The National newspaper has used that snappy headline over an excerpt from Sikunder Burnes they publish today. It is from the Chapter “Peshawar Perverted” and here is a brief extract of the extract.
These unpublishable moral delinquencies included paedophilia. Several British officers noted the children around Avitabile. Lieutenant William Barr was entertained to a nautch in 1839: “Amongst the number were a few children, varying from seven to ten years of age, who … are gradually being initiated into the mysteries of a craft most derogatory in its nature, as carried on in the East … Behind the governor stood two of his servants, a pair of diminutive Afghan boys … one of whom … would have made a remarkably pretty girl; he, however, looked quite out of place in attendance upon a masculine individual like Avitabile, and would have been better suited for the occupation of a lady’s page.”
SURGEON-GENERAL Atkinson noted of Avitabile the same year: “He lives in good style, and is distinguished for his hospitality, which has been amply experienced and acknowledged by the British officers… On every occasion, his table has been crowded with guests, and, according to oriental custom, the sumptuous entertainments always concluded with a grand nautch, his figurante-company of Cashmeer women consisting of about thirty, singers and dancers from the age of twelve to twenty-five.”
By 1840, Avitabile was entertaining so many British officers that he obtained a monthly allowance of Rs1000 towards the expense. Here we have one of those rare glimpses behind the curtain that reveals the truth about the “nautches” which were such a frequent feature of the lives of British officials: “At the same time the Government of India, who had heard of the disgraceful orgies which attended some of the entertainments, directed that none but the most senior officers were to be entertained by him, and gave the political officer an allowance of 500Rs a month, on behalf of the younger ones.”
So the senior officers got the disgraceful orgies, and the junior officers got dinner with Mackeson.
The National reproduce a large version of the most common sketch of “Alexander Burnes” to illustrate the book extract, despite the fact the book goes to some lengths to show it is not actually a sketch of Alexander Burnes. But you can’t expect picture editors to read books, I suppose. The print edition of the National also contains a sub-heading below this picture in what looks like Latin but isn’t. I have no idea why.
For a broader perspective on the book, there is an excellent account here of some of the themes I highlighted at a talk on Saturday.
As far as I can gather Sikunder Burnes has currently sold out absolutely everywhere except for a few copies left at Amazon, which bought up most of the stock. There were 19 other suppliers available through Amazon alone, but every single one has sold out. It is being urgently reprinted – for the second time – and the publisher assures me will be back in the shops before Christmas. Reminds me of Cabbage Patch Dolls!
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Signed First Editions of Sikunder Burnes are now available direct from this blog! You can leave a message naming the dedication you want. Sold at cover price of £25 including p&p for UK delivery or £29 for overseas delivery. Ideal Christmas presents!!
But the army of government and corporate trolls want us to be ‘happy’, so here you go…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guMfsv_0meA
This is what socialism looks like. It’s awful, isn’t it. I’d much rather see people living in cardboard boxes and dying from lack of healthcare.
I’ve seen and heard it all now. The organisation that gave Obama, the expert extrajudicial killer by drone, a Peace prize is inviting two ancient warmongers to their gathering to receive honours.
‘Kissinger and Brzezinski to be Honoured by Nobel Institute and Oslo University
by Jan Oberg / December 1st, 2016
These two top officials behind major US wars (Iran/Afghanistan and Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos) and regime change (against Allende, Chile) will speak at the first of a new event, The Nobel Peace Prize Forum Oslo, created by the Nobel Institute in Oslo.
The leaders of the two institutions declare that they are proud to have succeeded in getting these two diplomats to Norway – and the media, of course, will be there. The event is sponsored by the California-based company InCircl – a marketing and mobile payment company.
The university rector is dr. med. and participant at Bilderberg world elite power group in 2011 Ole Petter Ottersen and you can write him at on.oiu at rotker
These two experts on warfare and interventionism will – Orwellian style – speak about “The United States and World Peace After The Presidential Election”.
This is the country that, since 1980, has intervened violently in Iran, Libya, Lebanon, Kuwait, Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Kosova/Serbia, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, i.e. 14 Muslim countries. It has some 630 base facilities in 130+ countries. It has its US Special Forces (SOF) in 133 countries.
It has used nuclear weapons without apology and owns the second largest arsenal of nuclear weapons.
The US stands for about 40% of the world’s military expenditures, is the world’s leading arms exporter and has killed more people than anybody else since 1945. It’s the master of (imprecise) drone strikes. It presently supports Saudi Arabia’s bestial war on Yemen and conducts a military build-up in Asia and the Pacific planning, as it seems, for what looks like a future confrontation with China. And not with terribly positive results in its Middle East policies since 1945.
So with all these credentials, please tell us about world peace!
The U.S. should be seen as quite incapable of peace-making – not the least thanks to Dr. Kissinger (now 93) who is associated with major “war crimes, for crimes against humanity, and for offences against common or customary or international law, including conspiracy to commit murder, kidnap, and torture” in places such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Timor, and Chile as stated in the classical book about his peace-making by Christopher Hitchens “The Trial Of Henry Kissinger“.’
/..
http://dissidentvoice.org/2016/12/kissinger-and-brzezinski-to-be-honoured-by-nobel-institute-and-oslo-university/
Jeezus; You have a problem with drones? Heh.
If you preferred Trump you will have your ass handed to you post-haste.
Hard to imagine a person who better represents America’s military-indutrail complex than General Mattis.
Imagine Congress will pass permisison for his being SoD despite his recent militaary service, though it will overlook his working with arms firms like Ratheon. etc.
Good to see that the Pentagon’s revolving door is still in good working order.
Go on Sharp Ears, give it some stick. Neo-liberaliswm is grim rider on a skeletal dead horse on a hiding to nothing but nihilism. Maybe the judges think that total destruction of people and infrastructure is peace.
The USA has broken/ignored every convention on nuclear arms limitations. The Wiki page for this is total rollocks (as much of Wikipedia is)…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferation_of_Nuclear_Weapons
Here’s a news piece from a much saner age, from Robin Cook (who famously resigned over the Iraq war)…
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/may/27/greenpolitics.usa
So why is Trump trying to stop the recount in Michigan if everything is above board in the presidential election?
Costs hun nothing if baseless.
From Previous Thread –
Macky
” would you trust your life with Craig’s Honesty
I’m thinking yes on that
Macky
Have you looked into their souls
Once or Twice or Thrice . .There Must be Something That Something Goes Beyond…In peoples interactions..or Something 🙂
Paul the link seem Faulty.
‘Loony, I would venture that the government are not only “worse than useless”, they are also totally corrupt and are riddled with the kind of creatures that one finds under a stone.
we Sometimes forget that, to look under a stone is Food..or Bait for food.. not something the Elite need bother with..a job for Minions.
But Your Meaning Paul ..Totally.
Heard that Mr. 4% Francois Hollands is not putting his hat in the ring
for the French Election of President.
So have suggested that never before has a sitting President of France, not tried for a second term.
France is still in a State of Emergency.
So, it is quite likely that Francois is a completely spent force, no last hurrah.
It is quite likely that the main contenders for the next President of France, will be either very right wing
or very, very right wing.
Massive change is coming to France, top to bottom.
Alone and unpopular, France’s
Francois Hollande throws in the towel
http://www.france24.com/en/20161201-france-hollande-unpopular-president-legacy
or Socialisim is “Down and Out in Paris and London”
Recent opinion polls suggest extreme-far-right contender Marine Le Pen from the National Front could be Mr Fillon’s closest challenger.
‘Aware of risks’
“In the months to come, my only duty will be to continue to lead my country,” Mr Hollande said on Thursday.
“The world, Europe, France have faced particularly serious challenges during my mandate.
In these particularly challenging circumstances I wanted to maintain national cohesion,” he said.
He was referring to deadly terrorist attacks in Nice last July and Paris in November 2015, as well as the shootings at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo several months before that.
Mr Hollande added that he was aware of the risks of running and warned of the threat from the National Front.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38173350
So is the Socialist project in France at and end?
To take up Hab’s challenge:
Open Source Government
Features:
· The ability for local political and citizen groups to express and enforce oversight.
· Transparency with particular regard to lobbying, corporate and financial access, members interests. And for all subsequent members of bodies mentioned below.
· The ability for a direct democratic process of policy suggestion, development and implementation, utilising net based technologies and a competition for good ideas. Strict oversight of the process to ensure merit based ascension of ideas and policy.
· The ability for citizens to refuse to fund a wide range of government spending and policy, and to allocate their taxes directly and proportionately as they see fit from the total array (with very detailed breakdown) of all government spending. This can include the function to allocate taxes for yet to be enacted, citizen proposed and developed policy, as part of the policy adoption and development process, by this means mandating public consent for such policies with a very high degree of democratic control.
· Various strategic oversight bodies set up, composed of members with independent expertise to represent the best and most accurate information available.
· A sharply rising scale of taxation for any monies spent in any way on lobbying of any kind which is further increased as a proportion of the total wealth of any bodies seeking to influence governance. Taxes raised by this measure will be allocated to bodies representing publicly arrived at list of smaller, independent bodies to lobby on public behalf, thus creating a competition of resources and information which addresses the fundamental asymmetry of influence we currently have and introduces much needed competition of the views represented.
·
·
·
Okay, anyone like to continue and fill in some blanks…?
*policies with a very high degree of democratic control (and accountability.)
Open source and publicly funded media entities
Launched with benefits through taxation etc.
Independently arrived at panel of editors, regular elections for editorial board by readership
The ability for talented, thoughtful, independent writers and journalists to reach a wider audience promoting a wider range of discussion, inclusion and creativity.
?
Suggestions, to improve things, as Hab desired.
During his term in office, Francois Hollande devoted some his energy to cutting unemployment,
and it had begun to fall but far later than he had hoped.
Since January 2015, Mr Hollande’s presidency has been overshadowed by jihadist terror attacks.
France has been under a state of emergency amid fears of further attack.
Francois Hollande’s decision not to stand again comes as a huge relief to the Socialist Party, and probably to himself as well.
He – no doubt – mulled it hard and long. It is, after all, something of a humiliation to be the first president under the Fifth Republic to decide he’s not good enough to run for a second term.
And yet how much more of a humiliation would it have been to stand in the presidentials and be wiped out by Marine Le Pen in round one?
Or worse, to be eliminated in the Socialists’ own primary in January?
Because the truth is Francois Hollande had lost touch not only with the country but also with reality
From the TUC by e-mail today
This week, we took our message to Philip Green’s London HQ.
Together with Shopworkers’ union Usdaw and campaigning group Care2, we delivered a petition signed by 100,000 people asking former BHS owner and billionaire Philip Green to ‘sort’ the pension deficit..
This summer the high street chain BHS closed for good. But it’s not about the stores, 11,000 people lost their jobs. And now 20,000 stand to lose pension savings they thought were safe.
Philip Green made hundreds of millions out of BHS, and can well afford to do right by his former workers. But he is dragging his feet.
As Usdaw General Secretary John Hannett said:
“If he wants to recover any reputational credibility he must not haggle his way out of his responsibilities. He must make a full contribution and do it quickly. That is the least he can do for former BHS staff.”
Share – if you agree Philip Green has a moral duty to fix the BHS pension scheme.
Thanks for your help,
Ali and the Going To Work team
[1] The Guardian: Petition urges Philip Green to tackle BHS pension deficit:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/nov/29/petition-urges-philip-green-to-tackle-bhs-pension-deficit
https://m.facebook.com/tradesunioncongress/
Then, we had ‘Debauchery in the Court of a Psychopath’ in India; now, we have ‘PizzaGate’ in the Court of the Wannabee Leaders and Leaders of the ‘Western World’: ‘Plus ca change?’
Well, OK, so they hadn’t invented pizzas then, but otherwise? And then, virtually no one heard of it (apart from locals); now, though it is spread by the Alt Media, many dismiss it as ‘Conspiracy Theories’. But these same dismissers have obviously not bothered to search the mass of evidence of what has been amply documented in the past, with even some of the same ‘players’ (the Clintons), like the books and videos of Cathy O’Brien and Noreen Gosch; of John DeCamp and Ted Gunderson. And how about ‘Spirit Cooking’?
And how about the ‘barbaric’ Assad and his Ruski friends? Getting fiendish delight out of killing civilians, if you believe the MSM tripe. I just got an email from AVAAZ requeting donations for the ‘White Helmets’!!! It can’t even be classes an NGO, gets massive support from the UK and US as well as other governments, and serves the Western agenda of pushing for a ‘No Fly Zone’ (aka Libya!) and ‘Regime Change’.
I am half way through ‘Kill Anything That Moves’ by Nick Turse, a true book of documented abuses, and of eye-witness accounts by both the American Veterans and the Vietnamese survivors. It should be required reading for all the Western (particularly American) apologists.
The ‘Normal Suspects’ will probably evade this comment, as obfuscation isn’t so easy with documented stuff.
Again, on the subject of Psychopaths:
9th Dec 2016 – Free Fayez Sharary – Demand UK Gov act to free Briton from Israeli dungeon – Protest HP complicity in torture of Briton by Israel:
http://inminds.com/article.php?id=10734
DATE: Fri 9th Dec 2016 2:30pm-4:30pm
LOCATION: Foreign & Commonwealth Office, corner of King Charles St and Whitehall, London SW1A 2AH London (closest tube: Westminster )
FACEOOK EVENT: https://www.facebook.com/events/201362226936678/
WEB: http://inminds.com/article.php?id=10734