William Bowles – Essays
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May Day – May Day! By William Bowles
So apparently the Anarchists and the BBC have joined forces and cancelled May Day at least according to BBC TV News London (24/03/04). The nightly ‘news’ show carried a report that shifted the goalposts on May Day by presenting it as something that ‘belonged’ only to the Anarchists, and to compound this outrageous reordering of… Continue reading
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Blaming the Victim By William Bowles
Underlying the coverage of Haiti is a common theme that views all poor countries as incapable of managing their own affairs, intrinsically corrupt and pathologically unable to deal with western ‘democratic ideas and institutions’. The message is clear (if embedded), ‘You had your chance when we ‘gave’ you your independence and you blew it’. Without… Continue reading
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Is the Media Public Enemy #1? By William Bowles
Over the past twenty years media ownership has been concentrated into a handful of giant global conglomerates. But even more telling is the fact that the ‘digital revolution’ has seen media, IT/communications, weapons companies and the state fuze together to the point whereby, their interests and objectives have become indistinguishable. Continue reading
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“Why the little yellow bastards!”: Imperialism, nationalism and racism By William Bowles
It should be pretty clear to most right thinking people that there is a direct link between the imperialist project and the rise of racism and as the excerpts above illustrate, it is neither an accident nor is it a new phenomenon. And whilst Blair’s ‘theatrical’ approach may not be as explicit as those of… Continue reading
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Book Review: The New Imperialism By William Bowles
For most, mention the word economics and eyes glaze over and turn elsewhere, but without some basic understanding of economics, making sense of our world is all but impossible. The corporate media rarely, if ever, mentions economics as intrinsic to politics in its coverage of events unless it’s about interest rates, taxes or employment. Delving… Continue reading
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Will the real global terrorists please stand up By William Bowles
International ‘conspiracies’ have a long history extending back to the 1919 US ‘Palmer Raids’ that resulted in the arrest and deportation of hundreds of Italian ‘anarchists’ who were purportedly planning the overthrow of the US government. And of course ‘red plots’ of one kind or another have been used by Western governments as a pretext… Continue reading
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‘News’ Central By William Bowles
Might is right as they say, except when it’s wrong that is, but of course who is to gainsay the powerful? With the media and the education system as the main vehicles for maintaining the status quo, piercing the veil of propaganda is more than just the production of counter-propaganda, it requires a mind-shift in… Continue reading
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Emergency of State By William Bowles
There’s something truly scary about Tony Blair and the crew he has assembled around him. This guy is on a ‘mission’ and it is yet another example of serendipity at work insofar as the needs of the moment always throw up someone with the right mentality for the dirty job of building an empire. Enter… Continue reading
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Haiti as a ‘Failed State’ and the US programme of ‘destructive engagement’ By William Bowles
The overthrow of the democratically elected government of Jean Bertrand Aristide of Haiti is the latest example of the power of the corporate media to influence – through its presentation of events – the outcome. Over the past several weeks, Aristide and his supporters have been consistently portrayed as ‘gangsters”, drug dealers, out-of-control mobs and… Continue reading
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The imperium rampant or merely rampaging? By William Bowles
A fitting requiem to Jean Bertrand Aristide that goes to the very heart of the crisis of capital that threatens to overwhelm us all. For it is only when the power it wields can be viewed as legitimate that it can maintain its supremacy. Continue reading
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Haiti: Confusion in the Ranks By William Bowles
The only ‘evidence’ that supports the DV’s assertion that he fled is what the US government have said. So for example, Aristide’s ‘resignation’ letter was written on US government (embassy) stationary [1]. It was my understanding that Aristide phoned Randall Robinson, not the other way as the author states. How he got hold of a… Continue reading
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Haiti: Gangster (F)RAP(H) By William Bowles
No matter that the corporate media have done their best to cover up the outrage that has been committed against the people of Haiti, things have a way of working their way out into the light of day. The telephone conversation between Randall Robinson of the TransAfrica Forum and Jean Bertrand Aristide has blown the… Continue reading
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HAITI: ‘Textbook’ Imperialism By William Bowles
The tragedy that is Haiti unfolds once more in this, the 35th? coup since the world’s first black republic was founded in 1804 and once more the US role in the removal of Jean Bertrand Aristide is patently obvious to anyone who cares to dig deeper than the headlines that have flooded out of ‘propaganda… Continue reading
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Blair: Out-Gunned and then brought up Short By William Bowles
On Thursday 26 February, ‘lose cannon’ Ms Clare Short, former member of the Labour Cabinet went one step further and accused the Blair government of bugging Kofi Annan’s telephone conversations as well. Blair, understandably pissed off about Ms Short’s revelations attempted to make out that not only were Ms Short’s allegations untrue but in a… Continue reading
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HAITI: Rhetoric Versus Reality By William Bowles
So what else has changed in the following 179 years? Not very much and predictably, the media is doing a hatchet job on Haiti’s Aristide. A piece by Andrew Gumbel in Saturday’s Independent (21/02/04 p. 21) is pretty typical. Headed “The little priest who became a bloody dictator like the one he once despised” is… Continue reading
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National Endowment for Democracy: At It Again in Haiti! By William Bowles
The National Endowment for Democracy that ‘celebrated’ its 20th anniversary this year has a long and less than illustrious past. It’s dead hand has descended on a number of countries over the past two decades including Nicaragua, El Salvador, Venezuela (currently also on-going) and of course Haiti. Continue reading
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Media Dumps on Aristide By William Bowles
Haiti, yet another US foreign policy disaster area, Western press coverage has been predictably less than forthcoming over the deteriorating situation. Indeed, trying to find out anything meaningful at all about the current situation has proved to be extremely difficult. Aside that is from what has become a de facto methodology of reportage of events… Continue reading
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WHY? By William Bowles
Is it credible that after a dozen years of sanctions, investigations, overflights, hundreds of bombing raids on virtually every military target of any significance in the country, spying via human and electronic means, that Iraq, probably the most ‘watched’ country on the planet, managed to ‘fool’ the most sophisticated countries on the planet? Continue reading
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Wriggling, Squirming and Sliding into Sleaze By William Bowles
As predicted, Blair has done his best to reset the agenda re the ‘dictionary’ definition of WMD but then what other choice does he have? Blair’s capos Reid, Straw, Hain, Hoon et al have been working overtime trying to do damage control but it’s the performance of Margaret Beckett’s that took the cake this week,… Continue reading
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Damn! What a Week (and it’s only Wednesday) By William Bowles
Hard to know where to begin what with Blair desperately seeking solutions. Kay, Jones, Powell and co, all spilling the beans (not, I add of the ricin kind) and jumping ship in what now looks remarkably like a total rout for the imperium. Blair protests in Parliament that Saddam’s ‘plans’ are pretty much the same… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 