Oil
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The BBC back-peddles big time or how to completely rewrite history before the ink’s even dried By William Bowles
29 October 2007 Question: When is a Plan not a Plan? Answer: When the Plan is not a Plan, Plan The BBC is currently flighting a programme in two parts entitled ‘No Plan, No Peace – the Inside Story of Iraq’s Descent into Chaos’ (28 and 29 October on BBC1). Way back and many times… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Oil Laws – Colonising Iraq’s Economic Prize
We are led to believe that Western societies are free and open. In many respects this is true: freedom of speech and the right to protest still exist, albeit within ever-tighter constraints. At root, however, much of what we see and hear in the corporate media has been shaped by money, power and greed. What… Continue reading
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Media Lens: The Media Ignore Credible Poll Revealing 1.2 Million Violent Deaths In Iraq
The media are not, as is commonly supposed, windows on the world; they are more like paintings or sketches of windows on the world — both the ‘window’ and the ‘reality’ beyond are manufactured corporate products. Continue reading
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Iraq and Oil — Why the mainstream media won’t talk about it By William Bowles
10 September 2007 ‘Order 150 passed in 1987 by Saddam Hussein banned public sector workers from organizing trade unions. Oil Minister Hussein al-Sharistani declared all oil unions illegal in July 2007, using [the same] Ba’ath regime anti-union law'[1] Ever since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the mainstream media have deliberately downplayed the role of… Continue reading
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Crisis Management By William Bowles
Perhaps the most difficult thing to do when dealing with current events is to establish the link between economics and politics. Thus the corporate press never, ever present an event, the invasion of Iraq for example as having any connection with economics, indeed any attempt to do so is ridiculed (eg it’s not all about… Continue reading
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Leaving the scene of the crime? By William Bowles
The Independent’s front page head for Wednesday 25 October proclaimed loudly “We’re out of here” purportedly the words of General George Casey, the US’s head military honcho in Iraq. Of course the devil lives in the small print as any reading ‘between the lines’ reveals. And in any case, Casey’s comments are designed precisely to… Continue reading
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Been there – done that By William Bowles
In 1881 British Redcoats got their arses well and truly kicked in Afghanistan and had to withdraw. It was one of the worst defeats British colonialism had experienced. The similarities don’t end there least of all the real reasons for being there in the first place. In 1881 it was, according to the government of… Continue reading
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Connecting the dots by William Bowles
One has to ask the question why the media feels it necessary to ridicule the idea of a conspiracy, especially a government-inspired one. Could it be because it’s just too close to home? Continue reading
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Nigeria’s hidden history By William Bowles
This particular history haunts Africa to this day and one that the British Establishment have yet to pay for, for it resulted in the deaths of millions and almost led to the break-up of Nigeria. The results determined the nature of the Nigeria of today including all the talk about post-colonial ‘corruption’. And, it should… Continue reading
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The US-Iran ‘crisis’ – it’s the oil stupid By William Bowles
Anybody who doesn’t think control of energy sources is at the root of USUK actions in Iraq and elsewhere is suffering a serious (but hopefully treatable) delusional disease of denial. Even the most cursory exploration of the 20th century reveals the centrality of oil to pretty well every event of any significance, and in no… Continue reading
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Media Lens: The Point of No Return – Where James Lovelock Meets BP
16 January 2006 — Media Lens Billions Will Die The Independent and the Independent on Sunday (IoS) pride themselves on their environmental coverage. No doubt their editors will indicate today’s dramatic front page as a case in point. The paper depicts the Earth from space overlaid by a dramatic headline: ‘Green guru says: We are… Continue reading
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Ahmed Chalabi – Petroleum’s Point Man By William Bowles
Convicted fraudster, bagman, carpetbagger, (dis)informant, playboy, opportunist, failed mercenary army leader, go-between creature of imperialism, of one thing we can be sure, Ahmed Chalabi is a survivor by virtue of (almost) always being on the ‘right’ side. Continue reading
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Media Lens: The Insane Society – Climate Change, Advertising, And The Independent
Fromm concluded that modern Western society was indeed insane and that this insanity threatened the very survival of the human species. If this sounds extreme, consider the media response to the most terrifying threat of our time – global climate catastrophe. In 2004 a paper in the leading science journal Nature warned that, as a… Continue reading
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On the road to Damascus By William Bowles
Oil in the next war will occupy the place of coal in the present war, or at least a parallel place to coal. The only big potential supply that we can get under British control is the Persian and Mesopotamian supply .… Control over these oil supplies becomes a first class British war aim –… Continue reading
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Book Review: A Century of War – Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order by William Engdahl By William Bowles
By the 1870s the Empire had reached its high point and England began the longest economic depression in its history, one that it was not to recover from until the 1890s. And in the meantime its European competitors, chiefly Germany, now outstripping Britain in industrial production and technological innovation, by the 1890s also had a… Continue reading
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Crunch Time in Caracas By William Bowles
This coming Sunday 15 August, the infamous Recall Referendum takes place in Venezuela. For those of you not familiar with the situation in Venezuela – fifth largest producer of oil on the planet and 10% of it going to that insatiable guzzler of the stuff, El Norté, the US – in 1998, the country voted… Continue reading
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Making Sense of Sudan By William Bowles
The build-up in the press coverage of Sudan to its present hysterical fever pitch must surely come as no surprise to most knowledgeable Africa watchers but the reality is that the present situation in Sudan is well over a quarter of a century old and much longer in the making. And of course it’s also… Continue reading
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Coup D’etats and all that stuff By William Bowles
Is it conceivable that a core group of people within the US Establishment led by the CIA could, over a period of years, engineer what amounts to a coup d’etat to remove the Bush Gang from the White House? The motivation being that the Bush administration’s policies were threatening the very basis of US capitalism… Continue reading
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Iran: Two lies and why By William Bowles
These two lies are historically connected via the role Iran used to play in the Cold War and of course because of its possession of oil, lots of oil. And like Iraq and its changing role in the making of our current reality, Iran’s relationship to the West has changed to suit whatever policies of… Continue reading
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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
The New Dark Age 