Iraq
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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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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
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The voice of the imperium squeeks By William Bowles
This is a critical period for the imperium. Stretched to breaking point with widespread dissaffection amongst its troops on the ground after only nine short months, the Bush clique is faced with a genuine dilemma as well as a rapidly approaching election. Continue reading
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Take nothing you read for granted By William Bowles
Press coverage, right across the board has consistently misrepresented and distorted the shootout between guerrillas and the US occupation forces in Samarra, not only down to the number of dead and injured, but who exactly they were, how the confrontation occurred and what happened afterward. Continue reading
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The Sunni versus Shia Myth By William Bowles
Much that has been written about the ‘division’ between the Sunni and Shia in Iraq is not only a total distortion of the demographics of the Iraqi population, it also feeds into the propaganda campaign of ‘divide and rule’ tactics that even opponents of the war and occupation can fall into the trap of accepting… Continue reading
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The things they say By William Bowles
The state’s representatives – with the able assistance of ‘objective’ journalists – first deceive themselves before deceiving the rest of us, or so it would seem if one listens to their ‘earnest’ pronouncements on the ‘progress’ of the occupation of Iraq. In the month of November occupation forces and their mercenary assistants, suffered their highest… Continue reading
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Poisonous Perle By William Bowles
Today’s quiz: What connects Richard Perle to Douglas Feith, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, ELF Oil, Lord Black, Iraq, Israel, Iran, Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon, Bush Snr and Bush Jnr, Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, China, Adnan Kashoggi, Saudi Arabia, Global Crossings, Boeing, Halliburton, and the DoD? Continue reading
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Surprise-Surprise By William Bowles
Not surprisingly, this week the Blair government has announced the second highest ‘terrorism alert’ since 9/11 as a prelude to the visit by Bush the smaller. And like all the ‘terrorist alerts’ its vagueness verging on the mystical, allows the security state to cast its net very wide indeed. So much so that visitors to… Continue reading
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The Media’s Double Standard By William Bowles
I’ve often referred to the strategy that is the core of the ‘new’ imperialist agenda, the so-called ‘double standard’ articulated by Robert Cooper, now Blair’s pro-consul in Afghanistan. And although cloaked in ‘post-modernist’ phraseology, effectively, it’s a rollback to an earlier, imperialist epoch, a time when the Western world went unchallenged, aside from the occasional… Continue reading
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Iraq: Rhetoric Versus Reality By William Bowles
Bush and Blah have made much of the ‘fact’ that they invaded Iraq to bring democracy to the Iraqi people after thirty-five years of Saddam’s dictatorship. But what are the realities on the ground? Continue reading
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History Repeating Itself? Not Exactly By William Bowles
This time around, in spite of (or perhaps because of) a massive propaganda campaign preceding the war (whereas the Vietnam debacle was effectively hidden from the public), the imperium has been forced to try and justify its actions every step of the way. For those of us engaged in actively opposing the imperium, there are… Continue reading
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When thieves fall out By William Bowles
The real danger inherent in the Bush imperium’s strategy, is the threat to what’s left of US democracy after it’s been subjected to the depredations of the military-industrial clique and its parallel attack on the nation’s civil liberties. It points to the fact that without a massive campaign of lies, the American public would never… Continue reading
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Amateurs at Empire By William Bowles
It could be argued that the US emperium has bitten off more than it can chew but it’s even worse than that. They are rank amateurs at empire-building who are now faced with the insurmountable problem of effectively administering a country they claim to have liberated but which in reality has been occupied but without… Continue reading
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Out of Control By William Bowles
If there was ever time since the worst period of the Cold War (the early 1950s) for the creation of a global movement to try and halt this insanity, this is it! Methinks we only have one chance, a narrow window of oportunity to try and halt the slide and it’s right now. Can we… Continue reading
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This is how it goes… By William Bowles
The BBC is directly complicit in absolving the occupying forces from responsibility for the current state of affairs in Iraq. It’s this kind of ‘distancing’ between the media and the state that is so difficult to deal with as a kind of ‘osmosis of attitudes’ is taking place. Articulate these small lies often enough, and… Continue reading
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180 days of Empire By William Bowles
Presenting us with some kind of ‘checklist’ of a calamity that somehow is meant to inform us, is disingenuous reporting at its worst with its mixture of fact, fiction, supposition and just plain omission of critical information about the reality of six months of imperialist occupation. 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: 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
The New Dark Age 