"The Bride of death?" By William Bowles

13 October 2003

Intro, 26 September 2015: I wrote this thirteen years ago and on rereading it now I think it deserves a fresh airing given as how things have just gone downhill since then with the total demonisation of the Muslim/Arab in the so-called civilised world. And, it must be me that’s changed because I’m even more appalled today by the repellent racism of Kevin Toolis’s muck in the Observer than when I first read it all those years ago.

This is a kind of followup to the piece I wrote the other day “Let the reader be aware” about the way the media repeats lots of small lies to make one Big Lie, predicated on the approach that swallowing a lot of small lies is a lot easier to do than swallowing one Big One.

(Yet More) Rumours of War and other tales from Psy-Ops Central by William Bowles

7 September 2007

“Reports that the Bush administration will put Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the terrorism list can be read in one of two ways: It’s either more bluster or, ominously, a wind-up for a strike on Iran. Officials I talk to in Washington vote for a hit on the IRGC, maybe within the next six months.” — Robert Baer, a former high-ranking CIA field officer in the Middle East. [1]

Law ‘n’ Order By William Bowles

26 November 2003

What the state ‘giveth’, the state can take away

Marx saw the state as ‘whithering away’ with the building of communism (as opposed to the state under socialism, which is a kind of ‘interim stage’ between capitalism and communism). Moreover, Marx was quite specific about it. Under communism, the state becomes a government of ‘things’ as opposed to a government of people.

Snared on the Web By William Bowles

28 October 2003

“The United States has added Web sites to its list of “foreign terrorist organizations” for the first time, under the category of aliases for conventional groups, a State Department official said Friday.” Reuters October 10, 2003

The latest attack on freedom of speech might not bother non-Americans but the State Department’s move to add Websites to its list of “Blocked Persons, Specially Designated Nationals, Specially Designated Terrorists, Specially Designated Global Terrorists, Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers” should.

WDD: Weapons of Deliberate Disinformation By William Bowles

14 August 2003

The events of the past few days reveals just how much the media and the state work hand in glove in projecting a view of the world that maintains the fiction of the ‘terrorist threat’ and what the objectives of the West really are.

Heil Caesar By William Bowles

19 July 2003

“There is no more dangerous theory in international politics today than that we need to balance the power of America with other competitor powers, different poles around which nations gather.” — Tony Blair

From Burgers to Baghdad By William Bowles

3 July 2003

For over fifty years , the West has carried on a campaign that pushes the idea that the superiority of the ‘Western way of life’ based upon unlimited ‘choice’ and the ‘free market’ as opposed to the drab and conformist communist world, is the best of all possible worlds. They sold us the idea, that an ocean of ‘choice’ in clothes, cars, food, consumables and so on, was the only definition of ‘freedom’ worth pursuing. Moreover, we ‘freely’ made the choice to live in a world of unlimited consumption(and of course, production).

Spooking the Spooks By William Bowles

12 June 2003

Having spooked the entire population with tales of terror as part of its programme to win over the population to its policies, the Bush administration is faced with the reality of being hoisted by its own petard as the saying goes. As more and more information comes out about the real nature of the repressive tactics being used and the role of big business in propelling the entire insane machine, it’s becoming clearer and clearer to citizens, that they have more to fear from their own government than they have from any elusive enemy.

War Inc. – A $300 Billion Dollar Business By William Bowles

18 May 2003

‘Mercenaries are outlawed under Article 47 of the Geneva Convention. In December 1994 the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 49/1150 urging all nations ‘to take the necessary steps and to exercise the utmost vigilance against the menace posed by the activities of mercenaries’. The UN International Convention Against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries has been signed or ratified by twenty-one countries.’ – http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/sheppard.htm