Propaganda
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Media Lens: Media Complicity in War Crimes
On February 13, The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI), an international peoples’ initiative, declared much of the Western media guilty of deception and incitement to violence in its reporting on Iraq. The tribunal, meeting in Rome, made its pronouncement after taking testimony from independent journalists, media professors, activists, and a member of the European Parliament. Continue reading
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The Massage is the Message By William Bowles
A previous alert from MediaLens on Iran serves to remind us of the role of the intelligentsia in creating the ‘right kind’ of space for further imperial adventures as the innocuous-sounding quotes above aptly illustrate. But just who are they talking to? After all, if one is to judge by the surveys of the BBC’s… Continue reading
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Media Lens: Targeting Iran – The BBC Propaganda Begins
Remarkably, in an almost exact repeat of events in 2002 and 2003, the BBC is now reflexively boosting the US claim that Iran presents a threat to the West. Continue reading
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Media Lens: Protest the BBC on Thursday, December 2 – This is Why. Part 1
The BBC, of course, is not the Nazi media, but there have been real war crimes in Iraq, a real mass slaughter, and the BBC has helped make it possible. Please read the examples below and protest on December 2 out of compassion for the suffering of the men, women and children of Iraq. Continue reading
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“I simply say to you” By William Bowles
20 April 2004 “All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those toward whom it is directed will understand it…. Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the… Continue reading
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Emergency of State By William Bowles
There’s something truly scary about Tony Blair and the crew he has assembled around him. This guy is on a ‘mission’ and it is yet another example of serendipity at work insofar as the needs of the moment always throw up someone with the right mentality for the dirty job of building an empire. Enter… 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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Collective-selective amnesia By William Bowles
Self-censorship? Yes sometimes. A shared worldview? Yes sometimes. Heavy debts? More likely. Self-delusion? Even more likely. Amnesia? Absolutely necessary. A collective and selective amnesia, for without it how could the illusion be maintained? 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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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
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Dr David Kelly, the real deal: preserving the integrity of the state By William Bowles
17 August 2003 It is instructive as well as fascinating to follow the convoluted trail of disinformation and hyperbole in the government and the media’s attempts to transfer the blame from one individual to another in the agenda of diverting attention from the central issue, namely why we went to war. Continue reading
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Dr David Kelly, loyal foot soldier of the state By William Bowles
Far from being troubled about the impending invasion, Dr David Kelly could just as easily have been troubled by the use of ‘evidence’ that “takes away from the case for war.” In other words, Kelly’s statements can be interpreted as continued support for the war but that he objected to the way it was being… Continue reading
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Discovered! Shoal of Giant Red Herrings By William Bowles
The government’s propaganda campaign to scare the populace into accepting an unacceptable war, has, with the grovelling complicity of the media, including the so-called liberal arm of the press, entered a new but depressingly familiar phase. Continue reading
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Book Review: UK-the real outlaw state By William Bowles
The central planks of New Labour’s foreign policy have, we are told, been based on human rights, international development, just treatment for the poor of this planet including access to Western markets and the removal of debt, the rule of law and the maintenance of international order. In short, they have professed a progressive policy… 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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While the US crows, Iraq resists By William Bowles
As with all the other US military adventures across the world over the past decades, the US operates on the premise that people fight US invasions because they’re forced to. Yet time and again, this view has proved to be self-delusionary and follows from the imperialist elite confusing their own largely domestically targeted propaganda with… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 