William Bowles – Essays
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Iraq Fire Sale! $100 billion for one, war-damaged country By William Bowles
Underpinning all the propaganda, the bluster and the bullshit about bringing ‘democracy and freedom’ to Iraq and other points East and South, lies the real truth, that the reality is about capitalism and the triumph of the ‘free market’. That’s what the entire invasion has always been about, everything else is but a smokescreen. Continue reading
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9/11: “That’s some bad pilot” By William Bowles
Winning the war against Communism, contrary to all our expectations (the ‘peace dividend’ etc) were not to be realised. Instead, the way was open for the West to conquer those parts of the world and its resources that had been denied to it. But in order to rationalise its reinvigorated imperialist objectives a new ‘enemy’… Continue reading
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Iraq: The Big Lie Gets Even Bigger By William Bowles
With the willing complicity of the mass media, including the craven BBC, the real story, occasionally alluded to but never pursued, is that the decision to invade Iraq was made at least a year ago if not immediately after 9/11. And the government’s ‘attack’ on the BBC following the Kelly ‘revelation’ was an attempt to… Continue reading
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The Energy ‘Crisis’: Futurology without a future? By William Bowles
According to an interview conducted by Mike Ruppert and available on the Guerrilla News Network, and which first appeared on Ruppert’s From the Wilderness website, we have already passed the point of no return when it comes to new sources of oil and gas and we’re headed for a disaster, if not next year then… Continue reading
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All the ‘news’ that’s fit to invent By William Bowles
So I figured by at least Tuesday (today) I’d read something of substance on the WTO meeting in Cancun in the major media, but aside from the Independent’s (16/09/03) short editorial that smugly informed me that it collapsed in “acrimony” and that it was “American and French unwillingness to face down powerful farm lobbies”, that… Continue reading
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What Global Economy? By William Bowles
The collapse of the WTO meeting in Cancun has, by and large, been met with a deafening silence in the British media. My ‘paper of ‘choice’, the Independent, chose not to mention Cancun at all in its Monday edition! Yet given the parlous state of the capitalist world’s economy and how much is at stake,… Continue reading
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Iraq: Flawed, selective, distorted and mistaken? Selling the big lie By William Bowles
About the only thing the media won’t entertain is the idea that invading Iraq was always the basis of Blair’s policy and that all the squirming and changes of justification flow from this basic premise. How else does one describe the way the media worms its way through the mire and deliberately avoids the lies… Continue reading
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Can Cancun? By William Bowles
As things stand, it looks increasingly likely that either the WTO meeting will end with no decision being reached or the rich world will have to bite the bullet and make deep compromises over subsidies and open up its markets to the products of the poor countries of the world. This is a decisive moment… Continue reading
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Buddy can you spare $87 billion? By William Bowles
Economics is not something that the ‘average’ citizen wants to get involved in especially as it’s mostly mumbo-jumbo, based more on fancy than fact. Generally speaking, when there is no rational explanation to hand, it’s down to some ‘act of nature’ over which we have no control. Very convenient if you want to maintain the… Continue reading
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The lights are on but is anyone home? By William Bowles
Bush the smaller made his pitch to the nation over the weekend to “save civilisation” from terrorism and told us that the “frontline” was now Iraq. So Saddam disappears not only literally but also figuratively to be replaced by the generic ‘threat’ that has been the real core of the propaganda since 9/11. And in… Continue reading
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Off the Hook? By William Bowles
Well predictably the media here in the UK has, by and large, given Blah a clean bill of health, not because he didn’t lie but because he did such a good job of lying. Apparently, the more articulate you are at the business of dissembling, the more kudos you acquire. This is the ‘post-modern’ world… Continue reading
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Trust- Belief – Exaggeration By William Bowles
As the state is increasingly exposed as fraudulent, so the media has created a barrier that absorbs direct attack by deflecting criticism into the ‘nooks and crannies’ of the management of the state machine. How it does this is revealed by the nature of the relationship between the state and the media and the use… Continue reading
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Virus of violence unleashed on the world By William Bowles
Everyday I scan the news heads from the various sources I receive (I can never keep up with it all obviously) and it’s clear that the US has unleashed a virus of violence on the planet. Just a short selection from the last few days paints the picture: Continue reading
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An Accumulation of Capital(s) By William Bowles
(This is intended as the first of a series I have long planned on writing, indeed I’ve been exploring the ideas I lay out below since the early 1980s, after I got my first computer, a Commodore 64.) Continue reading
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A marriage made in hell By William Bowles
The media’s response to the ‘revelations’ of the Hutton inquiry reveals more about the nature of corporate journalism than it does about the role of the government’s propagandists. And especially, the back-peddling being performed in an attempt to justify the complicity of the media in not seeing what was patently obvious to anyone who cared… Continue reading
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Mission Impossible By William Bowles
Never has the meaning of the global village struck home in quite the way as in the present circumstances. Past empires have been able to hide behind distance and disinformation, but the current imperial project is, in spite of all the efforts to hide it, being built inside a goldfish bowl, where every move, every… Continue reading
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End Game? By William Bowles
What’s an empire to do when it’s barely started on its ‘mission’ (ordained by a God no less) and the damn thing starts falling apart? Blame the ‘international terror network’ of course. And of course, that’s what the Imperium is doing as it casts about for suitable suspects. And there’s no shortage on which to… Continue reading
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Between Iraq and a hard place By William Bowles
The latest bombing in Iraq of the UN headquarters has, understandably, put the frighteners on the USUK alliance. For not only does it up the anté, it puts the USUK on the spot. Continue reading
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The Media’s killing fields…and so it goes By William Bowles
Channel 4 TV broadcast a ‘documentary’ “Congo’s Killing Fields” (17/08/03) that purported to be a report on the current situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The hour-long doccie had me hopping mad from the very beginning to its very end and cursing the box sitting in the corner of the room. Continue reading
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The verdict? Guilty, sort of By William Bowles
One is tempted to hold off saying anything until the loathsome Alistair Campbell, chief propagandist for the Blair government does his pitch at the Hutton ‘enquiry’ today. However, of far more importance than what he does or doesn’t say (after all, the cat’s out of the bag anyway), is how will the Blair government deal… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 