January 2005
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Information Clearing House Archive Part 5 26-31 January 2005
31 January 2005 — 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 Part 5 January 26-31 2005 Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2005 === Continue reading
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Iraq: One ‘Election’, Two Different Stories By William Bowles
Over the past week, we have not heard a single dissenting voice on the issue of the legitimacy of the ‘election’. In fact it’s been wall-to-wall praise with words like “miracle” and “a dream made a reality” occurring almost every day and on every BBC ‘news’ programme. A veritable litany of government propaganda spewed out… Continue reading
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Angst, Anger and Aliens By William Bowles
Sometimes, writing about politics gets to be a real pain. Now I rarely indulge myself (is this the right term?) but let’s face it, we live in a completely fucked up society, yes fucked up capitalism and its fucked up ‘values’ – self-indulgent, smug and self-satisfied, insulated from a world it has systematically raped for… Continue reading
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The Massage is the Message By William Bowles
A previous alert from MediaLens on Iran serves to remind us of the role of the intelligentsia in creating the ‘right kind’ of space for further imperial adventures as the innocuous-sounding quotes above aptly illustrate. But just who are they talking to? After all, if one is to judge by the surveys of the BBC’s… Continue reading
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Media Lens: BBC Apology on Iran
On January 21, we published a Rapid Response Media Alert, ‘Targeting Iran – The BBC Propaganda Begins,’ in which we noted that the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent, James Robbins, had reported that US relations with Iran were “looking very murky because of the nuclear threat”. (BBC1, 13:00 News, January 20, 2005) Continue reading
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Information Clearing House Archive Part 4 20-25 January 2005
25 January 2005 — 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 January 20-25 2005 Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2005 King George: The Continue reading
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Media Lens: Targeting Iran – The BBC Propaganda Begins
Remarkably, in an almost exact repeat of events in 2002 and 2003, the BBC is now reflexively boosting the US claim that Iran presents a threat to the West. Continue reading
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What Goes Around, Comes Around By William Bowles
An awful lot of energy was expended in 2004 on the ‘Anybody But Bush’ debate, with the ABB brigade predicting really dire consequences if Bush got reelected (as opposed to just dire consequences if Kerry got the job). I tried to present the various for and against arguments here although my own opinion was (and… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Unity in Deceit – The British Media and Iraq’s election
20 January 2005 — Media Lens Introduction – A Simple Question People sometimes tell us we’re too hard on the media. They say: ‘Come on, there +is+ a fair amount of diversity, a range of different views. And the Independent publishes some valuable stuff, so does the Guardian – take a look at the Comments Continue reading
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Information Clearing House Archive Part 3 15-19 January 2005
19 January 2005 — 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 January 15-19 2005 How Americans Were Seduced by War Paul Craig Continue reading
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Media Lens: Harold Pinter, John Le Carré And The Media
It is a brutal fact of modern media and politics that honesty and sincerity are not rewarded, but instead heavily punished, by powerful interests with plenty at stake. It does not matter how often the likes of Pinter, Le Carré, Noam Chomsky and John Pilger are shown to be right. It does not matter how… Continue reading
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Information Clearing House Archive Part 2 9-14 January 2005
14 January 2005 — 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 January 9-14 2005 Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2005 === A global Continue reading
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AIDing and abetting death in Falluja By William Bowles
14 January 2005 The comedian, writer and actor Terry Jones wrote a letter to the Guardian asking why there had been no move to send aid to the survivors of the USUK destruction of Iraq? The letter ends by posing the questions: Why aren’t our TV companies and newspapers running fundraisers to help Iraqis whose lives have Continue reading
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Media Lens: Dwarfing the Tsunami – A Warning
12 January 2005 — Media Lens “Civilisation exists by geologic consent, subject to change without notice.” (Will Durant, historian) Festive Depression Curious things happen to the British public around Christmas. The weeks and months leading up to December 25 are characterised by a manic focus on consumption, materialism and unrestrained hedonism. The Season of Good Continue reading
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Warming to the subject of oil By William Bowles
In spite of all my efforts to show that ‘peak oil’ is an invention, it seems to fall on deaf ears with immense tomes landing with a thump on my virtual desktop that attempt to show that the Huppert ‘peak oil’ hypothesis is the only true and righteous path and anyone who dares challenge it… Continue reading
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Full circle? Well almost by William Bowles
This is the time of year when you are meant to engage in retrospection, look back on the events of the past year and pass ‘learned’ judgements, the lessons we hav(en’t) learned and so on and so forth. However, it strikes me that the events of the past year have more in common with those… Continue reading
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The Oxman/Bageant Exchange (Part One) By Richard Oxman
5 January 2005 — Counterpunch SPECIAL NOTE TO THE READER: The Multi-Issue Alternative Magazine, EnergyGrid, conducted an excellent interview with Joe Bageant recently; I recommend that you check it out after plowing through what’s below. Who is JB? Well, if you ask me…I think you’re better off not knowing at this juncture…if you don’t know Continue reading
The New Dark Age 