William Bowles – Essays
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Iraq Body Count – The acceptable face of slaughter? By William Bowles
The IBC’s John Sloboda inexcusable slur on Medialens and others such as John Pilger in the BBC interview (news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4950254.stm) follows a well-established line by the so-called liberal intelligentsia who, whilst claiming to be progressive, are actually having the opposite effect; to reduce the debate to an argument over numbers rather than principle, an issue the… Continue reading
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Mixed(up) Messages By William Bowles
The hysteria being generated around Iran’s alleged nuclear ‘ambitions’ (the media’s favourite newspeak word these days) serves several purposes; one, it conveniently diverts attention away from the situation in Iraq; two, it acts as a warning to any other country challenging US imperialism’s increasingly desperate bid for global domination and, it also serves to divert… Continue reading
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In the Clutches of Capital By William Bowles
19 April 2006 It strikes me that the citizens of the capitalist world are in so deep with the ‘life style’ that like all addicts it is virtually impossible for them to escape the clutches of capital. Once on the conveyor belt of consumption there is no turning back. Chief among the addictions is the… Continue reading
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From the Cold War to the Long War – only the name has been changed to protect the guilty By William Bowles
This past 10 April the Guardian published an extremely misleading article that is worth addressing for everything that it doesn’t say concerning US plans for the future and its so-called ‘long war’ against ‘international terrorism’ and it sums up the corporate media’s treatment of the continuation of the Cold War by another name. Continue reading
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States of denial – states of terror By William Bowles
For those of you who still bother to read/listen to/watch the mainstream news, you might be forgiven for thinking that the events of the past couple of decades have been proof of the overwhelming success/superiority of ‘Western civilisation’ in the battle with the heathen hordes hammering at the gates of Eden. Continue reading
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Wakey-Wakey! By William Bowles
I’m tempted to say that the British have, with Tony Blair’s corporatist, security state, gotten no better than they deserve. After all, though deeply in debt, by and large they live in a kind of comfort zone albeit one that insulates them from the realities of a world gone totally insane. Continue reading
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Breaking News – UK Govt hurls BBC into alternate universe! By William Bowles
Then it was back to Downing Street, no doubt to plan how to sell us Phase II of the PNAC, taking out Iran and pushing the ‘final’ frontier further Eastward. Not that you’d know it from BBC ‘news’ reports as it seems that the BBC was reporting from what appears to be an almost identical… Continue reading
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A Plague on Plagiarism – but there’s a lot more at stake here than rip-offs By William Bowles
31 March 2006 Like a lot of other independent journalists I’ve seen my work published on corporate Websites without my permission (or without being paid) including al-Jazeera and Yahoo. The terms of my copyright are clearly laid out in my Creative Commons license (see below). But worse still, mainstream publications seem to think that work… Continue reading
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Beware the Ides of March By William Bowles
Unlike many of my brethren (and not for the first time), I am seem to be out of step about the apocalyptic visions that are currently populating the Webosphere concerning an immanent invasion of Iran. Continue reading
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Extra! Extra! Do something about it! By William Bowles
25 March 2006 Judging by the stats on the site’s usage, many thousands of you read the daily GI Special, in fact it’s one of the most read sections on InI. The reason I mention it is that it reveals that the information put out by the MSM not just on Iraq but on virtually… Continue reading
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Race Matters By William Bowles
21 March 2006 These days, writing about ‘race’ is like walking on soft boiled eggs, especially if you’re a whitey but there’s no getting away from the fact that the issue of race is central to virtually all of the major issues of our times and indeed it can be argued that ever since imperialism… Continue reading
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Imperial Manoeuvres By William Bowles
History is a powerful weapon, perhaps that’s why they don’t teach it at school in the UK (except for the UK’s bizarre obsession with WWII, but then again it makes sense if you want to impart a sense of Britain’s former ‘greatness’ and what better propaganda weapon than our victorious struggle against the evil ‘Hun’). Continue reading
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Re “historical curiosity” or the semiotics of a war crime By William Bowles
Is it simply a historical curiosity or do you think … [the memos have] some relevance to what is happening in Iraq at the moment? The question whacked me between the eyes for what it revealed about the sick mindset of the smug and sanctimonious bastards at the BBC’s misnamed news department (I await expectantly… Continue reading
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Creature Comforts By William Bowles
Growing up in the ‘mother of empires’, it’s difficult to comprehend how most of the world perceives us, even if, like me, you’ve lived in other cultures, it’s still difficult to ‘break the chains that bind’ us to a view of the world defined by privilege, a world of assumptions reinforced by an unrelenting barrage… Continue reading
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One nation under the sleaze By William Bowles
L’affaire Berlusconi is just the latest in a long list of sleazy goings-on that reveals a cynical ruling class that long ago abandoned any pretence at representing the citizens and a labour government that is in bed with big capital in a big way. Cosy relationships such as the one Blair has with Berlusconi, darling… Continue reading
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Book Review: The Silence is Poisonous! Bioweapons – The US government’s Nuremburg Crime By William Bowles
Okay, what are we dealing with here? Boyle’s short and impassioned book deals with the US government’s illegal multi-billion dollar biological weapons programme. A programme, that as Boyle makes abundantly clear presents itself as “defensive” but of course, in order to produce a ‘defense’, requires the development of offensive bioweapons. Continue reading
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I Glorify in Revolution! So arrest me damn you! By William Bowles
From shouting out “nonsense” at the Labour Party Conference to attending film festivals or wearing a t-shirt that disses Blair, we are all subject to arrest and/or detention under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. And it’s clear that the police have been given orders to use it to intimidate and harass anyone who speaks out… Continue reading
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Media Misinformation Roundup: How the BBC and the Guardian transform torture into bad PR and “history” for the occupiers By William Bowles
19 February 2006 The Western propaganda onslaught is relentless and most goes unnoticed largely because it appears to be ‘objective’ reporting. What is important to note with this alleged news is the insidious nature of the way events are presented to us, cloaked in seemingly innocuous language, yet an entire mindset is embedded in the… Continue reading
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Empire Redux – Climate Catastrophe and Capitalism By William Bowles
Awhile back I made reference to the idea that the two leading imperialist powers, the US and the UK had come to the conclusion that climate catastrophe was unavoidable and that steps needed to be taken for capitalism to survive the catastrophe essentially intact. Continue reading
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The Devil lives in the detail – Demonising Iran By William Bowles
The Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory (and Israel is not), and to which the BBC reluctantly concedes Iran is in compliance with, was as Simon Jenkins points out, pretty much set up by the then nuclear ‘club’, with the view to keeping everyone else out. Meanwhile, the US is adding to… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 