William Bowles – Essays
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Caught between a ‘liberal’ and a hard man: How the BBC spends your licence money By William Bowles
2 June, 2010 “Israeli commandos had paintball guns” – Israeli Ambassador to Russia, Anna Azari “This happened in waters outside of Israeli territory, but we have the right to defend ourselves.” — Israeli military spokeswoman, Avital Leibovich In Yiddish it’s called Chutzpah, to have the nerve to say something outrageous, the perfect description—if what was… Continue reading
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Welcome to BBC Israel By William Bowles
So it seems that the BBC care only about Israel’s reputation and that it will undoubtedly be a ‘public relations disaster’. The deaths of at least nineteen unarmed people doesn’t figure in the BBC’s universe of spin. Continue reading
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From International Brigade to Freedom Flotilla: Remembering the ancestors of our struggle By William Bowles
In the light of the Freedom Flotilla on its way to Gaza and the opposition it’s facing, not only from Israel, but the news blackout by the corporate/state media on the seven hundred brave people making the trip, it’s worth recalling that back in the 1930s the International Brigade was formed to defend Spain’s democratic… Continue reading
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Coalition of the unwilling? I don’t think so By William Bowles
There’s a fascinating pas de deux going on here between the media and the political class that centres on not talking about about the crisis of capital. Instead, the Independent along with the rest of corporate/state media, focuses all of a sudden on ‘peoples’ rights’ what Clegg is calling the “power revolution”. Continue reading
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Shelling out or just a Shell game? By William Bowles
As far I know I’m not on any Shell mailing list but Shell must have been doing their homework and Googled me because low and behold, on the 17 May I got a press release from the biggest energy company on the planet. Amongst other things, the press release informs me: “The Comprehensive Shell Remediation… Continue reading
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Alice in Videoland By William Bowles
In every sense this past election was played out on television, with the print media doing ‘backup’. Whether the ‘debates’ affected the outcome is neither here nor there, as the script had already been written, on television, through the way the ‘news’ presents the issues and critically what issues to push to the ‘consumers’, sorry… Continue reading
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Israel: The not-so-new Fascism – Palestinians, the not-so-new Unter-Menschen By William Bowles
For decades the Zionist entity has played the victim card, even appropriating the term ‘Holocaust’ as its own, this in spite of the fact that millions of Roma, Slavs, Russians, Homosexuals, the ‘mentally feeble’ and other ‘undesirables’ (‘Unter-Menschen’ or under-people) were exterminated in Nazi concentration camps. In fact collectively, a far greater number than that… Continue reading
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The carve-up in ‘the national interest’ begins By William Bowles
You didn’t need a visit to the Delphic Oracle in order to figure out what would happen, in any case I doubt that many want to visit Greece these days. So, on 8 May the carve-up began with Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats meeting a team of Tory advisors in order to strike… Continue reading
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And the winner is? The Media By William Bowles
The idea of televised debates between the candidates was first proposed forty-six years ago in 1964, and of course it was rejected.[2] My, how times have changed reflecting as it does the desperate nature of the political class who fear not a ‘hung Parliament’ but ruling an electorate that doesn’t want any of them to… Continue reading
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Parliamentary ‘democracy’ – a triumph of Victorian engineering? By William Bowles
Enter Parliamentary ‘democracy’ and the route chosen by organized labour as the one true road to socialism. And it’s here that the role of myth-making was and remains crucial to the exercise of ‘democracy’, a ritual performed every 5 years as the political elite go through the motions of winning our votes. Continue reading
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Beautiful mind, fucked up planet By William Bowles
Lovelock’s contention is simple, in fact so obvious it hardly needs debating: Life, the oceans, the atmosphere/climate and the land are all part of a single self-regulating system that Lovelock calls Gaia after the ancient Egyptian goddess of life. Life maintains the right balance through regulating the type and proportion of gases in our atmosphere,… Continue reading
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Depleted Uranium: A War Crime Within a War Crime By William Bowles
As if destroying a country and its culture ain’t bad enough, how about destroying its future, its children? I want to scream it from the rooftops! We are complicit in crimes of such enormity that I find it difficult to find the words to describe how I feel about this crime committed in my name!… Continue reading
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Capitalism cut adrift – Part 2: Looking Sideways By William Bowles
Television has become the major propaganda weapon of capital, serving not only to ‘entertain’ but to transform our understanding of where we came from and crucially, how we got here. Continue reading
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A tribute to Sarah Meyer
Sarah Meyer, 73, who published her work on Index Research much more, died yesterday, 4 March, 2010 from cancer. Continue reading
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All the (un)usual suspects. What is RT.com up to? By William Bowles
Full page ads in the London Independent? Though the word ‘Russia’ is nowhere to be seen, instead it’s RT.com, what we used to know as Russia Today. But RT.com is a far cry from its crude beginnings four years ago as a mouthpiece for the Russian state. The question is, what kind of animal is… Continue reading
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Capitalism cut adrift By William Bowles
There has been much talk expended over the years on the degree to which the media—and hence culture—is central to maintaining the capitalist system. Leading the charge have been Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, so much so that they now more resemble sainted objects than social/political analysts, but then this is nothing new for the… Continue reading
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Cutting Clare Short By William Bowles
The media give Clare Short short shrift at the Chilcot ‘inquiry’ transforming her into a “difficult” woman though nevertheless “entertaining”. Continue reading
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Inside the mind of a psychopath and the Chilcot ‘Inquiry’ By William Bowles
Reams have been written about the appearance of Tony Blair at the so-called inquiry. Very few if any have even come close to identifying the real nature of the beast called Tony Blair. Continue reading
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Why is the BBC’s Haiti coverage so appalling? By William Bowles
I’ve been scanning through the BBC News website almost every day to see what our ‘impartial’ and ‘objective’ state-controlled news organization has to say on the subject. So first I searched through my BBC RSS feed from the 15 January to today, 25 January, using Haiti as the keyword. Only one out of twenty-six stories… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 