than 130 wounded on Friday as the unrest fanned out across central and southern Iraq
english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/2AF28C47-C193-4280-BAFE-693CA897B7B4.htm

tinyurl.com/6g5yc

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It’s a Girl’s World By William Bowles

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3 August 2004

Anybody who has been reading my serialised novel ‘XX‘ will know that I have an abiding interest in issues surrounding gender. There are lots of reasons for this, not the least my own experience of being a man in a man’s world. It occurred to me that I rarely write about issues of gender let alone sexuality in my ‘political’ columns (‘analysts’ can arrive at their own conclusions). Not being a particularly ‘masculine’ man, and in fact recognising that I have a strong ‘feminine’ side to my personality, something that I’ve long had a problem coming to terms with, has forced me to deal with the issue, even if in a roundabout (read cowardly) way. But as I’ve gotten older and perhaps gained a greater understanding of myself, it has enabled me to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of the societies I’ve grown up in and at the same time, a better understanding of myself. Indeed, the question of identity goes to the very heart of the beast that is capitalism, for it is through perverting the nature of our identities as men and women that it is able to control us.

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