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“We’re talking about deadly neoliberalism–this bipartisan foreign policy that supersedes Democrat Republican Tory Labour. Why is it that there’s so much focus on the electoral process yet nothing seems to really change with the oppressed people living under the boot of Empire and it’s collaborators?” — Abby Martin
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by William Bowles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Investigating Imperialism
London, England
November 20, 2019
Is this our last chance before the darkness falls?
This is probably the most difficult piece I’ve ever had to write, at least about the Labour Party. My feelings about Corbyn and the Labour Party are on record, here, here, here and here, to name a few. The Labour Party is a party of Imperialism and always has been since its inception, well over a century ago. Even its high point in 1945, with the creation of the welfare state, occurred through pressure from below and just as today, capitalism was bankrupt and in crisis. The Labour government, in return for the Welfare state, saved capitalism from revolution (or collapse). The gains made during that critical period following WWII lasted about thirty years before the lords of capital started taking back what ‘we’ had tried to take from them and by 1975 we were clearly not equipped to resist. In part, the Labour Party was directly responsible, in fact it was party to the attacks on the Welfare state and the working class.
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by William Bowles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Investigating Imperialism
London, England
February 7, 2019
In Defence of Jeremy Corbyn
First off, let me get the ‘defending Corbyn’ bit out of the way. I do defend Corbyn’s defence of the downtrodden and the dispossessed, a rare quality in Britain’s despicable, dishonest and hypocritical political class. The attacks on him accusing him of anti-semitism are reprehensible and fundamentally originate with the Zionist entity, Israel, launched by Israel’s supporters inside the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) and reinforced by that other supporter of Israel, the BBC (with the able assistance from the rest of the corporate media).[1]
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by William Bowles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Investigating Imperialism
London, England
May 25, 2018
I need to continue my previous essay, it remains woefully incomplete. I kinda hinted at it in the last para but never completed the thought.
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by William Bowles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Investigating Imperialism
London, England
May 23, 2018
Why should it be that in a climate that’s shifted so far to the right, that out of the morass that is contemporary Britain, there should emerge a politician who was shaped by and effectively still lives, in a world that no longer exists? It’s bizarre to say the least but how to explain it?
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The Radical Ferment of Winnipeg’s Jewish Socialist Politics – Leo Panitch on RAI (1/4)
TheRealNews on Mar 5, 2018
On Reality Asserts Itself, Prof. Leo Panitch talks about the political culture of his family, shaped in Winnipeg’s radical Jewish community before and after World War Two; Labor Zionists, Social Democrats and Communists debated and organized within the Jewish working class movement – with host Paul Jay. Continue reading
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by William Bowles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Investigating Imperialism
London, England
February 3, 2018
Have you noticed that it’s no longer PC Dixon of Dock Green who mediates the relationship between the state and its citizens as he goes about his beat in your neighbourhood? Instead, it’s a Kevlar-armoured, video-monitored, taser-equipped, drone-surveilled, spit-masked supplied soldier, straight out of Star Wars, who now staggers along under the weight of an industrialized capitalism, visibly physically disconnected from the citizens they monitor by their bullet-proof uniforms, that more resemble a rack of tools in your local hardware store than the Bobby on the beat.
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by William Bowles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Investigating Imperialism
London, England
January 25, 2018
It’s interesting reading comments on the essays I write that get published around the world on various websites (at least those that permit comments) regarding Jeremy Corbyn.
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by William Bowles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Investigating Imperialism
London, England
January 16, 2018
“…we have the certainty that matter remains eternally the same in all its transformations, that none of its attributes can ever be lost, and therefore, also, that with the same iron necessity that it will exterminate on the earth its highest creation, the thinking mind, it must somewhere else and at another time again produce it”. — Frederick Engels, from the introduction to ‘The Dialectics of Nature’, 1883
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by John Pilger
John Pilger, Oct. 6, 2017
October 7, 2017
Delegates to the recent Labour Party conference in the English seaside town of Brighton seemed not to notice a video playing in the main entrance. The world’s third biggest arms manufacturer, BAE Systems, supplier to Saudi Arabia, was promoting its guns, bombs, missiles, naval ships and fighter aircraft.
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by William Bowles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Investigating Imperialism
London, England
July 16, 2017
Class War
Consider the Grenfell Tower inferno as an expression of a new kind of class war, but not a class war as we have known it–between organised workers, political parties and capital–but between ordinary citizens and the local fiefdoms of the capitalist state as increasingly, big business has taken over the running of what’s left of our public and collective life, through ‘outsourcing’, public-private-partnerships and what have you, where making a profit is the bottom line, not serving the public.[1]
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by William Bowles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Investigating Imperialism
London, England
June 16, 2017
“From nowhere, a grassroots power base of [60,000] left-wing activists overturned Blair’s 20-year “New Labour” project, which took the party into the Clintonite center ground, and ultimately to three straight general election victories, No.10 Downing Street, and government. As the leader of Britain’s main opposition, Corbyn is technically the next prime minister in waiting. This is not a trivial achievement.
“It has left his party’s establishment stunned.” – ‘Momentum: The Inside story of how Corbyn took control of the Labour Party‘, Business Insider, March 3, 2016
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Updated: June 8, 2017
by William Bowles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Investigating Imperialism
London, England
June 7, 2017
And after all the bad things I’ve said about Corbyn (here, here and here) you would think asking the question was redundant, but is it? Should I vote for Corbyn/Labour Party or perhaps abstain? What is at stake here, aside from Corbyn’s political future (and perhaps the future of the Labour Party itself)? He is after all, almost at retirement age and thrust into a position that he never asked for in the first place. Had he been ten or twenty years younger I seriously doubt whether he would have accepted the position.
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by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London, England
June 1, 2017
After 20-plus years of being lost in the muddy centre ground of British politics, the Labour party now stands tall again as the party of social democracy, rooted in values of social justice, participation and unity. Under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, Labour is offering a positive message of hope at the coming UK election and presents a real alternative to the Conservatives.
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by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London, England
May 26, 2017
Consistent with 21st century politics the announcement on 18th April of a general election by Prime Minister Theresa May was a cynical move based purely on self-interest. The ‘snap election’ to be held on 8th June contravenes the fixed parliament act of 2011, which introduced fixed term elections (every five years) for the first time.
Dandelion Salad 