UK
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A warning to Israel and the US: Yemen isn’t Syria
Yemen, long seen as a victim of external aggression, is now rewriting the rules of engagement in West Asia. By targeting Israel and the US–UK navies with unflinching precision, Ansarallah has forced its adversaries into an unwinnable corner. Continue reading
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The UK attempt to criminalise dissent on Palestine
The British state clearly wants to find a way to scare British citizens away from supporting the legitimate right of the Palestinian people to resist occupation by all available means, including by armed struggle. This is their right under international law. Continue reading
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Internal crisis shakes Balkan media network run by UK intel, leaked emails show
A prominent propaganda outlet in the Balkans, which is directly overseen by a British government agency that Reuters once labeled “an influential soft-power extension of UK foreign policy,” appears to be on the brink of collapse after a major schism between staff members and leadership. Continue reading
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Politics as spectacle By William Bowles
Failing a real left in this country, it seems that political activity has devolved into little more than spectacle, something implausibly akin to the Olympics or the Queen’s birthday (but without the exposure or corporate support or even the commitment that money buys). The BurnAusterity one day campaign typifies this corporatized and extremely fragmented approach… Continue reading
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The BBC’s Syrian Chemical Weapons Coverage: An exercise in Imperial deception By William Bowles
Over the past three days, since the story first broke, the BBC’s news Website (I use the word news advisedly) has carried twelve stories on the alleged chemical weapons attack that took place in a suburb of Damascus. Today’s offerings include, Hague believes Assad behind attack (23/8/13), without a shred of proof that the Assad… Continue reading
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Dance of the Infidels By William Bowles
What gives that pompous ass Cameron the right to call for the resignation of a sovereign nation’s head of state? This is the same Cameron who authorized bombing Libya back into the Stone Age. Well of course it’s the insidious ‘Responsibility to Protect’, probably the most successful confidence trick in history and performed in full… 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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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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Things fall apart By William Bowles
It’s fashionable to call them the ‘underclass’ that the state has buried away, out of sight–out of mind on ‘sink estates’ or trapped in the poorest neighborhoods of our cities. Demonized and/or sentimentalized by the state/corporate media (‘Shameless’ and ‘East Enders’ for example), just as with our Victorian counterparts, an entire section of the working… Continue reading
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Rebellion in the High Street? By William Bowles
So, a few rumblings of discontent have surfaced, first with the students and now an interesting development, targeting corporate tax avoiders such as Topshop, owned by Sir Philip Green’s Arcadia Group who has his multi-billion empire registered in his wife’s name and who is resident in tax-free Monaco, where of course she’s really busy running… Continue reading
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Economism rules ok! By William Bowles
Currently, the only effective force in the country that can mount any kind of opposition to the attacks on our social capital is a much defanged trade union movement. But what are the chances of the organized labour movement leading a successful opposition to this, most likely the last gasp of a bankrupt capitalism before… Continue reading
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Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires or just a graveyard with a pipeline running through it? By William Bowles
Come on folks, it’s just good sense, there is no way the Empire can actually win the war in Afghanistan. As I have stated before it’s about being there, not ‘winning’. Afghanistan is basically a stepping stone on the way to some place else and leaving an oil pipeline behind with a friendly government in… Continue reading
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British Capitalism – the Worm Ouroboros By William Bowles
British capitalism has degenerated into that of a ‘middleman’, creaming profits off the global circuit of capital without contributing anything to real wealth creation and once the inevitable speculative bubble burst, as per usual, it’s the working class that pays the bill. Continue reading
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Robert Mugabe, yet another man the West loves to hate By William Bowles
And as long as Mugabe left Britain’s ‘kith and kin’ alone (the settler farmers), it was quite happy to let Zanu-PF spout all kinds of socialist rhetoric, as long as he didn’t actually implement any of it. Thus all the statements out of the West about the ‘miracle’ of Zimbabwe, the ‘bread basket’ of Southern… Continue reading
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Sink or Swim in the capitalist ocean? By William Bowles
When a group of so-called Aboriginals from I believe Borneo (or maybe it was Papua New Guinea) visited the UK recently they were gob-smacked to find homeless people on the streets of London. The concept ‘homelessness’ simply didn’t exist in their vocabulary and reinforced by the vast wealth that surrounded them (the ‘Aboriginal and the… Continue reading
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Bush’s Tower of Babble by William Bowles
3 November 2011 “[W]e got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have [sic] the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon” — president Continue reading
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The Media on ‘Global Terror’ by William Bowles
12 July 2007 Y’know it’s amazing really, considering that for centuries Europeans have been invading other countries, enslaving their peoples, ripping off their resources and in the process impoverishing much of the planet. And what is more, moving in and taking up residence without so much as a ‘by your leave’ let alone being put Continue reading
The New Dark Age 