William Bowles – Essays
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Mind your language! Part Two By William Bowles
So we have the ironic situation of BBC News reporting on its own alleged unreliability. Can the news be trusted? What is the future of public broadcasting and so on. Yet of course, the nature of the lack of trust in the state media is entirely misdirected. It’s okay that the coverage of the war… Continue reading
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Opening a can of worms By William Bowles
And at last, we have official confirmation that the claims by the government that Iraq got uranium from Niger at any time, is completely untrue. According to the report in the Independent, The French Ambassador, Denis Vène told the Sunday Telegraph that it was “impossible for uranium to leave the country without French officials knowing… Continue reading
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Mind your language! By William Bowles
In this critical situation, as the Imperium girds its loins in preparation for the next round of recolonisation, it’s important that we keep our eye on the ball. Will the Kelly affair divert us rather than inform us? I can already see the questions; ‘Did he jump or was he pushed?’ What is clear is… Continue reading
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Heil Caesar By William Bowles
“There is no more dangerous theory in international politics today than that we need to balance the power of America with other competitor powers, different poles around which nations gather.” — Tony Blair. Thus spake the Emperor’s English regent in paying his respects on a flying visit to Washington DC, our latter-day Rome, and spelt… Continue reading
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Blair into Blah doesn’t go: anatomy of a con By William Bowles
The fake Niger documents reached both British and US intelligence agencies, who no doubt verified that they were fakes but apparently neglected to tell anyone. The documents sat around, probably until sometime in early-mid 2002 when, at least according to high-ranking US intelligence officials, they came under intense pressure from the Bush administration to include… Continue reading
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Biting off more than can be chewed? By William Bowles
16 July 2003 It’s fashionable to think that the US imperium has gotten itself into a quagmire with its occupation of Iraq, but of course this view depends on whether or not, the US cares about what happens to Iraq. And if the situation in Afghanistan is anything to go by, having served its purpose… Continue reading
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A conspiracy of silence? By William Bowles
This morning, on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme, Jack Straw went through a tortuous process of trying to cover his tracks and if it hadn’t been for the fact that the interviewer, John Humphries, let him off the hook at every critical stage of the interview, he would have been revealed for what he is,… Continue reading
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9/11: connecting the dots By William Bowles
If 9/11 had not happened, it would have been necessary to invent it. And the history of the last 150 years is full of convenient inventions that have justified invasions, occupations, subversions and the overthrow of sovereign states by the US in order to pursue its economic/political objectives. Objectives laid down in latter part of… Continue reading
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9/11: the unanswered questions By William Bowles
So the real reason for the invasion of Iraq was 9/11, at least that’s what Donald Rumsfeld, US secretary of defence is now telling us, as the mythological WMDs fade into the background. And will this now be the basis for the next round of ‘revelations’ based on Saddam’s connections to Al-Qu’eda? Wait for it,… Continue reading
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Blair: Tense about Tenses By William Bowles
Backtracking like crazy, the UK government is in a real dilemma. The US which, as we all know, lives on another planet, has let the cat out of the bag and left Blair swinging in the wind with its acknowledgement that the infamous ‘Niger’ fakes were long known to be fakes, indeed well before the… Continue reading
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Bush in the Bush William Bowles
Today, Bush arrives in Senegal where he’ll visit Goree Island, one of the locations from which an estimated 20 million slaves started their long journey to the Americas. Half of the 20 million never made it. And no doubt, Bush will make a speech about America’s commitment to ‘freedom’ and to Africa, blah-blah-blah…. Continue reading
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Remembering Vietnam William Bowles
As with the ‘war on terror’, the ‘war on (godless) communism’ (or, if you prefer, fanatical Islamic fundamentalists) relied on a vast disinformation campaign based on fear and paranoia using the conception of the ‘other’ to put the fear of God into the population. So for example, many of the sci-fi movies that were made… Continue reading
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Blairspeak By William Bowles
Nowhere, in any of the evidence I’ve reviewed has anybody ever said that Blair personally invented the evidence, but that is what Blair says he’s been accused of doing. So now the argument will spin down a different road, leaving the essential issues behind obscured in a cloud of dust and small stones. Continue reading
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Manufacturing Terror By William Bowles
The vast and overwhelming propaganda onslaught that we’ve been subjected to since 911, is indicative of the lengths to which the ruling elites are prepared to go to in order to gain our consent for their actions. Indeed, the nature and scope of the propaganda war indicates just how insecure they feel. Continue reading
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From Burgers to Baghdad By William Bowles
For over fifty years , the West has carried on a campaign that pushes the idea that the superiority of the ‘Western way of life’ based upon unlimited ‘choice’ and the ‘free market’ as opposed to the drab and conformist communist world, is the best of all possible worlds. They sold us the idea, that… Continue reading
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Iraq: Desperate measures for desperate times
Is there no end to the government’s duplicity? Apparently not. On this morning’s (30/06/03) BBC Today programme, the Foreign Minister Jack Straw rolled out yet another ‘reason’, stating that the agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis (the ‘road map’) would almost certainly have not gone ahead, indeed it would have been ‘sabotaged’ by Saddam… Continue reading
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The never-ending story: 45 minutes from Niger By William Bowles
The dossiers of September 2002 and February 2003 are revealing for a number of reasons. Firstly, they illustrate just how unsure the government was about its ability to convince an extremely skeptical public and the lengths it was prepared to go to in order win us over. Continue reading
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Red Herring Day By William Bowles
Straw’s statement is indeed a clever (but not clever enough) sleight of hand, because if challenged, as the letter says, he can say, ‘Yes, what I said was true because at the time of writing, there was no imminent (immediate, current, impending) threat.’ Continue reading
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Incredible! By William Bowles
Surely, the entire point of lying to us and using fabricated evidence is because the government had already made up its mind that it was going to invade Iraq. It lied because it knew it didn’t have the support of the British public because it didn’t have the evidence to convince us with, so it… Continue reading
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Spinning out of control By William Bowles
Wonderful! Alistair Campbell accuses the BBC of ‘lying’ because, he asserts, the BBC accused the government of lying over the ’45 minute’ scenario. Is this a desert storm in a teacup? Whilst the two monopolies go at each other, the essential issues simply don’t enter into the discussion at all, from either side. Whilst they… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 