William Bowles – Essays
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An all-consuming greed by William Bowles
26 July 2007 ‘The less you eat, drink, buy books, go to the theater, go dancing, go drinking, think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save and the greater will become that treasure which neither moths nor maggots can consume — your capital. The less you are, the less you give expression… Continue reading
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Total power drives you totally mad by Willliam Bowles
17 July 2007 One tends to think of those who rule as being ruthlessly logical in their application of power; after all, maintenance of the status quo should surely be one of their major objectives? But their loss of legitimacy, obvious to all except the most myopic and self-delusional points to something quite fundamental taking… Continue reading
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The Media on ‘Global Terror’ by William Bowles
12 July 2007 Y’know it’s amazing really, considering that for centuries Europeans have been invading other countries, enslaving their peoples, ripping off their resources and in the process impoverishing much of the planet. And what is more, moving in and taking up residence without so much as a ‘by your leave’ let alone being put… Continue reading
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Completely Carbonated by William Bowles
5 July 2007 — InvestigatingImperialism Well it’s started, in fact it’s more than started and it’s driving me mad. You know what I’m talking about, my fucking ‘carbon footprint’! Every time I hear the phrase, which is every damn day, it really pisses me off. ‘Carbon footprint’ is the new Osama, the new bogie man… Continue reading
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All Aboard! By William Bowles
A couple of facts: The Indian Railway is the single biggest civil employer of people on the planet and the then newly-appointed minister of Transport’s first act was to rescind a decision to replace the locally made pottery cups that everyone traveling on the railway uses, with plastic ones, because the switch resulted in 100,000… Continue reading
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Whose culture is it anyway? By William Bowles
29 June, 2007 “And so, the end of the Blairite decade. Tributes, applause and a standing ovation at PM’s Question Time. Gushing reflections from fellow politicians and sundry acolytes. And, of course, the whole panoply of deferential BBC coverage replete with helicopter ‘reportage’ of official cars going to and from the Palace. How abjectly depressing,… Continue reading
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One square metre and a stool By William Bowles
8 June 2007 ‘All the freaky people make the beauty of the world’ — ‘All The Freaky People,’ Michael Franti & Spearhead For the most part, television is crap, driven as it is either by commercial interests or in the case of the state-run network, by something that tries to mimic the demographically driven commercial… Continue reading
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In His Master’s Voice – The BBC’s Mark Urban does a hatchet job on Media Lens By William Bowles
4 June 2007 I don’t know how many readers follow the exchanges between the BBC and other mainstream media outlets and Medialens (there are number of them archived here in the Media section of the site but please do pay a visit to their site). There’s no doubt that ML perform a valuable service by… Continue reading
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So what’s changed? By William Bowles
30 May 2007 It’s time for some plain speaking about the issue of climate change and capitalism and the progressive movement’s approach to the whole issue, at least in the so-called developed world. (Progressives in the developing world have more pressing needs right now which is why we have to get our act together.) Continue reading
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From ‘al-Qu’eda’ to ‘Abductions’-the deceptions continue By William Bowles
17 May 2007 It’s ages since I’ve dumped on my favourite newspaper, the Independent for its ‘news’ coverage but I broke down and bought the damn thing because of what I found on the front page this week. Under the head of “An American Nightmare” (15/5/07) we read that US troops have been “kidnapped” by… Continue reading
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Democracy inaction By William Bowles
15 May 2007 Believe it or not, there was a time when working people actually directly participated in the political process, believing that as members of the class of producers they could manage the affairs of state and eventually take control of the businesses they worked for; that was what socialism in the 19th century… Continue reading
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Flogging the Bloggers, Hobbling the Hip-Hoppers By William Bowles
14 April 2007 I’ve been writing the current series of these here essays for over four years and until recently at a frenetic pace, almost five hundred of the little fuckers in total. During this time we have seen the emergence of the cursed ‘Blog’, a curse because as per usual, the medium has become… Continue reading
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On the outside looking in or on the inside looking out? By William Bowles
9 April 2007 Marx’s famous dictum that ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it’[1], is never more appropriate than now. Yet in spite of the absolutely desperate state of the world, we seem to be even more removed from the political process than our ancestors were… Continue reading
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Truth and consequences By William Bowles
5 April 2007 In the space of around 25 years, the combination of the computer and the global telephone network have transformed communications. From its early days at the beginning of the 1980s, when, aside from a handful of transnational media corporations, computer-based communications existed only in defence-related academia (eg ARPANET) or the weird world… Continue reading
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I was nobody By William Bowles
3 April 2007 ‘I was nobody. I had no desires, no will, no likes, no dislikes. I had been fashioned to resemble as closely as possible a human model which I had not chosen and which did not suit me. Day after day since my birth, I had been made up: my gestures, my attitudes,… Continue reading
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To Nuke or not to Nuke? That is the question By William Bowles
2 April 2007 “All options are on the table” – President Bush on Iran For well over a year now pundits on both the left and the right have been telling us that the US/Israel Axis is about to bomb/invade Iran; those on the right say it with glee and on the left with understandable… Continue reading
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Us and Them By William Bowles
29 March 2007 We are so used to the ruling political class making decisions ‘for us’ that we forget that they exist and act only because we allow them to. We allow it because we think that once elected, our representatives will act in our best interests. And because ‘we elect’ them every so often—itself… Continue reading
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Beware the Ides of March By William Bowles
25 March 2007 “Inspired” “Engineered” “Involvement” “Intelligence” “Circumstantial” “Link” — The BBC hedging its bets on alleged Iranian involvement in the ‘insurgency’ in Iraq “There is intelligence about this [Iranian involvement], but no hard proof” BBC 6pm News, 23/3/07 Well we all know what ‘intelligence’ means but this didn’t stop the same ‘news’ broadcast leading… Continue reading
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Madness and Capitalism By William Bowles
21 March 2007 “The body had to die so that labor-power could live.” — Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch, p. 141. Anybody who has read Michel Foucault’s ‘Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason’, and who agrees with him, will probably have a very different take on the entire… Continue reading
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Clarifying climate change By William Bowles
17-18 March 2007 I hope that my piece ‘Don’t bother breathing out’ (see below) didn’t lead readers to assume that I don’t think that global warming is not the result of human actions. If so, I wish to clarify that all the available evidence points to the fact that global warming is the result of… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 