William Bowles – Essays
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Ahmed Chalabi – Petroleum’s Point Man By William Bowles
Convicted fraudster, bagman, carpetbagger, (dis)informant, playboy, opportunist, failed mercenary army leader, go-between creature of imperialism, of one thing we can be sure, Ahmed Chalabi is a survivor by virtue of (almost) always being on the ‘right’ side. Continue reading
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An old year’s tale By William Bowles
29 December 2005 It’s true: the 20th century is yesterday’s story and unfortunately, most of us are still living in it. Especially, the left. As to the ruling elite, they don’t care what century it is, as long as they rule in it. But it is the problem for most of us on the left,… Continue reading
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Propaganda Review – Part II Das Kulture By William Bowles
I and a host of observers are fond of quoting the first of the self-conscious propagandists of our age, Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda, but the fact is the reality we live in now is far more insidious and dangerous than the world according to Goebbels, his was a world of black and white, a… Continue reading
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Propaganda Review – from the ‘war against the ‘anti-Christ’ to the ‘war on terror’ By William Bowles
Reclaiming the public space that has been appropriated by the corporate class must figure highly on our agenda, for without it, we are at the mercy of Schiller‘s “concentrated accumulation of the productive equipment, the technological expertise, the marketing apparatus, the financial resources, and the managerial know-how” wielded by capitalism. Continue reading
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The Worm Ouroborus By William Bowles
It’s depressing to think on how many otherwise right-thinking people have bought into the ‘Peak Oil’ nonsense. We read for example, that of the over 60 known reserves in Iraq, only 17 have actually been exploited and it’s been calculated that the reserves far outstrip the currently exploited fields. Continue reading
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On the road to Damascus By William Bowles
Oil in the next war will occupy the place of coal in the present war, or at least a parallel place to coal. The only big potential supply that we can get under British control is the Persian and Mesopotamian supply .… Control over these oil supplies becomes a first class British war aim –… Continue reading
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BBC Newsspeak – ‘Credible sources’ By William Bowles
By now it must surely be obvious to pretty well everyone that the BBC’s messing with reality is rife, the twists and turns are tortuous and on-going as anyone following the British State’s Broadcasting Company’s coverage of the White Phosphorus will know. The Cat’s Dream Website pretty well blew it apart, so much so that… Continue reading
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Book Review: Selling the biggest lie of them all – Capitalism By William Bowles
For the better part of the 20th century the mass media has done an excellent job of selling the biggest lie of all, that we in the West live in democratic societies ruled by a political class that allegedly represents us and our interests, and the country where this lie has been sold to the… Continue reading
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The BBC’s Big White (Phosphorus) Lie By William Bowles
Finally, the ‘white phosphorus’ obscenity made it into the BBC’s main news, at least for a couple of days before being relegated into the Beeb’s dustbin of ‘allegations’ which of course, at least according the BBC, is where the story belongs. Of course, ‘making it into the news’ is a bit of a misnomer as… Continue reading
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Is Paris burning or Watt? By William Bowles
The importation of cheap, colonial labour whether from Puerto Rico to New York in the 1940s, from the Caribbean to London in the 1950s or those from Bangla Desh and Pakistan in the 1960s, all reflect the stark reality of a divided world, that sooner or later, given the fundamentally racist nature of capitalist society… Continue reading
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Fallujah – Where is the outrage? The story the mainstream media won’t tell you By William Bowles
Although reported by a handful media outlets at the time, the mainstream media took the official US denials at face value — that there had been no use of the illegal white phosphorus weapons on the inhabitants of Fallujah in December 2004. However the newly released movie (35 mb) from Italy’s RAI News 24 television… Continue reading
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Syria: Old whine, new bottle By William Bowles
The UN ‘report’ on the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese PM, bears all the hallmarks of yet another set-up, no doubt ‘inspired’ by US pressure as part of the build-up to yet another Middle Eastern ‘adventure’. Even less remarkable is the uncritical, indeed blind acceptance by the Western media of the Report’s conclusions… Continue reading
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Kiss your ‘democracy’ goodbye (But did you ever have one?) By William Bowles
21 October 2005 There are … potentially desirable limits to the indefinite extension of political democracy … A government which lacks authority … will have little ability, short of cataclysmic crisis, to impose on its people the sacrifices which may be necessary. – 1975 Trilateral Commission Report on the Governability of Democracies Just how pervasive… Continue reading
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Sleepwalking into Slavery? By William Bowles
The great British public, apparently don’t think that home secretary’s Clarke’s proposed additions to the anti-terror legislation including the 90-day detention without trial, apply to them, at least as far as we know, as nobody has actually asked them. Perhaps they need to be reminded that almost identical laws were passed by the Apartheid regime… Continue reading
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Awakening the Slumbering Giant By William Bowles
Back around 1991 I was in London for a short visit and I hung out with a South African comrade then living in exile in London. Over (at least) two bottles of wine in a bar on Islington High Street, we commiserated on the demise of the Left, which following the end of the Soviet… Continue reading
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Mantra politics By William Bowles
Once the state acquires such draconian powers it is unlikely to give them up voluntarily. We need only look at countries that have adopted comparable laws whether it be Mussolini’s Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, through to the various Latin American dictatorships and how they were removed, not that removing them necessarily guarantees removal of the… Continue reading
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‘Green slime’ invades Iraq By William Bowles
THERE’S a phrase set aside in the British army for men like Brigadier Gordon Kerr and it’s “Green Slime’’. Soldiers don’t mince words, and to regular squaddies and military brass, Kerr and his Intelligence Corps are on roughly the same level as pond life. Highly effective, immensely powerful and very dangerous pond life, but pond… Continue reading
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Iraq: Agents Provocateurs? By William Bowles
Fascinating. No really, the ‘evolution’ of state disinformation has probably never been better displayed than in the case of the two (more than likely) SAS soldiers who were ‘liberated’ after being arrested by the Iraqi police on 19 September by a phalanx of tanks and helicopter gunships that stormed the police station where the two… Continue reading
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The Gulf of Disbelief By William Bowles
Aside from everything else Hurricane Katrina has blown away it’s also ripped off the mask that covers the real face of corporate capitalism and reveals the stark reality that the US government has as little regard for its own ‘citizens’ as it does for those of Iraq or Afghanistan. Continue reading
The New Dark Age 