‘K’ Metamorphoses into ‘G’ By William Bowles

19 February 2019 — Investigating Imperialism

[I think it’s time to republish a piece I wrote 15 years ago, in 2004, though clearly very few took notice of it then, will it be any different this time? I doubt it, it’s probably already too late to do anything about it. What the Labour government initiated in 2004 has now reached, not only fruition but is now sweeping the ‘democratic’ West as the crisis of capital intensifies and opposition to neoliberalism intensifies. I call it what it is, Fascism. Maybe not the Fascism of Hitler or Mussolini, there are no jackboots, they don’t need them this time, they have built the corporate-security state, a state that has us all on file, a state that records our movements, a state that knows what we read, who we see,  a state that now works in tandem with its corporate masters just as Mussolini’s Fascism did, a state that makes Orwell’s 1984 amateurish by comparison.  Reading through it, I don’t think I need to alter one word. WB.]

24 April 2004

“Someone must have slandered Joseph K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.” – Franz Kafka, ‘The Trial’

From the personal to the political-and back again By William Bowles

12 June 2009

The last few months have not been pleasant for me, wrestling with my own inner demons. Yeah, we Brits are not meant to be open about our inner selves, stiff upper lip and all that crap, and, in the scheme of things there are more than enough demons stalking the planet without me adding to them.

That said, what the fuck! Where do you think our demons come from in the first place! So in the midst of all the mayhem around us, here I am struggling to write, something that has up until now anyway, been the most natural thing in the world for me to do.

That such an innate act, that of creating should be denied to me, came as a shock. Denied my own voice, I felt imprisoned inside my own skull. But even writing about such things feels like an indulgence, after all who wants to read about my personal problems when the world is going to hell in a hand-basket?

The phrase ‘from the personal the political’ comes to mind, or am I just fishing for a hook? But this is at least a step forward, I mean actually committing pen to paper and assuming it actually ends up online.

There’s a kind of madness in the air By William Bowles

16 February, 2008

Note: sorry about the story being out of sequence but all attempts at posting it failed. Had to wait until my return.

February 2, 2008 — For the first time in a long time I’m taking a trip to NYC, my old ‘home town’. The airport (I use this term advisedly) I’m leaving from, Gatwick, just outside London, has been tranformed into one, gigantic shopping mall (with runways attached as an afterthought).

The security ‘check-in’ is OTT, now you even have to take your shoes off (shades of the ‘shoe bomber’). How long before we get stripped searched and every orifice in our battered bodies probed, I wonder? If it gets to that point, you’ll never see me in an airport ever again.

Lies by Omission By William Bowles

6 October 2006

“An increasing number of people see a dark cloud hanging over Europe. They fear that the birthplace of the Enlightenment and the cradle of free speech is being silenced by the growing assertiveness of an intolerant strain of Islam.” — The Independent Editorial, Wednesday, 4 October 2006.

The London Independent’s editorial headed “Beware loose talk about a clash of civilisations” boggles the mind and my pen trembles and threatens to skitter right off the page of my ‘little red note book’ as I transcribe the words from this misleading and dangerous distortion of the facts.

It’s that’s time again – for another ‘terror plot’ By William Bowles

12 August 2006

“Sometimes we may have to modify some of our own freedoms in the short term in order to prevent their misuse and abuse by those who oppose our fundamental values and would destroy all of our freedoms in the modern world.” – Home secretary, John Reid

It’s amazing really that nobody sees the paradox of Reid calling for the abolition of what’s left of our civil rights in order to preserve them but then there’s nothing logical about the ‘war on terror’, it is itself a contradiction of terms.

Death to ‘al-Zarqawi’! Long may he live! By William Bowles

16 June 2006

Since the ‘death’ of ‘al-Zarqawi’ reams have been written from both a ‘left’ and right perspective on the significance of his death or even, as I along with other writers have asserted, whether the damn fellow existed in the first place, at least as he has been portrayed.

Specific intelligence? By William Bowles

14 June 2006

Last night (13/6/06) the Channel 4 News report on the invasion by an assault force of more than 250 state employees on the homes of two innocent citizens of this (formerly) green and pleasant land, Mohammed Abdul Kahar and his brother Abdul Koyair, opened with a list of all things reported by the media that were, to put it mildly, inventions, including, but not limited to, how the shooting took place; what exactly happened when a bunch of armed thugs broke down the door and masked and unidentified men, one of whom shot Kahar at close range, pushed his brother down the stairs and then beat him up. It also mentioned fictitious ‘terrorist’ links the two brothers had, non-existent criminal records and so on and so forth.

al-somebody or other By William Bowles

11 June 2006

Well folks, the ‘new’ leader of ‘al-Qu’eda in Iraq’ has been named (already). Can’t remember it offhand, not that it matters, it’s al-somebody or other. I’ve posted a page of newslinks on his ‘death’ if you can be bothered to read through the endless drivel that’s been generated. (See also the ‘Zarqawi‘ section for more on the fabled foe of Western ‘civilisation’.)

Pulling corpses out of the hat By William Bowles

9 June 2006

“The Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date.” — Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. military’s chief spokesman

There can be no doubt that the ‘death’ of ‘Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’ is part of a carefully planned disinformation campaign designed to divert attention away from the slaughter of Haditha (and elsewhere), a campaign that the corporate and state media have gleefully participated in. Indeed, ‘al-Zarqawi’ is itself a psy-ops programme in its own right, replete with faked letters of authenticity, fed to the press by the US military, which calls into question the source of the Internet videos of beheadings, and who is behind the wave of kidnappings and murders currently sweeping Iraq.

It’s down to Fundamentals By William Bowles

6 June 2006

Last Friday, 2 June the full force of the state was brought to bear on an East London street following a “tip-off” that the location was being used to build some kind of chemical bomb. In the ensuing melee of police, MI5, security agents, the ‘anti-terrorist’ squad and who knows who else, 250 in all plus a helicopter (and a 6 square mile ‘air exclusion zone’, though what did the state expect, a daring rescue/attack by helicopter?).