With a bit of research, many so called facts of history that we were taught in school turn out to be the exact opposites in reality. These are a few examples:
- William the Conqueror
Myth: William the First began English history, civilising the heathen natives and bringing law, order, and prosperity to the country. Before him the peasants blundered around worshipping stones, had no money, and lived in shite houses. Also they painted themselves blue and were half naked (Party On!)
Fact: Actually William the Conqueror's real title was William 'le Batard' (or in English, the Bastard). He was a criminal wanted in France for various awful crimes including rape, murder, pillage, arson, and treason.
Born around 1028, William was the illegitimate son of Duke Robert I of Normandy (also known as Robert the Devil, obviously a lovely fella), and one of his mistresses by the name of Herleve (also known as Arlette), daughter of a tanner in Falaise. Arlette is where the word harlot comes from.
Far from bringing order and prosperity to the country, he usurped all the land by force of arms, and replaced the existing records with his own Domesday book. He set the scene for the taxation and exploitation of the people of Englalond, which practise has continued ever since. His descendants and those of his cronies still own vast tracts of the land today.
The modern refined system allows the 16 million private homeowners of the island, many of whose ancestors gave their lives to further the ends of their rulers, to inhabit only 2.8 million acres of the land area, an area nearly equal to that set aside for growing trees! Meanwhile the top 40 thousand millionaire agricultural landowners own over 28 million acres.And then they have the cheek to say that there is hardly any countryside left in England! A well researched book which will tell you lots more on the subject of the ownership of land in England and Ireland is Who owns Britain
It's the best democracy money can buy. William: 10, Hoi Polloi: 0.
- Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar was a hard man and a great ruler.
Unfortunately we are given a clue to an alternate view of his nature through his historical nickname "The Queen of Bythnia". Oh dear.
- Greek Democracy
Myth: Ancient Greece was the home of democracy and everything good. They also had the Olympic Games where virile athletes performed manly acts, and a great army that whacked the Persians, no bother.
Fact: The Grecian society was built on slavery. The social system in Athens was made up of three distinct classes, Slaves, Citizens, and Foreigners.In just some city-states democracies were formed and male citizens only took part in assemblies to make laws. Most city-states had fewer than 5,000 people. Sparta had 10 times as many slaves as citizens. They called the slaves 'Tools that talk'. Very democratic!
As the Greeks have always been portrayed as the founders of civilisation, and of democracy (which is also always portrayed as a Good Thing), it is hardly surpising that the topic of their institutional homosexuality has been generaly avoided: "the Greeks are a good thing; homosexuality is a bad thing; therefore the Greeks could not have done it".
From page 109 in Robert Morkot's Historical Atlas of Ancient Greece:
"Homosexuality, which was a universal practice in all Greek states (normally involving an older man and a adolescent boy), was institutionalized in the armies of Sparta and Thebes, Greeces's two most formidable military states. In Thebes it was reputedly an intentional element in the compopsition of the "Sacred Band," it being believed that, placed side by side, lovers were ashamed to be disgraced in each other's presence, and that they would stand their ground to protect each other". Don't strike my Boy, you Bitch!
Demos: 10, Helots: nil
- The British Empire
Myth: The British Empire was built on hard work, civilised the heathen natives, and made England great.
Well, yes, if you ignore the fact that it made most of its money from drugs and slavery, ruthlessly enforced by a formidible war machine, and then kept it in the hands of the greedy few. Oh yes, and who were more barbaric, the vegetarian Hindus or the Christians who drink blood every sunday? Meanwhile it wasn't until the late 19th century that anyone in power thought that children under 12 working 20 hour shifts in the coalmines and factories (owned by their cronies) was a 'bad thing', and it was much later still before there was any regulation to look after the workers, and into the 20th century before most of the population - let alone women- were allowed to vote.
I always thought that the dastardly Chinese shanghaied innocent europeans and turned them into depraved opium addicts. Actually it was the East India Company who had the opium grown in India and smuggled into China to pay for another drug that they were exporting to England and couldn't afford to pay for - Tea! At the height of this shameful episode of history they had up to 8 million Chinese hooked on opium, and when the Chinese government tried to expel the smugglers and destroy their drugs, the beligerent Lord Palmerston sent troops to teach them a lesson, which they did very well and also got Hong Kong out of it, thank you very much. And they got compensation for the opium destroyed. William Jardine and James Matheson were two of the bigger dealers. Yes, their firm was Jardine Matheson. The Americans were also involved - Russell & Co were the biggest dealers. Warren Delano II became head of the firm. He was Franklin Delano Roosevelt's grandfather.
To quote from Lord Palmerston, British Foreign Secretary, 1850: "The time is fast coming when we shall be obliged to strike another blow in China......these half-civilised governments such as those in China, Portugal and Spanish America, all require a dressing every eight or ten years to keep them in order." The same attitude allowed 200,000 acres of tea to be planted in Assam by 1900 (don't even ask whose land it was) at a cost of the lives of several hundred thousand Indian Coolies.
Top few thousand Brits: 100+ million, Rest of the World: zero
- Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace evokes a scenario of splendour and great civilisation, being the London residence of the kings and queens of England.
Buckingham, however is a name which has peculiar conotations. It is the 1st duke of Buckingham (of the second making) who is most controversial. George Villiers was by all account 'the handsomest man in all England', noted for his exquisitely shapely legs. He was introduced into James 1st's court for this reason, as James had a thing for boys. James fell for him hook,line and sinker, lavishing honours, property and wealth on his new love, whom he called 'Steenie', and made him Duke of Buckingham.
There is a touch of irony in the fact that today's demure monarch lives in a palace bearing the name of a man who made all his wealth and social standing from being a king's lover.
- The American Empire
America: the Land of the Free
After a promising start, whereby the whole continent was usurped from the Native American tribes, either by force of arms, bottles of whiskey and glass beads, or by broken treaties, the Americans have built their dream country using the recurring theme of empires: drugs, slaves, and war. In this case the main drug was the dreaded Uppawok, as the tribes called it, or Al Tabac (The Drug in Arabic), tobacco to you or I, one of the larger killers of humans at this present time. Obviously the people couldn't be expected to do the hard work of planting and growing it themselves, so they imported millions of abducted Africans and, treating them worse than animals, got them to do it for nothing, right up until recently. Oh yes they 'abolished' slavery, but the people who really benifited from that move were the slave owners who were well compensated with taxpayers money, and didn't even need to feed or house their slaves anymore. And the black people still couldn't vote freely, or even ride on the same bus as their white contempories right up until the 1960's.
Although the communist threat has now run out, they still seem intent on bombing parts of the world back to the stone age to encourage freedom and democracy, while being the most indebted people in the world, -the average american owes a years salary to their credit card. They don't believe in social welfare, but see a better way by having their poor people living in shopping trolleys.
Having identified Cyberspace and Outerspace as the next strategic areas that they must dominate, their ultimate aim is apparently to be able to smite whosoever and wheresoever they may choose, whensoever they may desire. What do you call a man with a gun? Sir!
America: everything, Everyone Else: Nada
- A Worm in the democratic Rose
The Irish republic was hard won from the politicians and vested interests of the British Imperial Empire by the efforts, and the blood, of people determined to free the country for future generations. The cost was extreme: death, deprivation, imprisonment, hardship, ruined personal lives. But the prize was so worthwhile: a free democracy, in which the land is owned by the people who vote for their representatives to run the management of the country. A country where only 100 years ago 98% of it’s inhabitants owned nothing at all in terms of property, yet today has the highest number of house owners of any country in Europe. A marvellous transition, which has made the Irish people the owners of a prosperous nation, the true reason for our economic success.
Proportional representation is possibly the fairest form of voting, and is used to elect representatives to the houses of the Oireachtas. So far so good (notwithstanding the anomaly of referendum results scrolling across an episode of Fair City the night before the Nice referendum was taken), we now have our elected representatives at the seat of government ready to get on with the business of managing our country, by passing the necessary legislation.
Now here is the rub: after all this highly vaunted free choice, our representatives are not allowed to vote individually on legislation that the government proposes, but must vote only by the predetermined party line (the Whip system). This system (inherited from the British like all of the legal system and the civil service) makes a lie of the basis of our society i.e. democracy, being freedom of choice and the right to free speech. Why bother to have any debates or even TDs when the outcome of the Dail vote on the proposed legislation is already known? What kind of people will blindly follow the "party line" (a term most often used in connection with Communism or Dictatorships) and vote against their own conscience, or the wishes and welfare of the very people who put them in power? Only people with no conscience, no ethics, and no morality, could do this consciously. People who love power, money, and prestige for it's own sake. People who ride roughshod over the citizens who pay their wages. People who spent over €800,000 on wages for the Dail bar and restaurants last year, whilst withholding compensation for those citizens infected by contaminated blood products. In a word, Politicians, the very people who kept Ireland destitute and shivering on the Atlantic seaboard for hundreds of years
- Go Bot, No!
In the wicky wacky world of modern medicine, great store is put in the advances of the "science" of what once was known as plastic surgery. Today's favourite winner is BoTox, a "medical marvel" obviously vital to modern women (together with a Viagra-like drug, that they aren't allowed). One can suppose that armed with these two wonder drugs, every modern woman can behave à la mode de "Sex in the City".
But ladies, beware! BoTox is none other than a preparation of one of the dreaded Weapons of Mass Destruction, Botulinus Toxin.
Conveniently forgotten by the world's media in the cause of Hollywood's perennial chart busters: "Consumerism", "The Body Beautiful", and the "War against Terrorism", Botulism ranks in Time magazine as being one of the 6 "most likely bio-terror threats" having "no licensed vaccine. Antitoxin antibodies are effective if administered early, but only limited quantities exist." It seems that unlimited quantities of BoTox exist, and make a lovely profit for our humanistic drug manufacturers. Not for them a cure for Aids or cancer (no money in cures, more money in maintenance), it's far easier to produce BoTox
Was the dreaded Saddam Hussein manufacturing this stuff? Is this what the weapons inspectors were trying to find? Surely the Jihadists haven't infiltrated our high street beauticians and Harley street consultants with their deadly concoctions?
Civilisation, and the American Dream may be at risk!
⋅ The Senate committee's reports on 'US Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual-Use Exports to Iraq', undertaken in 1992 in the wake of the Gulf war, give the date and destination of all US exports. The reports show, for example, that on May 2, 1986, two batches of bacillus anthracis -- the micro-organism that causes anthrax -- were shipped to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education, along with two batches of the bacterium clostridium botulinum, the agent that causes deadly botulism poisoning
⋅ Rubin failed to see the irony in the US supplying Saddam with seed stock for anthrax and botulism, that he could use in weapons, and claimed that the Maryland company responsible was prosecuted. It was not: the company was given Commerce Department approval.