William Bowles – Essays
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Wikileaks: Prelude to a new wave of ‘legal’ repression? By William Bowles
What is dangerous about the turn of events…is that it if there is an ulterior motive to the release of the cables it might be a new wave of repressive laws, in all likelihood under the infinitely expanding umbrella of the ‘war on terror’. Already, it’s illegal in many countries to ‘assist terrorists’ by putting… Continue reading
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A conspiracy to silence? By William Bowles
10 December, 2010 ‘Wikileaks has not been charged with a single US crime…and here the country’s financial institutions are taking action on behalf of our state department to extinguish this whistleblower’s website.’ — Jeff Paterson, Project Director of Courage to Resist, ‘KKK OK but not WikiLeaks for some payment processors‘ “What is emerging from all… Continue reading
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It really is us against them By William Bowles
MPs fiddling expenses and leaked diplomatic cables: what connects them and is the game finally up for capitalist ‘democracy’? Continue reading
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The Empire strikes back By William Bowles
8 December, 2010 Is Julian Assange a brave fool, foolishly brave or just naive? Of course it’s unthinkable that the Empire will stand by and allow such a challenge and as more is revealed about Assange’s casual encounter with a couple of babes in Sweden (who turned out to be ‘honey-traps’), it tells us just… Continue reading
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Rebellion in the High Street? By William Bowles
So, a few rumblings of discontent have surfaced, first with the students and now an interesting development, targeting corporate tax avoiders such as Topshop, owned by Sir Philip Green’s Arcadia Group who has his multi-billion empire registered in his wife’s name and who is resident in tax-free Monaco, where of course she’s really busy running… Continue reading
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Out of the diplomatic bag By William Bowles
3 December, 2010 Wikileaks has committed the unforgivable sin of revealing the inner workings of Empire, what the servants of Empire really think and in so doing it has also revealed the extremely comfortable relationship between the media and the state in making sure that the truth behind the headlines is kept from us. Fascinating,… Continue reading
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‘Not Red Ed’ – reinventing Labour, again and again… By William Bowles
So what is ‘Not Red Ed’ up to? I hazard the following guess: It must have been pretty obvious that Labour would lose the election and having already stated that they would ‘put off’ cuts in public spending for a coupla years, Ed has predictably attacked the Tory/Lib-Dem govt’s plans to scupper our public services. Continue reading
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Economism rules ok! By William Bowles
Currently, the only effective force in the country that can mount any kind of opposition to the attacks on our social capital is a much defanged trade union movement. But what are the chances of the organized labour movement leading a successful opposition to this, most likely the last gasp of a bankrupt capitalism before… Continue reading
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New? ‘old’-new? Labour, the election of Ed Miliband and the left By William Bowles
Following the election of Ed Miliband to lead the ‘new’ ‘old’ Labour Party it seems nothing has been learned from the lessons of the past thirteen years (let alone the previous forty). Continue reading
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Why does the pernicious BS about ‘peak oil’ persist on the left? By William Bowles
Peak Oil? Why not Peak Water, after all, water is much more crucial to life than oil ever will be and it’s being consumed in vast quantities by the same economic system that chows oil? Continue reading
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Video review of ‘Plunder – the crime of our time’ By William Bowles
The question to ask of Plunder is: without recognizing the fundamental contradictions of capitalism, that regardless of whatever ‘safeguards’ are put in place, or removed for that matter, does Plunder convince viewers that capitalism is a broke-down system that needs to be replaced? Continue reading
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Book review of ‘Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir’ by Joe Bageant – So different yet so familiar By William Bowles
What Joe calls the white underclass, some forty-plus million Americans, who struggle to survive out of sight and out of mind of the urban middle class who not only manage capitalism but who also shape the kind of self-image people end up having of themselves. They are Marx’ surplus labour writ big, real big. They… Continue reading
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Music Review: Paul Hanmer’s ‘Accused No 1 – Nelson Mandela’ By William Bowles
Paul Hamner represents perhaps the best synthesis of what it is to be a South African musician today, with the mix of African, American, European, Asian, Caribbean and Latin American musical traditions, all coming together in Paul’s capable hands, assisted by an equally talented cross section of South African musicians. Continue reading
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Diz the Whizz and Bill at the Mac
The computer for the rest of us? This is the very first drawing, wobbly lines ‘an all that I did on my new Macintosh back in 1984, recently unearthed from my stuff that has been packed away in a loft in Brooklyn for fifteen years. Printed out on the original Apple Imagewriter dot matrix printer… Continue reading
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MIMO – A socio-economic model for the 21st century? By William Bowles & Michael Jensen
MIMO is a ‘work in progress’, that starts from the point where use value is transformed into cultural capital and, over time (as with the evolution of money from being a portable form of barter, to being a commodity) establishes a mechanism for measuring value generation that has meaning in the real world, insofar as… Continue reading
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How to build a real Web Economy – a socialist one By William Bowles
Flattr is a social micropayment platform that lets you show love for the things you like – Help support the people you like and enable them to continue with what they do. Well that’s how the blurb goes. Continue reading
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A Tribute to David Coetzee (1943-2010) By William Bowles
I was in London trying to get the Morning Star newspaper online, or at least using email and I met with the then foreign editor of the Star, David Whitfield who was less than impressed with my vision but who nevertheless introduced me to David Coetzee, an exiled South African journalist who published a weekly… Continue reading
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Israel, Nazi propaganda chief Göebbels would have been proud of you By William Bowles
As the true nature of the massacre on the Mavi Marmara becomes apparent now that witnesses can speak out, so too is the scale of the pre-planned propaganda blitz conducted by the Israelis, a blitz that was launched in tandem with the armed attack. Continue reading
The New Dark Age 