William Bowles – Essays
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Mea (Ex)culpa By William Bowles
Aish! Well I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised but in an op-ed piece in today’s Independent(03/02/04) by Mary Dejevsky headed “Let’s be honest: journalists failed as well”, we are told that: “We journalists failed to ask pertinent questions that could have at least cast doubt on the information the government supplied…. How could so congenitally… Continue reading
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It’s the spies wot gets the blame By William Bowles
“I saw evidence that was categoric on Saddam possessing chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. Now I saw the evidence, so did the Prime Minister, so did other cabinet ministers. That informed our decision to go topple him. I think we were right in doing so, but let’s wait and see what the jury… Continue reading
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Coitus Interruptus By William Bowles
“US officials knew in May Iraq possessed no WMD”. So goes the headline in the Observer(01/02/04) but the reality is that the US government knew in 1991 that Iraq possessed no WMD as did the UK government. So what’s the argument all about? Why is it so important that a ‘battle royale’ is being conducted… Continue reading
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Shit Happens! By William Bowles
Not since the Suez Crisis of 1956 has the capitalist state in Britain been in such disarray, with every attempt to justify its actions backfiring in the most spectacular fashion. And when one looks back to the beginning of the propaganda campaign in 2002, a common thread has been one cock-up after another, with Blair… Continue reading
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Franchising the news or how to whitewash a whitewash By William Bowles
In 2002 when I first returned to the UK after many years abroad and started my long period of readjustment to this malignant society, a major part of the process was getting a handle on the media here. I read many of the leading ‘papers, listened to the news and of course watched it on… Continue reading
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Some Old White Guy Does The Whitewash By William Bowles
Do politicians lie? Do fish swim and birds fly? It’s difficult to know where to start with this ‘inquiry’ except to say that Hutton has transformed what was meant to be an investigation into the events surrounding the alleged suicide of Dr David Kelly and his being ‘outed’ by the government into a total whitewash… Continue reading
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Throwing the book at our leaders By William Bowles
26 January 2004 Lie (noun): falsehood, fabrication, prevarication, fib, untruth, falsification, invention, mendacity, canard. Ah woe is me, what’s got into the world when those who claim to be fearless in pursuit of the truth – the great and glorious media, schooled, we are told in the art of assembling the dissembled – are afraid… Continue reading
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Dictatorship With a Digital Face: Blair and Bush Build the Corporate Security State By William Bowles
We live in strange and unknown times. All the old paradigms as they say, have disappeared. The world most of us have grown up in has vanished, at least that’s the appearance of things. But have they, or is it that we have merely forgotten our history, that we have been down this route before?… Continue reading
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How the Dominant Culture Dominates By William Bowles
In 1848 the Chartist Uprising petrified the ruling classes of England. The uprising, triggered initially by opposition to English colonial policies in Ireland swept across the length and breadth of the country. Strikes, marches and occupations and insurrections occurred in every major town and city in England and Wales. What is striking about that event… Continue reading
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Hoisted by their own, brazen pétards By William Bowles
12 January 2004 Western media continues to belittle Iraqi opposition to the occupation The latest reports to come out of Iraq reveal an ever growing level of resistance to US plans to create a puppet government for the country, not that you’d know it from Western news coverage aside that is from the (predictable) coverage… Continue reading
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Legitimacy Denied: Western media continues to belittle Iraqi opposition to the occupation By William Bowles
The latest reports to come out of Iraq reveal an ever growing level of resistance not only to US plans to create a puppet government for the country but to the occupation as a whole, not that you’d know it from Western news coverage aside that is from the (predictable) coverage of the statement by… Continue reading
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Reporting the war in Iraq: Underwhelmed with information, overwhelmed with propaganda By William Bowles
11 January 2004 At the close of 2003, 506 US soldiers had died in Iraq, the deadliest year for the US Army since 1972 when the US lost 640 dead in Vietnam. In the week following the capture of Saddam Hussein the death rate actually to rose to 19 (the average being nine). Continue reading
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“And when they came for me…” By William Bowles
Can people be so blinkered as to sign away their own rights? It seems so if one looks at the almost total lack of coverage of the “Civil Contingencies Bill” in the UK or “Patriot II” in the US, that although miles away, is intimately linked to the Blah policies simply because both governments are… Continue reading
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Manufacturing Panic & Paranoia By William Bowles
7 January 2004 What’s wrong with the Independent’s lead story on 6/1/04 that opened with the assertion? “Air travel turmoil as terror threat grows” Terror threat grows? Three loaded words for which there is not a shred of evidence that supports either the existence of terror or that there is a ‘threat’ or that it’s ‘growing’.… Continue reading
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How much the value of a (Palestinian) life By William Bowles
In a ten-day period, there were over 70 individual violent actions against Palestinians by Israeli Occupation Forces resulting in deaths and woundings of innocent civilians, destruction of property, confiscations and deportations. Where was the coverage in the Western Media? Continue reading
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Days of Empire By William Bowles
5 January 2004 I suppose one can be forgiven for feeling depressed about the current state of affairs, after all the measure of the speed at which things change (for better or for worse) are not those of the average lifetime unless like all of us alive right now, we happen to be around when… Continue reading
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2004: The year of the police state – the year of hypocrisy By William Bowles
The media’s unquestioning acceptance of these reports is, to put it mildly, scandalous. Any journalist worth his or her salt would immediately question the basis of the so-called intelligence being used if only because it actually exposes just how bad the preventive measures really are. A cynic might be forgiven for thinking that the US… Continue reading
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De ja vu? By William Bowles
“Terror in the sky: the net tightens”. So went the headline in the Independent (3/1/04). “Heathrow terror puzzle” was the Guardian’s headline on the same day. But what exactly, is the net tightening around except the throats of innocent passengers and why is it a puzzle? The Guardian linked it to a 1997 UN resolution… Continue reading
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Upping the anté & wishy-washy liberalism By William Bowles
Richard Perle’s latest book “An end to evil: What’s next in the war on terrorism?” might well be described as the handbook for the imperium’s agenda for 2004 with its call for an invasion of Syria and Iran and a Cuba-style blockade of North Korea. The question to be asked of this quasi-fascist’s quest for… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 