William Bowles – Essays
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So what gives? By William Bowles
12 March 2007 ‘[We come not as] conquerors or enemies, but as liberators.’ — Lieutenant General Sir Stanley Maude, Commander in Chief of British forces in Iraq, after entering Baghdad in March 1917. According to the best estimates, the dozen years of sanctions following Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait led to something like one million deaths… Continue reading
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The economics of 7/7 and other mysteries of capitalism explained By William Bowles
26 February 2007 ‘When politicians wave abstractions around like flags—abstractions like ‘security’ or for that matter ‘freedom’—citizens should be immediately suspicious.”[1] There is one thing we can be certain of; the capitalist state is in disarray and in crisis. With every passing day its legitimacy crumbles further. Much of its prior claim to any kind… Continue reading
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Ties that bind By William Bowles
22 February 2007 If nothing else, groups like Medialens[1] perform an invaluable service to an otherwise woefully misinformed public pointing out the blatant and not-so-blatant bias in the corporate and state-run media’s coverage of events. Back in the mid-eighties I was involved in Extra!, a publication of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR)[2], a New… Continue reading
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Yours Truly, ‘Disgusted’ of London By William Bowles
18 February 2007 Here in the UK we are, according to the statistics anyway, the fourth or fifth wealthiest nation on the planet at least in material terms but according to the latest UNICEF report we are at the bottom of the list of the twenty-one most developed nations when it comes to the treatment… Continue reading
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Gaea’s Revenge? By William Bowles
20 January 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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WWW or Whining, Waxing and Waning By William Bowles
9 January 2007 “China’s growth is replacing the US as the engine of the world economy. China is the world’s largest consumer of steel, cement, copper, aluminum and zinc and the second largest oil consumer. Says Robin Bhar of UBS, “The fact that growth in the developing world will offset the decline in demand from… Continue reading
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Book Review: Of Marxism and Magic By William Bowles
No doubt there will be people who consider that the title of this essay is to say the least, a contradiction in terms and on the face of it I would be forced to agree. However, before all the lefties amongst you start firing off letters of protest to yours truly, Marcos, ‘leader’ of the… Continue reading
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Serious Fraud By William Bowles
In an age of exploding communications where we now possess the tools to effectively challenge the dominant culture’s control of information, it is more than a little ironic that we find ourselves bereft of the traditional tools of political action that in days past would have enabled us to more effectively exploit these new conditions. Continue reading
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Beware of gringos bearing ‘gifts’ By William Bowles
“Staying the course”, the battle cry of the republic. Then comes the Iraq Study Group and predictably all the headlines parrot the news bites about a war ‘lost’ and a ‘change of course’. But is it a change of course or the same wolf dressed up as a dove creeping in through the back door… Continue reading
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Capitalism first – climate last By William Bowles
I think it should be pretty clear to all by now that regardless that the ruling elites of the planet know what’s in store for humanity, they do not intend to take the necessary steps to reverse the slide toward chaos. Yeah sure, lots of hot air to add to an already over-heated atmosphere but… Continue reading
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Book Review: Capitalism – past its sell-by date? By William Bowles
Historically, it has been the CIA which up until the 1990s did the dirty work for US imperialism as the record clearly shows. However, the CIA’s record in overthrowing foreign governments is far from being a success story. A new strategy was needed, and one which was untainted with the ‘dirty tricks’ label of the… Continue reading
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We are the Snails on the Slope By William Bowles
Are we the equivalent of the Snail on the Slope, intent on hanging on to what we think are our advantages even as we destroy the very basis of them just as the colonisers destroyed the forest that sustained life? We cannot say that we don’t see or know what is going on, we have… Continue reading
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WOT is to be done? By William Bowles
Y’know, I’ve been at this for what seems like a bloody lifetime, my first electronic missive hit the ether about 1983 when I started up an occasional column called ‘New York Online’ which for my sins spawned an eight-year long electronic journal of the same name running on my first Mac using a system most… Continue reading
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Crisis Management By William Bowles
Perhaps the most difficult thing to do when dealing with current events is to establish the link between economics and politics. Thus the corporate press never, ever present an event, the invasion of Iraq for example as having any connection with economics, indeed any attempt to do so is ridiculed (eg it’s not all about… Continue reading
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Leaving the scene of the crime? By William Bowles
The Independent’s front page head for Wednesday 25 October proclaimed loudly “We’re out of here” purportedly the words of General George Casey, the US’s head military honcho in Iraq. Of course the devil lives in the small print as any reading ‘between the lines’ reveals. And in any case, Casey’s comments are designed precisely to… Continue reading
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Book Review: Israel and the US – Two nations under one flag? By William Bowles
There is perhaps no better example of the corrosive and divisive nature of racism as a weapon of imperialism than the debate (such as it is) about the power of the (misnamed) ‘Jewish Lobby’ and its relationship to or influence over US imperial strategy. I say misnamed because in reality it should be called the… Continue reading
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A beginner’s guide to creating a ‘crisis’ By William Bowles
Poor old North Korea, the latest bogeyman, its leader variously described as a tyrant, psychopath etc, etc. is once more the focus of Western ire. Now in all likelyhood the reason is because things ain’t going too well in Iraq or Afghanistan and the Iranians have told the West to shove it, so isn’t it… Continue reading
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Been there – done that, so it’s time to do it all over again By William Bowles
If Queen Victoria was on the throne today I’m sure she would find the current situation comfortingly familiar and no doubt would be issuing proclamations about ‘our brave boys over there’ and the usual crop of medals would be flying out of her very royal hands along with all the usual platitudes about defending ‘civilisation’… Continue reading
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Lies by Omission By William Bowles
6 October 2006 “An increasing number of people see a dark cloud hanging over Europe. They fear that the birthplace of the Enlightenment and the cradle of free speech is being silenced by the growing assertiveness of an intolerant strain of Islam.” — The Independent Editorial, Wednesday, 4 October 2006. The London Independent’s editorial headed… Continue reading
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NATO’s Inferno By William Bowles
I know I shouldn’t be surprised but nevertheless I am. Surprised firstly that I live in a barbaric culture that has been able to masquerade as civilised and secondly, that it has been able to persuade the world that it possesses civilised credentials in the first place. And thirdly, that it has been able to… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 