William Bowles – Essays
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Responsibility to Protect or Justifying the Right to Project Power? By William Bowles
Whether we like it or not, the issue is not the Assad regime no matter what we think of it, but of course this is entirely the point of the massive propaganda campaign that has been unleashed on the Western public. As long as we are led to focus on a “medieval” Syria and its… Continue reading
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The October Surprise File December 22, 1988
[The following time line of 1980 Reagan Campaign Deal With Iran was mailed to me along with a packet of newspaper clippings that support the “October Surprise” theory that I had previously posted. Reading all the clippings (from everything from the Huntsville Times to the San Francisco Examiner) makes me feel better about the mainstream… Continue reading
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Impotence in the face of impunity? By William Bowles
A fellow writer tells me that she feels overwhelmed by events and I feel the same way. An awful sense of deja vu that we have as much chance of stopping the march to total war as they had in the 1930s. Except that this time it will not be us citizens of Empire who… Continue reading
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The sheep look down By William Bowles
The ability of ‘science fiction’ to extrapolate the future and it would seem often quite accurately, but one ignored by the priests of ‘high culture’ who consistently dismissed it as ‘genre’ writing, confined to a convenient niche where bug-eyed monsters live and bought where guys in dirty raincoats prowled. Continue reading
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Syria and the media: “Activists say…” By William Bowles
The situation in Syria would appear to be almost identical to that of Libya (with some Kuwait thrown in for good measure) in the months that ran up to the destruction of the country in just a few, short weeks. It’ll probably take NATO a little longer to destroy Syria but the outcome will be… Continue reading
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Tariq Ali says Assad has to go: I’m depressed – no, I’m outraged By William Bowles
So Tariq Ali thinks it’s time for Assad to go. Once more the Western ‘left’ reveals its true colours. Who needs enemies with a friend like this? Continue reading
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A word (or two) with my readers
3 February 2012 A word (or two) with my readers I’m not sure how many of you are aware of what it takes to keep this site bumping along, as aside from trying to write on a regular basis, I also try to keep the digests as well as third party articles uptodate as well. Continue reading
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Moral capitalism? What an insult to our intelligence! By William Bowles
PM Cameron’s call for a “moral capitalism” would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic and hypocritical. After all, hasn’t it been capitalism’s alleged occupation of the ‘moral high ground’ what they now choose to call ‘humanitarian intervention’ that has been used as a justification for mass murder and genocide? But plainly the millions killed… Continue reading
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A captive nation By William Bowles
‘Boom and bust’ no matter what the pundits say, is built into the very nature of capitalism. At best ‘tinkering’ with it brings a temporary reprieve from the inevitable and even the ‘tinkering’ is the result of working class intervention into the affairs of capitalism eg, the ‘welfare state’. Ultimately, the outcome every time is… Continue reading
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Sleepwalking into fascism By William Bowles
If I am right about the slumbering state of the Brits, and I fear that I am, what will it take to wake them up? Some kind of cataclysm, the total meltdown of society? Jackboots in the high street? We are almost there what with millions of surveillance cameras and snooping in our emails and… Continue reading
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Season’s Greetings
31 December 2011 I’d like to wish all my readers a progressive and happy new year, though the direction things appear to be headed I’m not too confident about the outcome, unless we get our act together and toss the barbarians out. A luta continua William Bowles Continue reading
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A history lesson By William Bowles
The history of capitalism is the history of continuous revolutions in production: from the rural to the city; from cottage industry to factory; and finally from factory to ‘outsourcing’, the rise of the ‘service’ industry, de-industrialization and the financialization of capital. The end of an economy based on actual production and along with it, the… Continue reading
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Are we living in a fool’s paradise? By William Bowles
We are now literally, passive observers of our own funerals in a world of total media saturation and control. A world of endless tragedy but at a distance, mediated by an unseen hand and fed to us pretty much like an out-of-control soap opera, where events break and at first reporting is chaotic and normally… Continue reading
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It’s an (English) dog’s life By William Bowles
Franco’s insurrection could never have succeeded without the military support of Hitler’s Germany and the alleged ‘neutrality’ of the Western powers that effectively isolated the Republican government. Even the Soviet Union’s role, ostensibly supporting the Republican government, was motivated by a similar nationalist thinking to its vacillation over Libya and with the same, predictable and… Continue reading
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OWS: Leading from behind? By William Bowles
What are Lefties to make of OWS? Is it ‘ours’? Where is it headed? Is it socialist? And what is it with occupations anyway? Continue reading
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In Training By William Bowles
31 October 2011 Some readers may find it difficult to believe that for a brief time during my early, spotty teenage years, like thousands of others of my kind, I hung out out on railway stations collecting engine numbers and ticking them off in my Ian Allen train spotters guide. When I look back on… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 