The researchers had a hunch he was there. ATOS pass Richard III’s skeleton as fit to work.
Joking aside, the discovery of Richard III’s body is fascinating and wonderful. Aside from Shakespeare’s brilliant play (which is evidently not as physically inaccurate as we have been told for years), and the question of who killed the Princes in the Tower, there is a romance about lost dynasties which appeals to a deep human yearning for a golden age when things were somehow better, and for “lost futures”. What might have been, had those evil Stanleys not turned on Richard at Bosworth and put their miserable Welsh accountant on the throne?
Richard is described in today’s newspapers as the last English King. The Plantagenets were of course Angevin. The last English King – indeed the only English King of all England – was Harold Godwinson. Now there’s a lost dynasty for you.
We now know that Richard’s “Claim of Right” was almost certainly true and Edward IV a bastard, as his father was nowhere near his mother for months around the purported conception. But the so-called Royal line is, I am quite sure, sprinkled with bastards and no line at all. Not to mention that George I was 39th in line to the throne when given it 300 years ago, but the first Protestant.
Monarchy is bollocks, and something we should have outgrown a long time ago. Nice to see that today’s Prince Harry retains the tradition of remorseless homicide though.
Leicester University deserve congratulations on a genuine achievement. I hope Richard can now be reburied as soon as possible – as a Catholic, which is what he was. He was a human being. The degradation and display of his fresh corpse were horrible; but there is a danger of repeating it with a po face and feigned serious intent.
Craig…answer your bloody e mails !!
More confused “thinking” from one of the Eminences of this blog :
Nevermind at 18h20 “A minority coalition that not even consulted its members on the bill never mind the electorate…”
MPs do not “consult” the electorate on individual issues, they are representatives and not delegates.
Had the electorate been consulted, the bill would most probably not have passed. And were the electorate to be consulted, hanging would doubtlessly be re-introduced.
********
Their Eminences’ clever solution :
1/. Their Eminences approve of what the bill seeks to achieve
2/. But they hate to give the Coalition and the PM credit for anything
3/. So they waesel out by calling the whole issue “guff” and saying it’s a diversion from more serious stuff.
Dishonest and stupid.
Destroying the myths of habby, res diss and the other idiot
“This is an extended review of a book which will shock those accustomed to the British official narrative of alleged ‘non-involvement’ in torture. The plain, unarguable facts are that, when the British State judges its security interests to be at stake, the gloves always come off; systematic depravity towards its captives is indulged, alongside simultaneous claims of the exact opposite. The book shows that, in all important respects, the British military/security establishments have led the world in the calculated use and refinement of torture techniques.”
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Document:Cruel_Britannia_-_A_Secret_History_of_Torture
Covering up government criminality
“As the weight of evidence mounts up, so the State becomes increasingly desperate to cover up. Miliband (D) pirouettes in the High Court, Straw denies any involvement in rendition before his assurances are contradicted by the discovery of documents in Tripoli. Then up pops the so called “Justice and Security Bill” – currently making its way through Parliament – in a desperate, blanket attempt to cover up all UK complicity in torture and rendition. However, the more attempts there are to cover it up the more the issue is exposed and it must be the supreme irony that as details of torture are finally being exposed from Kenya, the Government is embarking on yet another cover up.
This is why Cobain’s allegations in Cruel Britannia are like a hand grenade in the heart of the establishment. The truth has had the pin pulled out of it by this book and is likely to go off at any moment. When it does, it will not only be the foot soldiers who end up being caught in the explosive consequences.”
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Document:Cruel_Britannia_-_A_Secret_History_of_Torture
Not confused thinking this time, but something illustrating that other great speciality of the Eminences of this blog, namely, hypocrisy:
Mary at 18h43, referring to the forthcoming debate on “Was it worth it? Iraq 10 years on”, writes
“The ten of them {ie, the participants in the debate} … should just shut their mouths and respect the Iraqi dead”
Mary, the great illuminator? Mary the great sniffer-out of censorship by the establishment? Mary, the ardent defender of free speach and public debate?
“Shut their mouths”? Tut, tut, Mary.
David, I don’t know about you being a “myth destroyer”, but you most certainly are a mighty supplier of quotations from others. Are you by any chance competing with Mary? It would be nice to have something original from you (a thought, for instance?) once in a while.
Have a nice quoteful evening, Davy.
More myths exposed – habby’s friends in the US abandon all pretense to due process.
Torture, murder and authoritarian control. Prsumably this is what habby means by practicing Catholic. The other clown then pretends that this is what is supported by the 99%.
You couldn’t make it up. But they do!
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/2/5/kill_list_exposed_leaked_obama_memo
A thought, Davy, a thought! Not an insult! Although it’s true that insults are easy, whereas a thought requires…thought.
WERRITY AFFAIR – BENT ?
ATLANTIC BRIDGE
News of a Craig, (least?) favourite topic. Does this deserve a new tirade? ‘Course it does. ; ) –
“The decision of the Crown Prosecution Service not to prosecute Adam Werritty,22 the one-time adviser to Liam Fox, not only afforded relief to the former Secretary of State for Defence and his long-time friend and flatmate, but also to No 10 – and not just because David Cameron seems to have plenty of other difficulties on his hands at the moment. The reason is that the Prime Minister’s vivacious press secretary, Gabby Bertin – currently on maternity leave – used to work closely with Mr Werritty and Dr Fox as the researcher and sole employee of Atlantic Bridge. The controversial Atlanticist defence ‘think tank’ was shut down after the Charity Commissioners said in 2010 that its primary objective appeared to be ‘promoting a political policy [that] is closely associated with the Conservative party’.”
“Ms Bertin, a former banker, had her £25,000 salary at Atlantic Bridge paid by Pfizer, the giant US pharmaceutical company.”
More at
– Work in Progress – ‘Title Tatle’ – Summer 2013 – Issue 65 – Lobster Magazine –
http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/issue65.php
MJ
6 Feb, 2013 – 6:41 pm
“My reading of it is that both Cameron and Obama have been put under some pressure to push through same-sex marriage legislation. Not from the general public of course but from above. The question is therefore: why are the banksters so keen on same-sex marriage?”
I can’t see a logical reason why bankers or other elites would find it beneficial to their interests to pressurise governments (UK or US) to introduce same sex marriage but I am open to suggestions.
I think a more likely motive for both Cameron and Obama is simply tactical manoeuvring for future votes.
A same sex marriage bill was not enacted in Mondays vote. The House of Lords now has to have its say and a Ping-Pong battle between the Commons and the Lords may delay any legislation up to the next election.
Habbabkuk
Where are my books?
Oh dear, another one of habby’s heroes having a little spot of local difficulty. Funny the way that mythic 99% are never around when you need them, eh.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2274534/How-Margaret-Thatchers-legacy-divided-hometown-STILL-memorial-famous-daughter.html
Ex Pat I should say thanks for that link but having just had my supper and having just read it, I now feel sick. What a litany of the incestuous relationships that go to make what is referred to as the establishment of this rotten country, in politics, the media and business. Some of it was old news but much was new.
This section refers to Lord Browne whom I referred to earlier. The Robertson mentioned is that sinister ex NATO Secretary General.
Nick Butler
Lord Robertson’s very old friend and fellow founder of the
British American Project way back in 1984 was Nick Butler,
who, according to official BAP history, was the young Chatham
House research fellow on secondment from BP who managed
to find the $425,000 launch money to get the BAP off the
ground. He is still busy in retirement from his day job as righthand
man to Lord Browne, who resigned as chief executive of
BP in 2007 after being found to have lied repeatedly to the
High Court about his private life.27 Browne, in a continuing
influential public life, subsequently wrote the report ushering
in higher student fees.28
According to the 2013 Who’s Who, Butler still retains the
treasureship of the Fabian Society he has held for over 30
years, and serves as vice-president of the Hay Festival and is
on Yale University’s international advisory board. He is now
recorded as being chairman of the policy institute of King’s
College London.29 There is no reference in Who’s Who to his
first marriage – not unusual in its self-censoring entries – but
more surprisingly, perhaps, no mention of his important role in
helping set up the British American Project.
24
25
26
27
28
29
A BAP coda
Two small concluding footnotes on the BAP. The 1998 official
history of the BAP, published soon after Lobster’s disclosure of
the Project’s existence,30 paid tribute to the important role of
banker and former British Steel chairman Sir Charles Villiers31
in easing its birth. His daughter, Diana, has served on the
BAP’s US advisory board under her married name of
Negroponte. Husband John ‘had a distinguished career in
diplomacy and national security’, according to Yale University,
32 with which, like his wife’s old BAP friend Butler, he has a
continuing connection. In 2004 when he was appointed US
ambassador to post-invasion Iraq, his role in Honduras at the
time of the BAP’s foundation was described by Counterpunch
as that of ‘ambassador to death squads’.33
An early recruit to the BAP in 1991, Brendan Barber rose
to be general secretary the TUC and talked a lot of Britain’s
‘stratospheric inequality’.34 After 37 years as Congress House
bureaucrat Barber retired on New Year’s Eve with a £100,000
pay-off in addition to his pension.35 This is not likely to match
the earnings of two of Barber’s other 1991 BAP ‘fellows’,
Damon Buffini and Jonathan Powell. Multimillionaire Buffini, as
chairman of Permira, became the apparently reluctant public
face of private equity.36 Powell is now a senior managing
director with Morgan Stanley37and one of the New Labour
senior network doing quite nicely in Barber’s Britain of
‘stratospheric inequality’.38
29
30
31
32
33
Noam Chomsky on the appointment of Villiers’s son-in-law to Baghdad
can be read at .
34
35
Shame the links didn’t print although they were copied along with the Lobster text.
David. The headless version should be erected. 🙂
George Galloway –v- Cameron
‘I asked a reasonable question, to detail the difference between the jihadists in Mali we oppose and the jihadists in Syria we back and in response to a legitimate inquiry I received a sneering insult more fitted to the gutters of Eton than the Mother of all Parliaments,’
Galloway said. ‘Britain is guilty to backing the worst, most bloodthirsty dictators in the world, bar none. This country backs and arms the foul Saudi Arabian sheikhdom which has the least democracy and probably the worst human rights record on the planet.
Then there’s Bahrain. And what about Egypt where this government backed Mubarak until almost the end? And it is less than a week ago, isn’t it, that the Foreign Office was warning British citizens to get out of Benghazi immediately for fear of their lives – at risk from the same jihadis we supplied, armed and fought for.’
Galloway added: ‘I have written to the Prime Minister today about his response to me and I will be interested how he responds.’
Below is the text of the letter:
Wednesday 30th January 2012
Dear Prime Minister,
I’m sure on reflection you will realise that your answer to me today was beneath you and unbecoming for a British Prime Minister. I will deal with the complete absence of a substantive reply in a moment. But let me deal first with the vulgar abuse.
I do not support any Arab dictatorship, unlike you. It is you who is selling weapons to the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia and providing military training there. It is you who is supporting the Bahraini dictatorship. It is you who supported the Mubarak dictatorship until its last hours. Ditto the late dictatorship in Tunisia, Yemen etc.
It is you who has the warmest possible relations with the dictatorships in the Gulf. I could go on, believe me. I, on the other hand, have spoken, written and broadcast against all Arab dictatorships. Perhaps your staff, in preparing your reply, will provide you with the evidence of this. I also read Frankenstein until the end.
I told one of your predecessors, Lady Thatcher, on the eve of the triumph of those whom your party routinely described as ‘Afghan freedom fighters’ that she “had opened the gates to the barbarians…. And that a long dark night would now descend upon the people of Afghanistan”.
I warned repeatedly against the folly of the creation of the Arab-Afghan force which became Al Qaida. Immediately after 9/11 I said in the House that “I despise Osama Bin Laden, the medieval obscurantist savage. The difference is that I have always despised him. I despised him when you (pointing at the Tory benches) were giving him guns and money”.
I find it genuinely inexplicable that you are doing it all over again. This is a tragedy which begins to look farcical when one considers the issue which I raised today with you. We are now killing Al Qaida in Mali and helping Al Qaida kill in Syria – killing Christians, killing Shiites, killing Kurds, killing Druze, killing Sunnis who won’t join their jihad, and soon, trust me, they will be killing each other.
Chris Hedges makes an argument that sorely undermines the naive and simplistic analysis of habby hero Niall Ferguson:
“The human species, led by white Europeans and Euro-Americans, has been on a 500-year-long planetwide rampage of conquering, plundering, looting, exploiting and polluting the Earth—as well as killing the indigenous communities that stood in the way. But the game is up. The technical and scientific forces that created a life of unparalleled luxury—as well as unrivaled military and economic power—for the industrial elites are the forces that now doom us.”
“Karl Marx and Adam Smith both pointed to the influx of wealth from the Americas as having made possible the Industrial Revolution and the start of modern capitalism. It was the rape of the Americas, Wright points out, that triggered the orgy of European expansion. The Industrial Revolution also equipped the Europeans with technologically advanced weapons systems, making further subjugation, plundering and expansion possible.”
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_myth_of_human_progress_20130113/
Yup, Mary. Habby’s headless hero. Apt.
HaBbabKuK: “A thought, Davy, a thought! Not an insult! Although it’s true that insults are easy, whereas a thought requires…thought.”
An insight, Habby, an insight! Not a thought! Although it’s true that thoughts are easy, whereas an insight requires…no thought.
Can you manage that? Can you even take that in?
@ David (21h33) : a nice quote from Chris Hedges, Davy, but what’s the connection with the distinguished academic historian Niall Ferguson?
BTW, Chris Hedges – is he that American left-wing journalist? BA in English Literature and an MA in Divinity?
Today everyone said sorry yet they did not resign, as any person of honour would have done.
1. Sir David Nicholson, head of the NHS Confederation, and who was the head of the Strategic Health Authority that had overall control of the Mid Staffs Hospitals Foundation Trust during the period of the hospitals’ shortcomings. He has got the job of launching the new improved Cameron style privatised NHS as Chief Executive of the National Health Commissioning Board in April. Head honcho.
See his career path. His second wife is the Chief Executive of Birmingham Children’s Hospital.
Did he take any action to sort out the Mid Staffs failures and problems? No.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nicholson_(civil_servant)
2. Stephen Hester Chief Executive of RBS. The bank’s illegal LIBOR activities were happening during his first two years in the post.
Did he do anything to put a stop to them? No.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hester
While a section of the gay community might be happy with the bill, giving greater perceived equality, and future generations might be more fully integrated into the mainstream, I think a far greater but less vocal component of gay people wouldn’t want these religious cranks waving dead chickens over them, mumbling cant and flaunting their holy book superstitions. Neither their (begrudging) blessing or their curses are welcome much or even worth attention. It seems something like the fox-hunting debacle, something to convulse and divide the politicians, and then the public according to their inculcated prejudices and conditioning: tokenism, the substance of which matters not but serves as a distraction from serious affairs snuk in under cover of the row which will ensue; a mad punch-drunk on power clique revelling in ever more despicable brazen wholesale theft and killing, and which will shame all of this country till eternity for their crimes.
All places of worship should be converted to well-equipped community workshops in which all manner of items can be repaired, refurbished or recycled, with marriages over an anvil.
I’d offer Richard the Turd’s bones to Leicester Cat and Dog Home for strays to chew on.
I wouldn’t feed bitter genocide apologist trolls anything but poisoned pieces of raw rat.
How the the misinformation, lies, and prejudices that are used too formulate disorder hitherto were used to establish order. How much different could things become?
Look for the tenacity.
Habbab, who was up early this morning all excited with Songs of Praise for Camera-on:
“BTW, I note the big silence re. the gay and lesbian marriage bill which was voted yesterday. A further step towards equality, which should be welcomed – loudly – by the eminences on this blog. Where’s Mary with her links? Nevermind? Doug Scorgie? Villager? Komodo? I say : three cheers for David Cameron on this one!”
The institution of marriage is broken. If the gays want a piece of that action, of course they should be welcomed to make the mistake. Why should heteros suffer alone?
Wow Habby what a statesman your idol is! Is that all it takes to de-light you? Shows what a light you are unto yourself.
Just had to feed you that before you turn out your lights. My compassion for you would not allow you to bed hungry. But sleep well knowing that Cameron needs followers like you. Eyes shut widely.
Seems as though habby hero, Niall Ferguson is a bit of a troll himself. I suspect if we looked at other habby heroes we’d find a similar inability to speak truthfully. This may be down to a lazy carelessness, dishonesty or just general ignorance, or some combination of all three.
Let’s see what they say about Niall. These from a number of different commentators, named in the article:
“”We are not talking about ideology or even economic analysis here,” writes the Nobel prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, with whom Ferguson has had several previous run-ins, “just a plain misrepresentation of the facts.” Krugman accuses Ferguson of “unethical commentary” and “deliberately misleading readers”, and suggests Newsweek should print an “abject correction” of one particularly “cheap shot” on healthcare reform.”
“Ferguson’s story “is so careless and unconvincing that I wonder how he will presume to sit in judgment of the next set of student papers he has to grade”.”
“embarrassingly bad”
“lying”
“”editing” a key Congressional Budget Office report on Obama’s healthcare reform “to change its meaning”
“Ferguson delves into a fantasy world of incorrect and tendentious facts. He simply gets things wrong, again and again and again.”
“intellectual fraud”
“based on a bunch of crap he made up.”
“Even the king of US political bloggers, Andrew Sullivan, calling himself “an old and good friend” of Ferguson’s, accuses the historian of “massively – and rather self-evidently – distorting” Obama’s record and promises several more posts on the subject, because sadly “the piece is … ridden with errors and elisions and non-sequiturs”.”
Ouch!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/shortcuts/2012/aug/21/niall-fergusons-newsweek-article-obama
In response, Niall doesn’t address the issues raised. Rather he plays the distractio ad infinitum game.
Remind you of anyone?
Of course, habby hero Niall quotes very approvingly of fellow Scot, Adam Smith, calls him the cleverest man in the world. Perhaps he didn’t read him well enough.
“Karl Marx and Adam Smith both pointed to the influx of wealth from the Americas as having made possible the Industrial Revolution and the start of modern capitalism. It was the rape of the Americas, Wright points out, that triggered the orgy of European expansion. The Industrial Revolution also equipped the Europeans with technologically advanced weapons systems, making further subjugation, plundering and expansion possible.”
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_myth_of_human_progress_20130113/
So, it’s money wot won it. Plundering, rape, pillage, murder, slaughter, theft. The usual.
The question of course is, where does this leave wee Nially and his killer apps, eh, eh?
“Monarchy is bollocks.” Oh, brilliant argument, for making a jackass like Cameron President of the Republic, living in the palace with all the residual powers now reserved to the monarch. You’re complete indifference to the limitation on the power imposed by a constitutional monarch on clowns like Cameron and Blair indicates a lack either of sense or honesty.
Had to have a laugh at the lobster 65 preview tittle-tattle ‘Alex and Rupert do a deal’.
The suggestion that the SNP is heavily reliant on the editorial support of this Rupert, is so far off and wide of the mark as to cause astonishment broken only by tears of laughter. I know so many supporters of Independence and not one gives two hoots for the unreality field that is Murdoch’s mind or the mix of the sinister and the dross his media titles spew forth. Much like in Liverpool Murdoch’s output is universally derided and sneered at. How this total and unwavering contempt for all that is Murdoch can possibly translate into being ‘heavily reliant on his editorial support’ is a stretch of the actuality beyond limit.
The item then gets worse, the closing line: ‘Perhaps a future opening there for Mr
Salmond if the referendum doesn’t go well?’, is not borne by any of the proceeding matter, George Robertson’s moronic non sequitur fits within a piece of constructed entirely of them.
I think the over-whelming Yes vote in the referendum in spite of a hostile media – which when the day comes will include a full onslaught from the Murdoch machinery – will be the final nail in the coffin signifying the decline to powerlessness of the detestable old media.
The Lobster slides down the credibility scale with this sour piss, branching into comedy.
Noid
The existence of a monarchy in the UK does little if anything of substance to limit executive power.
On the contrary the existence of the monarchy actually enhances executive power through their use of the royal prerogative; powers which cannot be scrutinized.
If we had a republic then we’d have more effective control over the usage of these powers.
So, the monarchy doesn’t add anything in terms of accountability and in fact takes away accountability.
Noid: I think I know what you’re about, it’s the old good king – bad king routine.
Someone contended they’re little more than state employees, public servants since the 17th Century precedent, who can be hired and fired lawfully at the publics whim, though our record is for the new starts to be even worse than the p45 bearing departees.
As public servants then as with Lords; MPs; Judges etc. their interests, investments should be fully declared and known (not that this has ensured such luminaries are purer than even yellow snow), that they do not use their official and vaster unofficial powers to plunder the planet, start wars, kill for the bottom line of oil and armaments holdings, using the mangled bodies of economic conscript killers and resources of the state for personal gain.
Who then told Blair to invade Iraq was it GWB or was it ER who told them both?
As head of state the monarch is untimately responsible along with the executive who oiled the wheels of the war machine –for execrable crimes. What is to be done with heads of state who are in the final analysis wanted war criminals and on the run? I’d say in that circumstance any employment contract would be unquestionably torn up, broken, deserted.
De-Windsorification anyone?
US – UK – CANADA TORTURE
AKA ‘MINDCONTROL’
“The whole Sensor Deprivation process in Northern Ireland was a package deal. Being awaken in the middle of the night, being beaten, confused as to your whereabouts, lied to and insulted, was all part of the ‘unfreezing process’ through which your psychological defences were broken down, and terror and humiliation were induced.”
“Hence, the photographing in the nude, being forced to urinate while running, refusal to allow toilet visits, the sadism and abuse. Meanwhile the psychological functions of the body were being disturbed by the very low or non-existent intake of calories, high temperature caused by sweating which could lead to dehydration, coupled with the cold at night, sleep deprivation and loss of sense of touch.”
The whole experience was a package. Whether you want to call it interrogation in depth or brain washing is academic. The aim of the treatment was to cause temporary psychosis, temporary insanity, which was a severe psychological injury liable to having lasting consequences.”
‘United States, Canada, Britain: Partners in Mind Control Operations,’ by ‘Armen Victorian’ July 1996
– http://valtinsblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/following-is-reprint-of-famous-article.html
As in Ireland, so in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Mali, Yemen, Poland, Lithuania, Thailand, Diego Garcia, on and on.
“That’s the way to treat the w@#$” (ER, begin at Calais? Ed.)
No change there, then!
Found on page 1 – ‘Armen Victorian’ – The View from the Bridge’ by Robin Ramsay, –
– Work in Progress – Lobster 65 – Summer – 2013 –
– http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/issue65.php
I am fed up with reading the disinformation speed forth by a certain boring, juvenile and distracting troll, ( you know who you are, vile moniker). Please can he be moderated away? Ban this tedious disinformation merchant please. Could we have a poll to bar him from posting? He is not of the effective calibre of WWII Lord Haw Haw but just as silly and irritating.