the DON JONES INDEX…

 

 

GAINS POSTED in GREEN

LOSSES POSTED in RED

 

  9/17/22...      14,953.01

  9/17/22...      14,903.37

   6/27/13…     15,000.00

 

 

(THE DOW JONES INDEX:  10/1/22… 29,431.73; 9/17/22… 32,151.71; 6/27/13… 15,000.00)

 

 

LESSON for September 24, 2022 – “BEAUTY and the BEAST! (Part Two)”

 

The first UK state funeral since Winston Churchill’s in 1965 took place on Monday as Queen Elizabeth II was laid to rest.

A Guardian U.K. timeline of the services (Attachment One) noted that “(a)t about 9:30am, Westminster Abbey’s tenor bell started to toll once every minute 96 times”, marking every year of the Queen’s life.

The coffin, carried on the state funeral gun carriage from Westminster Hall to the abbey, was followed by King Charles III and other members of the royal family – arriving at the West Gate to the strains of the Sentences (“lines from the Bible verse Revelation 14:13, set to music by William Croft” which have been used at every state funeral since the 18th century.

After readings including a passage from John 14 by new Prime Minister Liz Truss, and hymns, the sermon was delivered by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.  “People of loving service are rare in any walk of life,” he said.  “Leaders of loving service are still rarer. But in all cases those who serve will be loved and remembered when those who cling to power and privileges are long forgotten.”  (Attachment Two)

 

More homilies were expressed until, at 11:55 AM (GMT – 5:55 EST) the Last Post was played, followed by two minutes of silence.

Twenty minutes later, “the late Queen’s coffin was carried from Westminster Abbey and placed on the state gun carriage, from where it began the journey to St George’s chapel in Windsor,” followed by Charles, the family and accompanying musicians, dignitaries and “detachments from the armed forces of the Commonwealth” in the traditional Long Walk accompanied by bells, gunshots and bagpipers. 

The Committal service (which is a graveside service; “Committal” referring to the brief memorial service at the time you commit the body to the ground), attended by about 800 guests, was conducted by the dean of Windsor, David Conner, with a blessing from the archbishop of Canterbury.

“After the service, the Queen’s coffin was lowered into the royal vault as the dean read a psalm and a commendation. At the same time, the Queen’s piper played a lament.”

The Queen’s coffin will be laid to rest in George VI memorial chapel in St George’s chapel, alongside Prince Philip and her parents, King George VI and the Queen Mother.

On the day of the funeral, world leaders, politicians, public figures and those who worked with the Queen, as well as monarchs from other countries, joined members of the Royal Family to pay their respects.

Westminster Abbey can hold up to 2,200 people. On the day of the funeral, world leaders, politicians, public figures and those who worked with the Queen, as well as monarchs from other countries, will join members of the Royal Family to pay their respects.

The Queen’s four children – King Charles III, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward – will be present, as will Camilla, the Queen Consort, and the monarch’s grandchildren – Princes William and Harry, Peter Phillips and Zara Tindall, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, and Lady Louise Windsor and James, Viscount Severn.  (Vanguard, Attachment Three)

Spouses of all close family were present too, including Catherine, the Princess of Wales, and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex.  Prime Minister Liz Truss, Labour leader Keir Starmer and other UK politicians also attended.

Present, although not invited, was a small spider who hitchhiked atop the commemorative card that Charles placed atop his mother’s coffin.  Some maintained that the arachnid was a harbinger of good fortune.  Others said “Ewww!”  (Article: Attachment Four, video at https://people.com/royals/spider-queen-elizabeth-coffin-spotted-state-funeral-good-omen/ )

Members of Europe’s royal families, from countries including Spain, the Netherlands, Monaco, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, and Greece, are likely to fly to London for the funeral, and about 500 foreign dignitaries are also expected to attend.  (A partial list from Town and Country and last week’s DJI was included as Attachment Five, re-attached below as... go figure!... Attachment Five)

The Guardian’s Alexandra Topping explained the symbolism of the crown, orb and scepter atop the Queen’s coffin.  Nestled among the flowers of the Queen’s funeral wreath was a handwritten card by her son King Charles III, which read: ‘In loving and devoted memory, Charles R.’” she wrote.

No symbolic legendermain attached to the spider (Attachment Six) – except, perhaps, for some of the King’s prior misadventures.

With the conclusion of the ceremonies, commentators (domestic: Attachment Seven and foreign: Attachment Eight) said their pieces about the Queen, the new King and the state of the Empire.

Much of the commentary was inspirational, but some was not pretty.

 

Family, royals, commoners and dignitaries had come to London to mourn the Queen but, as noted in last week’s lesson, some were not invited.  Dictators like those in Russia and Iran were excluded – and responded with cold castigatory platitudes (the Queen’s “Dark Legacy from Iran, Attachments Nine A and B) or hot threats (the “Iron Doll”, a talking skull on Russia State media stated that the pusillanimous Putin should have nuked QE2’s funeral “today, when all the best people” were there, Attachments Ten A and B)

The Saudis were invited, however... and sent a delegation... although a prudent King Salman probably advised members of the still wealthy, still powerful Bin Laden clan to stay at home – a consequence of the Nine Eleven, of course, and of another... more recent kerfluffle.

 

People with arguments to argue, often valid, contend that the world is controlled by its past... that history is merely a tale of the oppressors and oppressed; ugly truths must be told, revenge must be taken.  There are places where the rites of recrimination date back hundreds, often thousands of years... the Balkans and the MidEast as well as other locations where religion has set people against one another.  The Uyghur oppression is attributable to Chinese vengeance for centuries of Mongol domination, the Hindu-Buddhist-Islam intrigues have plagued South Asia since before the time of Christ and the Islanic/Jewish hostilities preclude the coming of Mohammed – dating back, as it were, to Old Testament accounts of God’s Chosen People, the Egyptians and Babylonians.  The destiny of Europe may be attributable to the campaigns of Rome against Carthage 2500 years ago or the even earlier wars of Greece against the Persians and the Trojans.

For all intents and purposes, however, the “modern” cycle of victimization and vengeance can be said to begin with the voyages of Europeans to the New World and, thereafter, the rise of empires... where the colonial states of what is now The West divided up the rest of the world in order to exploit and oppress.  Anti-colonial revolutions... notably the American, but insurgencies in the rest of the Americas against the Spanish and Portuguese overlords, Africa, the Indian subcontinent (still divided and hostile as a consequence of the partition of India and Pakistan after the Second World War)... eventually led to political freedom, but economic liberty remains in the grasp of multinational corporations in many places; fundamental religious fanaticism in some others.  The British Empire, though diminished in clout, remains territorially alive and one of the primary tasks of King Charles will be to deal with the anti-colonial sentiment of numerous members of the Commonwealth.

 

Thanks to Crusader-hater Saladin, Christian and European invaders were unable to maintain dominion over the mutually hostile states of Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia.  Instead, the political and economic rulers of the powers concerned entered into commercial arrangements with one another... the engagement of Iran and the West substantially retarded after the overthrow of the Shah, but the more numerous Sunni states in and around the Gulf ably balanced commercial engagement with religious discord well into and throught the Twentieth Century until the insurgence of Osama Bin Laden shattered the concord on September 11, 2001.

The spark as ignited a new ethnic and religious antagonism did not arise from the wretched of the Earth; it was lit by Osama, a scion of one of the wealthiest familial empires in the Islamic world.

For the ancestorship and ongoing connections to the man adjudicated the greatest terrorist on the planet since the end of the Second World War, remarkably little has been written about the Bin Laden family and their black sheep save a perfunctory biography in the Encyclopedia Brittanica (Attachment Fifteen).

A far more authoritative account of the life... not the death, for Yossef Bodansky’s “Bin Laden – The Man who Declared War on America was published in 1999, well before the Nine Eleven... of the Beast is comprehensive in enumerating details of Bin Laden’s upbringing and integration into his family construction business (itself integrated into the warp and woof of the Saudi regime) and astonishingly prescient in its warning that America’s “haphazard” response to terrorism would return to haunt us some day – which day would arrive eighteen months after the publication of Bodansky’s tome.

The biography fleshes out the EB’s rote recital of details... Osama’s birth in 1957 as one of fifty some children by six wives to Muhamed bin Laden, a small-time contractor from Yemen who became rich and powerful along with the Saudi oil boom of the 1970’s... but glosses over particulars detailed in Bodansky’s book - for example, his days as an economics student at Abdul Aziz University in Jedda.  There, as one of many privileged and dissolute playboys who escaped the confines of Saudi Arabia for weekends of debauchery and decadence in “cosmopolitan Beirut”, where he frequented “flashy casinos, nightclubs and bars”, indulging in drinking, whoring and brawling... always protected by privilege.

In the seventies, the Lebanese civil war curtailed his escapades and, commissioned by his father to work on some of the magnificent mosques of Mecca and Medina, regained an attachment to faith (which taught that the troubles of the Lebanese were a God-imposed punishment for their wayward and dissolute culture).  The disasters of the Yom Kippur War and the assassination of beloved King Faisal by “a deranged nephew” who followed the lure of the West, coupled with the concomitant profligacy engendered by the oil boom also created a culture war, of sorts, and the orthodox preachers and teachers of Abdul Aziz declared, in no uncertain terms, that: “only an absolute and unconditional return to the fold of conservative Islamism” would protect the youth from “inherent dangers and sins of the West.”

By the time that the Ayatollah Khomeini’s legions overthrew the American puppet, the Shah, in 1979, the young Bin Laden had become an enthusiastic, perhaps fanatical, adherent of Islamic fundamentalism – advocating war against the decadent West.  But when conflict came, it was in Afghanistan where Russian troops invaded and imposed a Communist dictatorship – one which true believers found to be as offensive as anything to be found in the United States, the United Kingdom or any colonialist gang of heretics.

One of many foreign “freedom fighters” who went to Afghanistan to fight the Russians, the EB states that: “In 1989, following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia, where he was initially welcomed as a hero, but he soon came to be regarded by the government as a radical and a potential threat...” whys and hows omitted.  Thereafter he migrated to Sudan, was kicked out, returned to Afghanistan, “where he received protection from its ruling Taliban militia” and launched his campaign of terror... bombings of U.S. embassies in NairobiKenya, and Dar es SalaamTanzania, and an attack on the USS Cole, an American warship harboured in Yemen.

“Ultimately,” Bodansky concluded, “the quintessence of Bin Laden’s threat is being a cog, albeit an important one, in a large system that will outlast his own demise – state-sponsored international terrorism,” the author predicted, adding a warning that was cavalierly ignored, to grave consequences.

“The availability of weapons of mass destruction and the audacity to reach out into the heart of the United States make this trend all the more frightening.”

After the Nine Eleven, EB reported that Bin Laden hid in the caves of Tora Bora before relocating to Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he was located and killed in 2011 and “given a sea burial” (i.e. thrown into the ocean to be eaten by fishes).  And, as Bodansky had predicted, terrorism has not disappeared but has, instead, and in multitude of forms (Russia and China, the misogynistic campaigns of the Taliban and Iran’s “morality police”, perhaps even in the persons of domestic leaders and aspiring leaders working and scheming to turn America itself away from democracy and towards an authoritarian (if not outrightly dictatorial) regime.

It is perhaps unfair to tar the many executives, employees and family members of the Bin Laden empire (which retains primacy over construction projects in Saudi Arabia and, in fact, most of the Islamic world) but, one may ask, exactly what the hell was Charles doing... soliciting and accepting donations from the clan to enrich his charitable impulses and, perhaps, bolster his standing among the movers and shakers of the Near East.

Perhaps he was assuaged by the Bin Laden clan’s dedication to capitalism.

While the world may be focusing on one bin Laden, there are dozens of others, who together comprise the second richest family in Saudi Arabia and one of the most important families in that nation's banking business.  But members of the bin Laden clan living in the United States weren't laughing in the days following the attacks. They were fearing for their lives — and fleeing the country.

Osama's father was an illiterate laborer who turned a construction business into a worldwide conglomerate. Now, the family members are "kind of like the Rockefellers or the Forbeses of Saudi Arabia," explained ABCNEWS consultant Jonathan Winer in an examination of the family shortly after the terror.  (October 1, 2001, Attachment Sixteen)

If a consumer buys a Snapple, VolksWagen or an Audi in the Middle East, they've bought it from the bin Ladens, who have the exclusive franchise on the brands. The bin Laden family business employs 32,000 people in 30 countries, has a revenue of $5 billion a year and is invested everywhere from construction to manufacturing to financial services to insurance to biological research.

And some of the bin Ladens carry out their business ventures in the United States, based primarily on the East Coast, from as far south as Florida to as far north as Boston, and with offices in Rockville, Md., in between.

The Boston bin Ladens, for instance, own several units in a luxury condo and 16 percent of Hybridon, a Boston, Mass.,-based biotech company engaged in cancer research — and technology that someday could be used to defend against biological attacks.

And while their brother was allegedly sponsoring the first Trade Center bombing in 1993, the other bin Ladens were donating millions to Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., for Muslim scholarships and art.

The family also has some interesting political connections through the Carlyle Group, their financial advisers. The firm hired former Secretary of State James Baker and former President George Bush as consultants. Bush met with the family twice.

Last year, former President Carter met with 10 bin Ladens who donated $200,000 to the Carter Center in Atlanta, Ga.

Osama’s rupture with his family came in 1991 when Osama denounced the presence of America in Saudi Arabia to fight the Gulf War while other bin Ladens were making millions building airstrips and military housing for U.S. troops.

What emerges from the intricate web is a picture of two bin Ladens: One, a 6-foot 4-inch, 44-year-old soft spoken terrorist who moves through the shadows of Afghanistan, using a body double to confuse his enemies, and sharing rat-infested caves with his three wives and 15 children.

The other, some of the most prominent supporters of the West in the Muslim world, living in luxury in Saudi Arabia.

"It is a very tangled web of relationships that needs to be sorted out," Winer added.

One might contend that Carter and Bush were as contemptable as Charles in having dealt with the Bin Ladens.  But, if you check the dates, you will find that the money changed hands before the Nine Eleven, before that attacks on the embassies and the Cole, even before the Gulf War.  The King, however, knew damn well whom he was dealing with and, like Donald Trump lifting lyrics from Oscar Brand, “knew damn well that (they were) snake(s)” before he let them into PWCF.

 

In Saudi Arabia, observed Reuters (Attachment Seventeen), “the Bin Ladens are known as the Kennedys of Jeddah for their wealth and tragedies.” They built Saudi Arabia’s roads, mosques and palaces. Family patriarch Mohammed died in a plane crash, as did the son who succeeded him. Younger son Osama, however, plotted the 9/11 attacks on the United States, plunging the clan into infamy.

“Under the quiet stewardship of chairman Bakr bin Laden,” after the debacle, Reuters reports that the company kept its footing, gradually won back fickle friends and went on to reach the height of its power during the reign of King Abdullah, who took the throne in 2005.

The Saudi Binladin Group’s “Rush Projects” division handled construction of King Abdullah’s new palace in Jeddah and, not far from that palace, Bakr built a villa of his own with marble corridors and swimming pools looking out onto the Red Sea, which he opened regularly for traditional all-male parties to cultivate the family’s royal relationships, said a source who attended one such event.

As they prospered at home, the brothers expanded the business internationally, “making particular inroads in Africa” but also in and amoung the EU nations and the U.K. itself.

A PBS “Frontline” examination of the Bin Laden family’s interests and supporters calls the relationship between Osama’s kin and the Saudi royal family “quite exceptional in that it not simply one of business ties: it is also a relationship of trust, of friendship and of shared secrets.”  Many many contacts and contracts are enumerated, proving that the Bin Ladens... before and after the Nine Eleven... did their “bizness” on a worldwide scale.

Further listings of Bin Laden projects, including those conducted either by their own shell aliases or as joint ventures with other local firms have been noted by Devex, (see Devex.com and Attachment Nineteen).

And, by the way, they’re hiring.  You may want to be able to walk into the bar of your choice, announce that you’re working for the Bin Ladens, and then watch the faces of the patrons blanch.

Terrorism has its perks.

So, inquiring minds have to wonder whether it was a strange desire to re-establish relationships with one of the private powers of the Islamic world, cupidity, or sheer dog-stupidity that possessed Prince Charles to accept a bribe... a kinder, gentler bribe in the form of a million pound contribution to The Prince of Wales's Charitable Fund (PWCF) charity... from the Bin Laden family.

Prince Charles accepted the money from Bakr and Shafiq, two of Osama Bin Laden's half-brothers in 2013, two years after the al-Qaeda leader was killed, the Sunday Times reported.  (Picked up by the BBC: July 31, 2022, Attachment Sixteen)

The (PWCF) received the donation.

Clarence House said it had been assured by PWCF that "thorough due diligence" had been conducted, and the decision to accept the money lay with the trustees.

“Any attempt to characterise it otherwise is false," it told the BBC.

“False” characterizations, nonetheless, spewed from the pens of tabloid terrorists like the ink from the King’s malfunctioning pen:

A source at the Prince of Wales's Charitable Fund told the BBC’s Royal Correspondent, Johnny Dymond, that "the sins of the father" - that's Osama Bin Laden - should not disqualify other members of the family from making a donation. (BBC Attachment Twenty One)

Dymond allowed that this makes sense but, once it was public – “however many checks were made and rules were followed” - it was “always going to look horrible.”

A colleague, Security Correspondent Frank Gardner, concurred (Attachment Twenty Two) stating that “to millions of Saudis, the name Bin Laden is totally innocuous.”

And, across the waves, the New York Post’s Michael Kaplan interviewed survivors and family members of the Beast’s terror – the father of one deceased firefighter declaring that he was “pissed off” at the Royal antics, while others attributed the King’s folly to “greed”, called the proceeds “blood money” and the incident “disgraceful.” 

“It’s shocking and makes my skin crawl,” declared a Nine Eleven widow; “I will never go to England. I thought they were our allies.” (8/2/22. Attachment Twenty Three)

 

Cozying up to the terrorist’s family has been the new King’s most egregious error, but Charles has dis-endeared himself to the world and to his subjects in other ways which will only swell in significance as the pomp and ceremony of the Royal Funeral fades and the seven-decades of affection for his mother recedes.

The Royal Family was already in the loo (to use Britspeak) over several incidents... a young Prince Harry was once vilified for wearing a Nazi armband to a costume party before, of course, marrying the... uh, darker-complexioned... Meghan Markle, provoking old racial hostilities which, allegedly, included the King, and a break with brother and heir apparent Billy – the escalation of which, or easing of which, was much mentioned in the U.K.’s famous tabloid press.

And then there was Andrew’s wild ride – revisited after a heckler reprimanded the Prince as a “sick old man” and controversy flared up over the Queens revocation of his honours... Randy Andy being forced to wear a common suit amidst his uniformed fellow Royals during the ceremony.  (Time, 9/13, Attachment Twenty Four)

 

And then two more Charleshoppers surfaced after the funeral... the sick and sordid story of long-time household retainers being unceremoniously booted out of Clarence House and revelations that he, like the other royals, pays no income tax at a time when the ordinary gobs and gals are struggling with inflation worse than America’s.

Dozens of Clarence House staff have been given notice of redundancies as the offices of King Charles and the Queen Consort move to Buckingham Palace after the death of the Queen according to the ubiquitous (and liberal) Guardian U.K.  (9/13/22, Attachment Twenty Five).

Up to 100 employees at the King’s former official residence, including some who have worked there for decades, received notification that they could lose their jobs just as they were working round the clock to smooth his elevation to the throne.

Private secretaries, the finance office, the communications team and household staff are among those who received notice during the thanksgiving service for the Queen, at St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh on Monday, that their posts were on the line.

A Clarence House spokesman said: “Following last week’s accession, the operations of the household of the former Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall have ceased and, as required by law, a consultation process has begun. Our staff have given long and loyal service and, while some redundancies will be unavoidable, we are working urgently to identify alternative roles for the greatest number of staff.”

Staff who are made redundant are expected to be offered searches for alternative employment across all royal households, assistance in finding new jobs externally and an “enhanced” redundancy payment beyond the statutory minimum.

Pippa Crerar and Caroline Davies of the GUK went out into the street searching for reactions and encountered more than a few.  (Attachment Twenty Six)

Podiatrist Christhell Hobbs said of the staff facing redundancy:”I think it’s sad. They have families they have to support.”

Hobbs, who left Farilight near Hastings in East Sussex first thing in the morning to see the Queen’s coffin arrive on Tuesday evening, added: “Many of them have put in many good years of service and now they’re told ‘we don’t want you’. You have to be human about this.”

These firings yanked the chain of young and old, Conservative and Labour alike.  A political student commisserated: “[these are] people who’ve been working hard and are faithful and loyal. Nobody deserves to be fired because someone dies.”

“I don’t think this was a good time to do it right now,” seconded a fashion student.

But a fifty-something property developer self-identified as “an enthusiastic royalist” conceded: “It is bad timing. It’s not what you would expect because it’s so soon.”

If the precipitous sacking of the new King’s staff engendered disappointment and sympathy, news that Charles III, pays no taxes spawned anger. 

“It is only proper that the new King pays no inheritance tax,” observed the leftist GUK’s even leftier corresponden Aditya Chakrabortty, saying (Thu 15 Sep 2022 01.00 EDT, Attachment Twenty Seven) that the state (and, by inference King Charles) makes citizens choose between heating or eating

“It has not been widely reported, but King Charles won’t have to pay a penny of inheritance tax on the vast estate passed to him by one of the wealthiest women in the world. Nor is he under any legal obligation to pay income tax; he does so voluntarily. This has been the arrangement only since 1993. For decades beforehand, the monarchy paid no tax at all.

“One law for King Charles the billionaire, another for you. Bailiffs for the poorest in society, privileged exemption for the very richest. A society with all the latest technology and sophistication, yet still in the shadow of medieval feudalism. Except even John of Gaunt couldn’t have counted on the unstinting support of the Daily Mail.”

Summing up the day, after the funeral, a more thoughtful GUK meditation asked whether the personality of the Queen (probably never to be repeated) overshadowed the evils of the empire.  Spare a thought/laugh for the many puffed-up presidents and prime ministers and global bigwigs present in the Abbey imagining their own future send-offs, and realising that compared to this, those would tend toward the low-key,” appealed correspondent Marina Hyde.  (Attachment Twenty Eight)

“But still they pay obeisance, with even the Japanese emperor submitting to the supposed indignity of park-and-ride coaches to the Abbey,” Hyde added. “For all her celebrated lack of vanity, one can’t imagine those image-conscious courtiers would ever have let the Queen herself be just another figure emerging from an international dignitary bus. So there remains something undeniably unique about her final event, in a church whose building was begun by Edward the Confessor almost a thousand years ago. All flags on public buildings in the United States have flown at half-mast for a full 10 days. Landmarks around the world shone red, white and blue (the English, as well as American hues), or went dark. It is difficult to imagine another figure for whom all these things would have been done.

“Was she, then, bigger than the club? After initial scepticism about her youth on accession, Winston Churchill very quickly came to believe that the Queen was something more than merely special.”

Bigger than Charles, at least according to another GUK dispatch (Attachment Twenty Nine)... this by Stephen Bates, described as their “former religious and royal correspondent” and author of “The Shortest History of the Crown”.  Bates proposed five irreligious changes (some serious, some not) that the King could make which, in his opinion and probably that of most left-thinking Brits who take the Guardian along with their morning quinoa and whatever passes for Starbucks’ frappes over there.  They were...

 

Inheritance and corporation tax (reform)

A slimmed-down monarchy

Giving up Buckingham Palace (he suggested selling it to Donald Trump for a hotel/casino)

Reforming the honours system (CDC’s Jack Parnell suggested the opposite... selling off American   royal titles to attack the deficit), and

Banning leaky pens

 

And finally, the GUKsters surveyed press dispatches from around the nation.  Their own main image displayed the bearer party taking the Queen’s coffin up the steps into the darkened entrance of the George VI Memorial Chapel at Windsor Castle.  The Financial Times looked from above at the coffin in the nave of Westminster Abbey and chose a quote from Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, for its headline: “People of loving service are rare in any walk of life. Leaders of loving service are still rarer.”

The Telegraph homed in on a tender moment for its main image, showing King Charles placing the Company Camp Colour of the Grenadier Guards on the Queen’s coffin. “An outpouring of love” was the headline, above Hannah Furness’s five-column report on the day.  The Mail opted for image of the coffin being lowered into the vault at St George’s chapel, Windsor, with the headline: “Her final journey” for its bumper 120-page edition.

Further afield, the timings allowed Australian papers enough time to place their own poignant tributes on their front pages. Amid debate about whether Charles should be Australia’s head of state, Tuesday’s papers were united in covering the occasion in subdued tones. The Age (“The final farewell”) and Sydney Morning Herald (“We’ll meet again”) both showed the Queen’s coffin being guided into Windsor Castle, while the Herald Sun and Daily Telegraph sought to capture the feeling of readers with their headlines: “Thank you, our Queen”, and “Rest in peace, Ma’am” respectively.  Adelaide’s Advertiser went with the headline “Eternal Queen”, and Queensland’s Courier Mail went for “Thank you, our Queen”. National paper the Australian calls the late monarch “Elizabeth the great” and focuses on the grief-stricken expression of King Charles for its image, with the headline, another: “We’ll meet again”, perhaps an echo of Welby’s reference to Vera Lynn’s song, which the Queen used in a broadcast during the worst of the Covid pandemic (and, of course, during World War Two.  (Attachment Thirty).

Iran and Russia chose a different path, as above.  China weaponized the funeral to round up nostalgics and subversives; A Hongkonger who played a harmonica to a crowd outside the British consulate during Elizabeth II’s funeral was arrested for sedition.  After 2019’s democracy protests, China has cracked down on dissent in Hong Kong using national security legislation and charges of sedition.

The latter is a colonial-era law that had fallen into obscurity for decades until prosecutors reintroduced it in the aftermath of the protests.  Police said a 43-year-old man surnamed Pang was arrested outside the consulate for “seditious acts”. A police source confirmed to AgenceFrance Press (Attachment Thirty One) that the man arrested was the harmonica player.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle headed home to California, Vanity Fair reported on Thursday, after Queen Elizabeth’s death extended their visit overseas.  (Attachment Thirty Two)

The royal couple flew home from the UK on Tuesday following their mourning period, and one day after attending the late monarch’s funeral service; Harry highlighting the queen’s commitment to serving the United Kingdom.  “In celebrating the life of my grandmother, Her Majesty The Queen—and in mourning her loss—we are all reminded of the guiding compass she was to so many in her commitment to service and duty,” the Prince wrote.

While half the “Fab Four” were flying back to California, Kate and William, back at home, expressed their appreciation for “those behind the scenes who facilitated the Queen’s final televised funeral ritual” (unlike his father, giving them the sack), and discussed the rainbows that had appeared over several of the historic sites over the week, noted Thursday’s People Magazine (Attachment Thirty Three).  “Her Majesty was looking down on us,” Princess Kate replied.

 

Still, after the ceremonies, however, with the U.K. and much of the world was still under the spell of the dead Queen and the centuries-old trappings of power, ritual and pageantry as well as ancient grudges – newly excavated.  So the Queen died, Lizzie kicked the bucket, she’s out of here,” wrote an irreverent Danny Price from Hunger (Attachment Thirty Four... presumably a publication or website of some sort).  “Let’s be real, she was 96, she had great innings, and this was expected. Was it sad?….for me, no, but for a lot of people, it was devastating.”

During the course of the funeral, he added, there was war in Ukraine, racial strife, economic hardship and, to all intents and purposes, anarchy in the U.K.  Climate change and Covid-19 deaths are vastly ignored.  And forget about bringing up colonialism, as you would have surely been met with the response of “now is not the time”. So, “when is the right time?” asked Mr. Price.

People in other countries and media in other countries are saying that this is the beginning of societal collapse in the UK. Earlier this month, a certain Professor Eliot Jacobson stated that the UK is likely to be the first world country to implode due to Brexit, government spending, corruption, and inflation.

And the expense of sustaining the royalty.

And Prince Andrew.

 

And, just yesterday, it became apparent that the new King’s stumbling and fumbling regarding the character of his charities continues apace.  “In the last two years, Charles has pretty much only done two things that have come to the public’s attention: one, accepting millions of Euros from a suspicious title seeker in a suitcase and/or carrier bag, and the other… accepting millions of pounds from the Bin Laden family for his charity,” scowled the Man from Hunger (above).  “Charles will be a fine King.”

The Bin Laden swag we have already noted.  But now, the Guardian (Attachment Thirty Five) and... notably... the Kuwait Times (Attachment Thirty Six) chronicled Charlie’s convening with either the Saudi billionaire (GUK) or Qatari sheikh (Kuwait)... or both.

The Metropolitan police confirmed that on 6 September officers interviewed a man in his 50s and a man in his 40s under caution in relation to offences under the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925.

The force launched the investigation in February after media reports alleged offers of help were made to secure honours and citizenship for a Saudi national.

In September last year, the Sunday Times published claims that the billionaire Mahfouz Marei Mubarak bin Mahfouz paid tens of thousands of pounds to fixers with links to Charles who had told him they could secure the honour.

Bin Mahfouz was awarded a CBE at a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace in November 2016.

Bin Mahfouz has been one of the biggest donors to Charles’s charities and even has a forest named after him, the Mahfouz Wood, at the 15th-century Castle of Mey, formerly the Queen Mother’s home and now one of Charles’s Scottish residences.

When the allegations surfaced, the Prince’s Foundation launched an internal investigation, which in turn led to one of Charles’s former closest aides, Michael Fawcett, 59, temporarily stepping down as the foundation’s chief executive.

Fawcett, a former valet to the Prince of Wales who has been close to Queen Elizabeth II’s heir for decades, is alleged to have coordinated efforts to grant a royal honour and even UK citizenship to Mahfouz.  The King, of course, denies that any quid pro Qatario took place... and even if it did, it was legal.

Legal, but as one of the Nine Eleven victims remarked, above (Attachment Twenty Three), “blood money.”

 

The public affinity gap between Queen and posterity (Anne, who did a lot of the hard work of the services excepted) was, so it would seem, enormous.

 

 

 

Timeline (non-QE2)

September 17th – September 23rd, 2022

 

 

Saturday, September 17, 2022

Dow:  32,151.71

 

 

QE2 security reports that the wait-in-line time is down to fourteen hours as thousands of mourness mass to say goodbye to the monarch.  The funeral is set for Monday at 11AM GMT (6 AM EST).

   In the aftermath of the political “stunts” being pulled by Govs. Ron deSantis (R-Fl)... raiding the plague settlement coffers to fly migrants to ritzy Martha’s Vinyard... and Greg Abbott (R-Tx)... busing them to Veep Kamala Harris’ house in Washington, the Mayor of El Paso makes his case for extreme measures.  4,000 refugees from Venezuela alone have descended upon the West Texas town, half of whom are unsponsored.  Without jobs or homes or places in which to hold them, many are sleeping on the streets – terrifying residents.

   Also terrified are residents of Puerto Rico, where Hurricane Fiona is taking aim at... the island’s power grid still shaky five years after Maria stirred the pot.  And on the other side of the continent, Typhoon Merbok blasts the coast of Alaska.  Weatherpersons call the storms “Historic!”

 

 

Sunday, September 18th, 2022

Dow: Closed

 

 

It’s POW/MIA Day.  Also National Cheeseburger Day.

Thousands of British security police mobilizing to protect five hundred world leaders from, as the pundits put it, “protesters, pickpockets and terrorists.”  Some of the more amiable pickpockets are the merchers who are cashing in on thousands of Queenly pilgrims.  Hotels raise rates.  The bobbies warn people to stop coming to stand in the line, but they keep coming.

   Russians keep going... in reverse.  But in revenge for Ukrainian military victors, Bad Vlad carpet bombs more civilian targets, including the enemy’s second largest nuclear plant, raising more cries of nuclear terror.  So far, 34,000 war crimes have been reported with more emerging as more bodies are dug up out of fields and basements in liberated towns.

   After a two year plague hiatus... and despite the power pinch caused by Angry Russians, Germany resumes celebrating Oktoberfest. 

 

 

Monday, September 19th, 2022

Dow:  31.019.68

 

 

The Queen’s funeral begins early in the morning, even earlier American time.  Prince Harry is forbidden to wear his military uniform but comes anyway, as do many thousands while an estimated four billion watch the services on television.  The Archbishop of Canterbury charges: “Go forth, Christian sould.”  King Charles cries.  The piper who woke QE2 up mornings plays “Sleep, Dearie, Sleep” and Queenly homilies are recalled such as the advice: “Look up.  Look out.  Say less.  Do more.”

   And then, as mourners follow the casket out of Westminster, the talkers on TV networks resume their talking during “the long walk”... the three mile procession from Westminster to Windsor.  Ian Pannell predicts “a void”.  Robin Roberts predicts that Charles will remain under the thumb of Princess Anne, who has done most of the heavy lifting over the past week; he leaves an inspirational note in an envelope placed atop the coffin (down which a spider crawls).  Everybody sings: “God Save the King”.

   An ocean away, Puerto Rico is devastated by Fiona – eighty percent of residents without power.  And, although the services have been remarkably free of crime and violence (perhaps due to the massive security mobilization), the CEO of Beyond Meat is accused of biting a man on the nose.

 

 

 

Tuesday, September 20th, 2022

Dow:  30,706.23

 

 

 

 

 

Flags in the U.K. go back to full staff and the world goes back to doing what it does... most, if not always best... making money.  Ford announces a price increase, blaming the supply chain. 

   Russia officially annexes its captured Ukrainian territory – quickly, it is said, before the people who live there reclaim it.  Iran, being Iran, executes a woman for improper dress.  And the One Six Inquisition resumes with Judge Dearie (referred to as Judge Drearie by some mediums) disappointing his patron by telling Team Trump to “put up or shut up”. 

   Doctors report that plague infections and deaths are down but STDs are way, way up.  Some of them blame the pandemic related quarantines.

 

 

 

Wednesday, September 21st, 2022

Dow:  30,183.78

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s World Alzheimer’s Day.  And the world is already beginning to forget QE2 and get back to its business... which is, well, business.

   For decadent Westerners, the business means money – who gains and who loses.  As expected, the Federal Reserve raises interest rates: gladdening some, maddening others.

   For Mad Vlad Putin, the business means doubling down on the Ukraine War; despite certainty that his move to call up reserves and impose a sort of draft upon the population, the dictator pulls the pin anyway – raising an army of 300,000 (including prisoners seeking pardons and conscripted protesters) to fight the Ukes.  Experts predict that they’ll be cannon fodder for Zelenskyy’s experienced and desperate troops.

   For President Joe, a trip to New York Cit y where he appears before the United Nations and tells the assembled diplomats that Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons against the Ukes is “irresponsible”.

 

 

Thursday, September 22nd, 2022

 Dow:  30,076,68

 

 

 

 

 

It’s the first day of Fall.  First frost of fall manifests in Manitoba, and in Minnesota.  Fiona spins away to the north, leaving another massive Puerto Rican cleanup behind.

   Putin’s threats of escalation sends gas prices rising again after months of decline... just in time for winter and the heating fuel season.  Fool season marches on as former President Trump says that a President can declassify classified documents “just by thinking about them.”  When the courts find that unlikely, Djonald Undeterred pivots and says that the FBI planted fake, incriminating documents upon the real ones.

   Iran’s “morality police”, facing accusations of murder, double down on illegal and irresponsible fashion, with the result being that the mob follows Russians out in the street to loot and riot.

 

 

 

Friday, September 23rd, 2022

Dow:  29,590.41

 

 

 

Fiona batters Bermuda and then heads due north, making another landfall in the Canadian maratimes.  Down in the Caribbean another storm, soon confirmed to be Ian (even the hurricans have British names in honor of the Queen) takes a path that might result in a direct hit on Tampa.

   Experts predict a “mild” recession with unemployment rising from 3.7% to 4.4% meaning that, with Congress refusing to extend the plague benefits, a prognosis of hunger, homelessness and a Republican sweep in the midterms.  Early estimates are that pandemic fraud raked in 45B in fake unemployment claims.

   Russia begins its own elections – or, at least, imposes them on occupied Ukraine with a referendum on being annxed by Putin or not.  Russian troops go door to door to get out the vote with machine gun totin’ soldiers following to separate out the naughty and the nice.

 

 

@

 

 

 

 

 

THE DON JONES INDEX

 

CHART of CATEGORIES w/VALUE ADDED to EQUAL BASELINE of 15,000

(REFLECTING… approximately… DOW JONES INDEX of June 27, 2013)

 

See a further explanation of categories here

 

ECONOMIC INDICES (60%)

DON JONES’ PERSONAL ECONOMIC INDEX   (45% of TOTAL INDEX POINTS)

 

 

CATEGORY

VALUE

BASE

RESULTS

SCORE

OUR SOURCES and COMMENTS

 

INCOME

(24%)

6/17/13 & 1/1/22

LAST

CHANGE

NEXT

9/3/22

9/17/22

SOURCE

 

Wages (hrly. Per cap)

9%

1350 points

9/17/22

+0.44%

10/22

1,381.63

1,381.63

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wages   27.57 .68

 

Median Inc. (yearly)

4%

600

9/17/22

+0.03%

10/1/22

603.79

603.79

http://www.usdebtclock.org/   36,010 020 030

 

Unempl. (BLS – in mi)

4%

600

9/17/22

-5.41%

10/22

616.25

616.25

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000/  3.7%

 

Official (DC – in mi)

2%

300

9/17/22

-0.14%

10/1/22

315.86

315.86

http://www.usdebtclock.org/      5,620 6.015 014.911

 

Unofficl. (DC – in mi)

2%

300

9/17/22

+0.03%

10/1/22

286.22

286.22

http://www.usdebtclock.org/    11,829 519 514

 

Workforce Particip.

   Number

   Percent

2%

300

9/17/22

 

+0.007%           -0.007%

10/1/22

 

 

299.72

 

 

299.72

In 158,356 756 767 Out  100,157 99.444 447  Total: 258,513

 

http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 61.26

 

WP %  (ycharts)*

1%

150

9/17/22

+0.48%

9/17/22

150.48

150.48

https://ycharts.com/indicators/labor_force_participation_rate  62.40

 

 

OUTGO

15%

 

 

 

Total Inflation

7%

1050

8/22

 nc

10/1/22

1010.64

1010.64

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.1

 

Food

2%

300

8/22

+1.1%

10/1/22

289.34

286.15

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.8

 

Gasoline

2%

300

8/22

-7.7%

10/1/22

221.46

238.50

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm      -10.6

 

Medical Costs

2%

300

8/22

+0.4%

10/1/22

293.45

292.28

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.4 0.8

 

Shelter

2%

300

8/22

+0.5%

10/1/22

293.46

291.99

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.5.7

 

 

WEALTH

6%

 

 

 

Dow Jones Index

2%

300

9/17/22

-2.66%

10/1/22

267.85

267.85

https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/index/   32,151.71  30,822.42

 

Home (Sales)

(Valuation)

1%

1%

150

150

9/17/22

-6.05%             -2.93%

10/1/22

154.06

309.58

154.06

309.58

https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics

Sales (M):  4.81 4.80 Valuations (K):  403.8 389.5

 

Debt (Personal)

2%

300

9/17/22

+0.11%

10/1/22

290.28

290.28

http://www.usdebtclock.org/    70,962 913 985

 

 

NATIONAL

(10%)

 

 

 

Revenue (trilns.)

2%

300

9/17/22

+0.18%

10/1/22

325.77

325.77

debtclock.org/       4,456 763 827

 

Expenditures (tr.)

2%

300

9/17/22

+0.30%

10/1/22

332.14

332.14

debtclock.org/       5,903 6019 6003

 

National Debt tr.)

3%

450

9/17/22

+0.05%

10/1/22

441.43

441.43

http://www.usdebtclock.org/    30,879 894 909

 

Aggregate Debt (tr.)

3%

450

9/17/22

+0.16%

10/1/22

436.83

436.83

http://www.usdebtclock.org/    92,572 716 861

 

 

 

 

GLOBAL

(5%)

 

 

 

Foreign Debt (tr.)

2%

300

9/17/22

+0.03%

10/1/22

325.58

325.58

http://www.usdebtclock.org/   7,413 412 410

 

Exports (in billions)

1%

150

9/17/22

+1.60%

9/22

163.46

163.46

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/index.html  260.0 259.3

 

Imports (bl.)

1%

150

9/17/22

+0.29%

9/22

153.99

153.99

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/index.html  340.4 329.9

 

Trade Deficit (bl.)

1%

150

9/17/22

-7.41%

9/22

210.77

210.77

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/index.html    79.6 70,6

 

 

 

SOCIAL INDICES  (40%) 

 

 

 

ACTS of MAN

12%

 

 

 

World Affairs

3%

450

9/17/22

  -1.5%

10/1/22

458.53

458.53

QE2 funeral set for 6AM EST on Tuesday.  The coffin watching line drops to 14 hours, but starts rising again.  London bobbies prepare for outbreaks of protest and pickpocketing. 

 

Terrorism

2%

300

9/17/22

  -0.2%

10/1/22

296.01

296.01

U.S. trades Afghan druglord for Taliban hostage.  Russians stop shelling Zaporizhazha, but rain missiles on another nuke plant.  Iran’s “morality police” kill woman for wearing headscarf wrong way.  Everybody riots!... Iranians burn hijabs, Russians burn Russian flags.

 

Politics

3%

450

9/17/22

 +0.2%

10/1/22

467.38

467.38

NY AyGee Leticia James calls Trumpish transactions “art of the steal.”  Gini Thomas agrees to testify before One Six Inquisitors.  U.N. begins hearings on Putin’s War but failure already assured due to Russian veto power.  What will China do?

 

Economics

3%

450

9/17/22

 +0.1%

10/1/22

438.39

438.39

Fed raises interest rates 0.75%.  Ford raises prices, blames supply chain.  Inflation causing decline in youth sports.  Target to hire 100K holiday temps; WalMart only 40K, down from 2021.  DOJ investigates Google as a monopoly (well, 92% of one).  FTC investigates Amazon’s gobbling of iRobot.

 

Crime

1%

150

9/17/22

   -0.7%

10/1/22

285.89

285.89

Dozens arrested (Brett Favre investigated) in $250M Miss. child nutrition scam.  Kidnapped Hawaiian girl rescued, abductor nabbed.  Washington monument defaced with red paint.

 

 

 

ACTS of GOD

(6%)

 

 

 

Environment/Weather

3%

450

9/17/22

    +0.2%

10/1/22

440.27

440.27

As Fiona heads towards Eastern Canada, typhoon Merbok pounds Alaska’s West Coast.  New tropical storm gets named... Ian... and heads for Tampa.

 

Disasters

3%

450

9/17/22

  -0.4%

10/1/22

440.94

440.94

7.6 EQ shakes Puerto Vallarta, Mexico followed by 6.8 aftershock and mad typhoon bedevils Philippines.  Fentanyl OD survivor complains: “Nobody knows what they’re taking anymore.”  Newark to Brazil flight catches fire but lands safely.

 

LIFESTYLE/JUSTICE INDEX

(15%)

 

 

Science, Tech, Educ.

4%

600

9/17/22

  -0.3%

10/1/22

616.66

616.66

Japanese invent Jetsonistic hover bike that retails for only $777K.  But American flying car company Kittyhawk goes broke.  Food scientists invent purple tomatoes, said to be healthier. 

 

Equality (econ/social)

4%

600

9/17/22

-0.1%

10/1/22

590.42

590.42

Alex Jones exasperated – refuses to apologize for calling Sandy Hook a hoax and parents hoaxers.  Climate warriors fight to ban natural gas from furnaces and stoves... Now!  Let the bastards freeze in the dark!

 

Health

4%

600

9/17/22

-0.1%

10/1/22

486.96

486.96

To accompany plague, Monkeypox and flu season, doctors now say that STD cases are out of control.  Anxious doctors say that everybody under 65 should get anxiety screening.  Lemons for Leukemia raises money for bone marrow donors.

 

Freedom and Justice

3%

450

9/17/22

-0.2%

10/1/22

450.39

450.39

Border states groaning under refugee crisis – 4,000 Venezuelans alone fleeing Communism in 2022.  Lawyers mobilize to address busing stunts.  Boeing settles to air crash lawsuits.  Angry judge raises sentence on “manipulative” fake kidnap victim Sherri Papini from 8 to 18 months.  California legalizes human composting.

 

MISCELLANEOUS and TRANSIENT INDEX

 (7%)

 

 

 

 

 

Cultural incidents

3%

450

9/17/22

+0.1%

10/1/22

465.62

465.62

Aaron Judge slams 60th homer, ties Babe Ruth.  Vegas Aces beat Conn. to take WNBA title.  Celtics suspend Coach Udoka for having sex... with a female!   Sir Elton plays the White House and President Joe gives him a medal.  Failing Hollywood trying to squeeze money out of recycling old favorites like “Avatar” (One) and “The Bodyguard”.  RIP Hollywood villain Henry Silva, base thief Maury Wills 

 

Misc. incidents

4%

450

9/17/22

+0.1%

10/1/22

461.44

461.44

“Beyond Meat” CEO bites man on the nose.  On the Continent, Germans prepare for resumption of Oktoberfest after a two year plague hiatus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Don Jones Index for the week of September 17th through September 23rd, 2022 was DOWN 6.76 points

 

The Don Jones Index is sponsored by the Coalition for a New Consensus: retired Congressman and Independent Presidential candidate Jack “Catfish” Parnell, Chairman; Brian Doohan, Administrator.  The CNC denies, emphatically, allegations that the organization, as well as any of its officers (including former Congressman Parnell, environmentalist/America-Firster Austin Tillerman and cosmetics CEO Rayna Finch) and references to Parnell’s works, “Entropy and Renaissance” and “The Coming Kill-Off” are fictitious or, at best, mere pawns in the web-serial “Black Helicopters” – and promise swift, effective legal action against parties promulgating this and/or other such slanders.

Comments, complaints, donations (especially SUPERPAC donations) always welcome at feedme@generisis.com or: speak@donjonesindex.com.

 

 

ATTACHMENT ONE – from the Guardian U.K.

 

QUEEN ELIZABETH II’S FUNERAL: TIMELINE OF DAY’S KEY MOMENTS

A guide to proceedings of first state funeral since Winston Churchill’s in 1965

 

By Tobi Thomas  Mon 19 Sep 2022 11.38 EDT

The first UK state funeral since Winston Churchill’s in 1965 will take place on bank holiday Monday for Queen Elizabeth II. Here is a guide of what will happen at key moments throughout the day.

6.30am (all times BST) – The Queen’s lying in state ended

The Queen’s lying in state, in which her closed coffin has been placed on view to the public at Westminster Hall since Wednesday, came to an end in the early hours of Monday morning. An estimated 300,000 people queued to pay their respects, with the wait time reaching an estimated 17 hours.

8am – Westminster Abbey opened for the congregation

The abbey opened to the congregation attending the Queen’s funeral. The event, which will be one of the largest gatherings of heads of states and royalty the UK has hosted in decades, will be attended by European royal families and world leaders.

As the abbey opened, the King’s Guard trooped through the gates of the building, with two soldiers stationed at the metal gates awaiting the start of the proceedings.

At about 9:30am, Westminster Abbey’s tenor bell started to toll once every minute 96 times in the run-up to the funeral service, marking every year of the Queen’s life.

10.30am – The Queen’s coffin is carried by gun carriage to the abbey

The coffin was carried on the state funeral gun carriage from Westminster Hall to the abbey, towed by 142 sailors from the Royal Navy. The tradition dates to the funeral of Queen Victoria in 1901.

Shortly before, the King arrived at the Palace of Westminster after driving the short distance from Buckingham Palace.

10.44am – The royal family followed the coffin into the abbey

King Charles III, joined by the royal family as well as members of the household, followed the coffin as it made its journey from Westminster Hall to Westminster Abbey, via gun carriage.

The coffin was draped in the royal standard, and carries the imperial state crown and a wreath of flowers containing plants from the gardens of Buckingham Palace, Clarence House and Highgrove House.

The procession was also led by 299 pipers and drummers of Scottish and Irish Regiments, the Brigade of Gurkhas and RAF.

10.52am – The procession arrives at Westminster Abbey

The procession carrying the Queen’s coffin has arrived at the West Gate of Westminster Abbey.

The bearer party –comprising members of the Queen’s guard – have carried the coffin from the gun carriage and into the funeral service.

The procession from Westminster Hall took about eight minutes, and as the coffin entered the abbey, the choir sang the Sentences, lines from the Bible verse Revelation 14:13, set to music by William Croft. The lines have been used at every state funeral since the 18th century.

11am – The service begins

The service, which is being led by the dean of Westminster, Dr David Hoyle, has commenced.

The First Lesson was read by Patricia Scotland, the secretary general of the Commonwealth. The Lesson is taken from Corinthians 15.

The first hymn – The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, is Ended – was written by John Ellerton.

The prime minister of the UK, Liz Truss, read the second lesson, from John 14.

The second hymn – The Lord’s My Shepherd – was sung to the Crimond tune.

The sermon, delivered by the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, describing the Queen as having been “joyful, present to so many, touching a multitude of lives”.

After Welby’s sermon, the choir sang My Soul, there is a country by Hubert Parry.

Subsequently, a series of church leaders offered prayers.

The Church of Scotland’s Reverend Dr Iain Greenshields begins by offering thanks for the Queen’s “long life and reign” and her “gifts of wisdom, diligence and service”.

The archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, offered thanks for the Queen’s “unswerving devotion to the gospel”.

The leader of the Roman Catholic church in England and Wales, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, gave thanks for “the rich bonds of unity and mutual support she sustained”.

The congregation then sang the third hymn, Love Divine, All Loves Excelling, which followed the Lord’s Prayer.

Welby has now given the commendation, a prayer that entrusts the soul of the deceased to God.

 

11.55am – The Last Post sounded

The Last Post played, followed by a two-minute silence.

Noon – The state funeral service came to an end

The national anthem has been sung, bringing the state funeral service to a close. The coffin is brought to the state gun carriage.

12.15pm – Coffin carried to Wellington Arch

At the close of the funeral, the sovereign’s piper and the late Queen’s coffin was carried from Westminster Abbey and placed on the state gun carriage, from where it began the journey to St George’s chapel in Windsor.

The procession, following the coffin and led by the King, was made up of several groups, with each accompanied by a service band. These groups included representatives from the NHS and members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, as well as detachments from the armed forces of the Commonwealth.

Guns were fired in Hyde Park by the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery every minute during the procession, while Big Ben tolled every minute.

The route of the procession included moving past the Cenotaph, Horse Guards Parade and the Mall, continuing on to Buckingham palace.

1.30pm – The coffin was placed in the state hearse at Wellington Arch

The procession arrived at Wellington Arch, with the bearer party transferring the coffin to the hearse before the car left for Windsor. There was a royal salute and the national anthem was played.

The King’s Guard turned out in the forecourt of the palace to give a salute to the coffin at the Queen Victoria Monument.

3pm – The state hearse reaches Windsor

The hearse reached Shaw Farm Gate in Albert Road, Windsor, to join a funeral procession already formed and ready to head up Long Walk to Windsor Castle.

Thousands of people gathered in crowds to watch the journey from London. Shortly before its arrival, the royal standard was raised above Windsor Castle, signifying that King Charles III had arrived at the residence ahead of the late Queen’s committal service.

Members of the armed services joined police in standing guard along the route.

As the state hearse reached Shaw Farm Gate, it joined the procession to make its way up the Long Walk to Windsor Castle.

The procession, made up of the Household Cavalry and members of the Grenadier Guards, will be joined by the King and other members of the royal family in the castle’s quadrangle.

During this time the minute gun will be fired every minute, and five seconds later the Sebastopol Bell.

As the procession has approaches the Cambridge gate, bagpipes played the Skye Boat Song.

4pm

The King, accompanied by other members of the royal family, joined the procession at the Quadrangle in the castle grounds, with members of the royal household being positioned at the rear of the coffin.

King Charles, the Princess Royal, the Duke of York, the Earl of Wessex, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Sussex were among those who met the procession at the Quadrangle, as it moved towards Engine Court.

Minute guns were fired by the King’s Troop, Royal Horse Artillery from a position on the East Lawn as the coffin headed in the direction of the West Steps of St George’s Chapel.

The Castle’s Sebastopol and Curfew Tower bells also tolled as the state hearse continued its journey.

Then, the procession reached the west steps of St George’s chapel at Windsor Castle. The bearer party lifted the coffin from the hearse and carried it into the chapel before the committal service.

4:20pm – The committal service begins

The televised committal service began, attended by about 800 guests. The service was conducted by the dean of Windsor, David Conner, with a blessing from the archbishop of Canterbury.

The service was opened by the choir singing Psalm 121, followed by the dean giving the bidding.

The late Queen’s three domestic chaplains from Sandringham, Balmoral Castle and Windsor Great Park gave prayers.

4:50pm – Queen’s coffin lowered into royal vault

“After the service, the Queen’s coffin was lowered into the royal vault as the dean read a psalm and a commendation. At the same time, the Queen’s piper played a lament.”

7.30pm

A private burial service conducted by the dean of Windsor, attended just by the King and the royal family. The Queen’s coffin will be laid to rest in George VI memorial chapel in St George’s chapel, alongside Prince Philip and her parents, King George VI and the Queen Mother.

 

ATTACHMENT TWO – From archbishopofcanterbury.org

THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY’S SERMON FOR THE STATE FUNERAL OF HER MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH II

19/09/2022

 

1 Corinthians 15:20-26, 53 – End

Psalm 42:1-7

John 14:1-6

 

Come Holy Spirit, fill us with the balm of your healing love. Amen.

The pattern for many leaders is to be exalted in life and forgotten after death. The pattern for all who serve God – famous or obscure, respected or ignored – is that death is the door to glory.

Her Late Majesty famously declared on a 21st birthday broadcast that her whole life would be dedicated to serving the Nation and Commonwealth.

Rarely has such a promise been so well kept! Few leaders receive the outpouring of love that we have seen.

Jesus – who in our reading does not tell his disciples how to follow, but who to follow – said: “I am the way, the truth and the life”. Her Late Majesty’s example was not set through her position or her ambition, but through whom she followed. I know His Majesty shares the same faith and hope in Jesus Christ as his mother; the same sense of service and duty.

In 1953 the Queen began her Coronation with silent prayer, just there at the High Altar. Her allegiance to God was given before any person gave allegiance to her. Her service to so many people in this nation, the Commonwealth and the world, had its foundation in her following Christ – God himself – who said that he “came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” 1

People of loving service are rare in any walk of life. Leaders of loving service are still rarer. But in all cases those who serve will be loved and remembered when those who cling to power and privileges are long forgotten.

The grief of this day – felt not only by the late Queen’s family but all round the nation, Commonwealth and the world – arises from her abundant life and loving service, now gone from us.

She was joyful, present to so many, touching a multitude of lives.

We pray especially for all her family, grieving as every family at a funeral - including so many families round the world who have themselves lost someone recently - but in this family’s case doing so in the brightest spotlight.

May God heal their sorrow, may the gap left in their lives be marked with memories of joy and life.

Her Late Majesty’s broadcast during Covid lockdown ended with: “We will meet again”, words of hope from a song of Vera Lynn. Christian hope means certain expectation of something not yet seen.

Christ rose from the dead and offers life to all, abundant life now and life with God in eternity.

As the Christmas carol says “where meek souls will receive him, still the dear Christ enters in.” 2

We will all face the merciful judgement of God: we can all share the Queen’s hope which in life and death inspired her servant leadership.

Service in life, hope in death. All who follow the Queen’s example, and inspiration of trust and faith in God, can with her say: “We will meet again.”

 

1 Matthew 20:28, NRSV

2 O Little Town of Bethlehem

 

ATTACHMENT THREE – from Vanguard

QUEEN ELIZABETH’S FUNERAL: RUSSIA, BELARUS, MYANMAR, SYRIA, VENEZUELA, AFGHANISTAN NOT INVITED

September 19, 2022

 

About six countries were not invited to Queen Elizabeth’s funeral today, Monday. They are Russia, Belarus, Myanmar, Syria, Venezuela or Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

The Sky News gave the reason that UK does not have diplomatic relations with Syria or Venezuela, while the political situation in Afghanistan since the Taliban swept to power a year ago means no representative has been invited from Kabul.

However, Iran, North Korea and Nicaragua have been invited only at an ambassadorial level. Attendance is by invitation only.

As they did as the Queen’s body travelled from Balmoral to Edinburgh, thousands are expected to line the funeral cortege route and millions around the world will watch at home on TV.

Westminster Abbey can hold up to 2,200 people. On the day of the funeral, world leaders, politicians, public figures and those who worked with the Queen, as well as monarchs from other countries, will join members of the Royal Family to pay their respects.

The Queen’s four children – King Charles III, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward – will be present, as will Camilla, the Queen Consort, and the monarch’s grandchildren – Princes William and Harry, Peter Phillips and Zara Tindall, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, and Lady Louise Windsor and James, Viscount Severn.

Spouses of all close family are expected to be present too, including Catherine, the Princess of Wales, and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex.

Prime Minister Liz Truss, Labour leader Keir Starmer and other UK politicians will also attend.

Members of Europe’s royal families, from countries including Spain, the Netherlands, Monaco, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, and Greece, are likely to fly to London for the funeral, and about 500 foreign dignitaries are also expected to attend.

US President Joe Biden and his wife, First Lady Jill Biden, were among the first to say they would be there, and French President Emmanuel Macron has also confirmed his attendance.

It is understood all holders of the Victoria Cross or George Cross are able to attend and nearly 200 key workers and volunteers crutinize in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list have also been invited.

 

 

ATTACHMENT FOUR – from GUK

 

SPIDER CAMEO AND TINDALL’S MEDALS – SOCIAL MEDIA REACTS TO QUIRKY SIDE OF FUNERAL COVERAGE

Twitter users were less reverent than those at the Queen’s funeral, and had plenty of jokes and questions as the ceremony unfolded

 

By Martin Belam  Mon 19 Sep 2022 08.27 EDT

 

Not all of the nation was gripped to the television in reverential silence during the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, as the conversations about the event on social media inevitably turned to observations about some of the quirkier elements.

Even before the event began some suggested it might be time for the royal family to give a little back to the world of football, after all the tributes paid at sporting events in the previous 10 days.

Much has been made that over her long reign the Queen received 15 prime ministers, four of them in the past six years alone thanks to Conservative party leadership changes. Some suggested the sight of the nation’s former PMs didn’t indicate there had been an improvement over time.

There were some expressions of concern about Prince George and Princess Charlotte having roles in such a public ceremony at a young age, and comparisons with the appearance of Prince William and Prince Harry at their own mother’s funeral in 1997. However, there was a theory as to why Prince Louis was occupied elsewhere on the day his great-grandmother was buried.

Louis had, after all, provided one of the defining images of the Queen’s platinum jubilee earlier in the year.

During the service in Westminster Abbey itself, you wouldn’t have wished “dropping your notes right next to the Queen’s coffin in front of a television audience projected to be billions” on your worst enemy.

The arachnid cameo did not go unnoticed.

In fact, the spider benefited from better television coverage than some of the people participating in the service.

And at least the spider was actually there.

People were disappointed that the attenders weren’t getting onboard with the spirit of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, which has fallen on 19 September every year since it was founded in 1995.

The television captions weren’t always kind to the prime minister, Liz Truss, either.

The appearance of Liz Truss also flummoxed Channel Nine’s Peter Overton and Tracy Grimshaw in Australia, who suggested on live television that she might be “a minor royal” after failing to identify her.

 

ATTACHMENT FIVE – from Town and Country (Attachment Five… re-attached from last week’s DJI)

WHO’S ATTENDING QUEEN ELIZABETH’S FUNERAL?

 

Queen Elizabeth’s state funeral will take place on Monday, September 19, 2022. Buckingham Palace has released specific details about the schedule of the funeral—which includes the broad categories of people invited: heads of state, overseas government representatives, foreign royal families, governors general, and realm prime ministers. (More here on all the royals confirmed to attend the Queen’s funeral.) Invitations to the funeral were offered to the head of state from each country, along with their spouse or partner.

In addition, the Palace shared, “Other representatives of the Realms and the Commonwealth, the Orders of Chivalry including recipients of the Victoria Cross and George Cross, Government, Parliament, devolved Parliaments and Assemblies, the Church, and Her Majesty’s Patronages will form the congregation, along with other public representatives.”

Ahead of the funeral, King Charles will host heads of state and official overseas guests at Buckingham Palace on Sunday. Here’s all the politicians, world leaders, and others confirmed to attend Queen Elizabeth’s funeral:

UK leaders

Prime Minister Liz Truss, who met with Queen Elizabeth just two days before the monarch died, will be in attendance, as will the Labour party leader, Sir Keir Starmer, First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, and First Minister of Wales, Mark Drakeford.

US presidents

The White House confirmed that President Joe Biden will attend Queen Elizabeth’s funeral along with First Lady Jill Biden. Not all former presidents will be able to attend, but there is speculation that some former, like Barack and Michelle Obama, may receive private invites.

Commonwealth leaders

·         Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia

·         Governor-General David Hurley of Australia

·         Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand

·         Prime Minister Andrew Holness of Jamaica

·         Governor-General Patrick Allen of Jamaica

·         Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada

·         Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh

·         Prime Minister James Marape of Papua New Guinea

·         Governor-General Bob Dadae of Papua New Guinea

·         President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa

·         President Ranil Wickremesinghe of Sri Lanka

·         President Paula-Mae Weekes of Trinidad and Tobago

·         President Droupadi Murmu of India

Other world leaders

·         Taoiseach (similar to ‘Prime Minister’) Micheál Martin of Ireland

·         President Michael D. Higgins of Ireland

·         President Emmanuel Macron of France

·         President Alexander Van der Bellen of Austria

·         President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany

·         President Sergio Mattarella of Italy

·         President Isaac Herzog of Israel

·         President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil

·         President Sauli Niinistö of Finland

·         President Hage Geingob of Namibia

·         President Yoon Suk-Yeol of South Korea

·         President Katalin Novak of Hungary

·         President Egils Levits of Latvia

·         President Andrzej Duda of Poland

·         President Gitanas Nauseda of Lithuania

·         President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey

·         European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen

·         European Council President Charles Michel

Other attendees

All holders of the Victoria Cross or George Cross will be able to attend, as will the nearly 200 people recognized at the Queen’s Birthday Honors in June. The birthday honors recipients “drawn from across the UK were crutinize for their extraordinary contributions in areas including the response to the Covid-19 pandemic, people who volunteered in their communities, charity workers and those who work in healthcare, education and the wider public sector,” according to a spokesperson for the Prime Minister.

 

 

ATTACHMENT SIX – from GUK

 

A HANDWRITTEN NOTE, A CROWN AND A WREATH: ITEMS ON QUEEN’S COFFIN AND WHAT THEY SIGNIFY

From myrtle to the gem-encrusted cross on the orb, there is a wealth of symbolism behind each object

 

By Alexandra Topping  Mon 19 Sep 2022 11.28 EDT

 

1. Handwritten note

Nestled among the flowers of the Queen’s funeral wreath was a handwritten card by her son King Charles III, which read: “In loving and devoted memory, Charles R.”

2. Flowers

At King Charles’s request, the wreath on top of the Queen’s coffin contains flowers and foliage from the royal properties of Buckingham Palace and Clarence House, in London, and Highgrove House in Gloucestershire. Also at the King’s request, the wreath was sustainable, and affixed in a nest of English moss and oak branches.

The wreath contains myrtle, the ancient symbol of a happy marriage, cut from a plant that was grown from a sprig of myrtle in the Queen’s wedding bouquet in 1947. It also contains rosemary as a symbol of remembrance and English oak, a national symbol of strength, in a nod to the Queen’s constancy and steadfast duty. Other foliage includes pelargoniums, garden roses, autumnal hydrangea, sedum, dahlias, and scabious.

3. The imperial state crown

The late Queen’s sanctified body is represented by the crown, orb and crutin. The crown, representing the sovereign’s power, has 2,868 diamonds, 269 pearls, 17 sapphires, 11 emeralds and four rubies. It contains some of the crown jewels’ most precious gems, including the black prince’s ruby, the Stuart sapphire, and the Cullinan II diamond. The St Edward’s sapphire, set in the centre of the topmost cross, is said to have been worn in a ring by St Edward the Confessor and discovered in his tomb in 1163. The crown has been damaged previously – during the transportation of the body of George V, the diamond-encrusted globe which tops the crown, along with the cross and sapphire it supports – snapped off and rolled into a gutter.

The Queen wore the crown when she left Westminster Abbey after her coronation in 1953. The monarch wears the crown for state occasions, including the state opening of parliament.

4. The orb

The golden crutin ball created, like the crutin, in 1661, is topped by a gem-encrusted cross. It is meant to remind the monarch that their power is derived from God.

5. The crutin

The crutin was created for the coronation of King Charles II, and has been used to represent the crown’s power and governance in every coronation since 1661. In 1910, the Cullinan I diamond was added to the crutin. Weighing 532.2 carats, it is the largest colourless cut diamond in the world. Cullinan I is the biggest stone cut from the magnificent Cullinan diamond. Discovered in South Africa in 1905, it is the largest uncut diamond ever found.

6. The royal standard flag

The royal standard represents the sovereign and the United Kingdom. The modern incarnation of the flag has four quarters: England (three lions passant) in the first and fourth quarters, Scotland (a lion rampant) in the second quarter and Ireland (a harp) in the third quarter. In Scotland, a different version of the royal standard is used, with Scottish arms in the first and fourth quarters and English arms in the second. Wales is not represented, as its special position as a principality was crutinize by the creation of the Prince of Wales long before the incorporation of the quarterings for Scotland and Ireland in the royal arms.

 

AND ALSO (from GUK, and from last week’s Lesson, Attachment Nine)...

 

SPIDER CAMEO AND TINDALL’S MEDALS – SOCIAL MEDIA REACTS TO QUIRKY SIDE OF FUNERAL COVERAGE

Twitter users were less reverent than those at the Queen’s funeral, and had plenty of jokes and questions as the ceremony unfolded

 

By Martin Belam  Mon 19 Sep 2022 08.27 EDT

 

Not all of the nation was gripped to the television in reverential silence during the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, as the conversations about the event on social media inevitably turned to observations about some of the quirkier elements.

Even before the event began some suggested it might be time for the royal family to give a little back to the world of football, after all the tributes paid at sporting events in the previous 10 days.

Much has been made that over her long reign the Queen received 15 prime ministers, four of them in the past six years alone thanks to Conservative party leadership changes. Some suggested the sight of the nation’s former PMs didn’t indicate there had been an improvement over time.

There were some expressions of concern about Prince George and Princess Charlotte having roles in such a public ceremony at a young age, and comparisons with the appearance of Prince William and Prince Harry at their own mother’s funeral in 1997. However, there was a theory as to why Prince Louis was occupied elsewhere on the day his great-grandmother was buried.

Louis had, after all, provided one of the defining images of the Queen’s platinum jubilee earlier in the year.

During the service in Westminster Abbey itself, you wouldn’t have wished “dropping your notes right next to the Queen’s coffin in front of a television audience projected to be billions” on your worst enemy.

The arachnid cameo did not go unnoticed.

In fact, the spider benefited from better television coverage than some of the people participating in the service.

And at least the spider was actually there.

People were disappointed that the attenders weren’t getting onboard with the spirit of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, which has fallen on 19 September every year since it was founded in 1995.

The television captions weren’t always kind to the prime minister, Liz Truss, either.

The appearance of Liz Truss also flummoxed Channel Nine’s Peter Overton and Tracy Grimshaw in Australia, who suggested on live television that she might be “a minor royal” after failing to identify her.

One man who caught the eye of social media users was Matthew Magee. Appointed by the Queen as her assistant private secretary in 2018, at 7ft 2in (2.18m) Magee notably towered over those around him during the procession.

After days of odd corporate tweets – Playmobil Queen anybody? – National Rail made a late bid for glory with the suggestion everyone go down the pub after the funeral rather than actually get on their trains.

There was the eternal mystery surrounding some of the more obscure ceremonial aspects of the day.

Chess jokes inevitably got another airing.

And the question came up of why former rugby player and non-military man Mike Tindall, who is married to the daughter of Princess Anne, now has medals.

The actual answer is that Tindall was wearing his MBE awarded for his contributions to rugby, and also medals for the late Queen’s diamond and platinum jubilees.

Would the Queen have appreciated people making jokes during her funeral? Well, the royal family often spoke about her sense of humour. At least she spared us this …

 

 

ATTACHMENT SEVEN – From GUK and Sources Noted

 

‘THE FINAL FAREWELL’: WHAT THE PAPERS SAID ABOUT THE QUEEN’S FUNERAL

Powerful images dominated the newspaper front pages after a nation gathered to say goodbye to its longest-serving monarch

By Graham Russell  Mon 19 Sep 2022 22.56 EDT

 

After 10 days of national mourning, remembrance and no small amount of expectation, newspapers around the world gave their front pages over to Queen Elizabeth II’s final journey back to Windsor.

The Guardian’s main image displays the bearer party taking the Queen’s coffin up the steps into the darkened entrance of the George VI Memorial Chapel at Windsor Castle, above a report from Caroline Davies on the most intimate part of the day: a family farewell. Other pieces from Jonathan FreedlandEsther Addley and Marina Hyde assess the future, past and present of the monarchy.

The Mirror chooses a similar image in a poster front page for its tribute edition, displaying the cherished items on top of the coffin to full effect. A subdued headline in small font says simply “… until we meet again”.

The Times again chooses a wrap front page, showing the coffin entering Westminster Abbey with the headline: “Carried to her rest”. The back page carries a quote from Hubert Parry’s From Songs of Farewell: “Leave then thy foolish ranges, For none can thee secure But one, who never changes, Thy God, thy life, thy cure.”

The Express uses its wrap to signal a farewell to the past and a look at the future. The Queen’s coffin dominates the front page alongside the headline “God rest our Queen”, while a tearful, saluting King Charles III adorns the back, with the exclamation: “God save the King”.

The Financial Times looks from above at the coffin in the nave of Westminster Abbey and chooses a quote from Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, for its headline: “People of loving service are rare in any walk of life. Leaders of loving service are still rarer.”

The Telegraph homes in on a tender moment for its main image, showing King Charles placing the Company Camp Colour of the Grenadier Guards on the Queen’s coffin. “An outpouring of love” is the headline, above Hannah Furness’s five-column report on the day.

The Sun stays with its royal purple colouring and is one of few papers to feature the crowds that gathered for the farewell. Across a picture of the funeral cortege processing along the Long Walk to Windsor, the upbeat headline is “We sent her victorious”. The back page of its wrap features the coffin being lowered into its final resting place.

The Mail opts for image of the coffin being lowered into the vault at St George’s chapel, Windsor, with the headline: “Her final journey” for its bumper 120-page edition.

Metro captures King Charles’s cruti expression as he gazes at the flower-strewn hearse on its arrival at Windsor Castle. The crowds lining the Long Walk form the back page of its wrap.

The façade carries a historic note in its headline: “The end of the Elizabethan age” and describes in its trademark bullet points how Monday’s “spectacular military display” brought London to a standstill.

The Northern Echo shows proceedings in London and opts to use a quote from BBC presenter Kirsty Young for its headline: “She made history, she was history”.

The National in Scotland gives its front page to Pipe Major Paul Burns of the Royal Regiment of Scotland, who crutini the end of the Westminster Abbey funeral service with a powerful rendition of Sleep, Dearie, Sleep on the bagpipes.

The Daily Record showed the Queen’s coffin being taken into Windsor Castle, with the headline “Rest in peace, Queen Elizabeth”.

Further afield, the timings allowed Australian papers enough time to place their own poignant tributes on their front pages. Amid debate about whether Charles should be Australia’s head of state, Tuesday’s papers were united in covering the occasion in subdued tones. The Age (“The final farewell”) and Sydney Morning Herald (“We’ll meet again”) both showed the Queen’s coffin being guided into Windsor Castle, while the Herald Sun and Daily Telegraph sought to capture the feeling of readers with their headlines: “Thank you, our Queen”, and “Rest in peace, Ma’am” respectively.

Adelaide’s Advertiser went with the headline “Eternal Queen”, and Queensland’s Courier Mail went for “Thank you, our Queen”. National paper the Australian calls the late monarch “Elizabeth the great” and focuses on the grief-stricken expression of King Charles for its image, with the headline: “We’ll meet again”, perhaps an echo of Welby’s reference to Vera Lynn’s song, which the Queen used in a broadcast during the worst of the Covid pandemic.

 

ATTACHMENT EIGHT – from GUK

 

END OF AN ERA’: HOW THE QUEEN’S FUNERAL WAS SEEN AROUND THE WORLD

From Melbourne to Paris, New York to Delhi, the solemn events in London resonated around the globe

 

By Cait KellyKim WillsherAdam GabbattCaroline KimeuHannah Ellis-PetersenDavid Smith and Georgina Maka’a   Mon 19 Sep 2022 10.24 EDT

 

Melbourne

As the doors to Westminster Abbey opened to allow guests to take their seats, across the other side of the world, Australians sat down in front of their TVs to watch the historic event.

English pubs in the central business district of Melbourne were largely empty as they broadcast the funeral on big screens.

Rick Tonk, from West Yorkshire, was watching at the Charles Dickens Tavern with his parents. “We’ll spend some time here just taking in the atmosphere and we’ll be able to say goodbye,” Tonk said. “It’s been very solemn, for a lot of people around the world. They’ll be watching.”

He said it had been strange to be so far away from home as such a historic event unfolded, and while the Queen’s death was not a complete shock, it still felt like it had come out of nowhere.

“It’s really the turning of a page, the dawning of a new age – just saying goodbye to the one person who has been our monarch for so long,” Tonk said.

The tavern’s owner, John Davie, said the coverage leading up to the funeral had “watered down” interest in Australia. “The coverage it’s had leading up to probably the most important day of the lot, it’s probably not done it a service,” Davie said. “Whereas in the UK people are queueing for days to pay respects. I think people here are just a little bit burnt out. It’s a lot to take in.”

The pubs might have been quiet but Australians across the country – both monarchists and republicans – tuned in to watch. Some wanted to just “watch the historical moment” while others crutini at the ceremony.

“Imagine having responsibility for the seating plan for this,” tweeted Ebony Bennet, the deputy director of the Australia Institute.

Earlier in the day, some churches crutiniz small services so they did not clash with the funeral.

 

Priest Jennifer Furphy, 68, of St Agnes Black Rock, led her congregation in prayer for the Queen, read out snippets from some of her Christmas speeches and talked about what her death meant.

“We talked about how we really wanted to honour her memory and her Christian faith, and how she had lived a life of service to her country and the commonwealth,” Furphy said. “Parishioners here are migrants from England, they have family there and real connections with the culture. I think it was important to honour that.”

Furphy said it was a moment in history she wanted to respect, while also acknowledging that for many First Nations Australians, the crown and its handover recalled a painful past of colonialism.

For many Australians in her generation, especially working women, the Queen was also a symbol of strength, juggling her role as monarch and mother. “I’ve always felt the Queen was a good leader, and I’ve always felt it was good to be led by a woman,” Furphy said. “It’ll be quite different to have a king now.” Cait Kelly

Paris

The French republic has shown remarkable interest in the death and funeral of Queen Elizabeth II over the last 11 days. Emmanuel Macron paid an emotional and respectful tribute to the British monarch, saying that for the French she was simply “the” Queen, and tweeted a black and white film of Elizabeth at the Élysée and with successive presidents, with the simple message: “Thank you, Your Majesty.” The film began with the Queen wishing long friendship between the two countries.

TF1, one of the main French TV channels, broadcast a special edition called L’Adieu covering the entire funeral with solemn French translation and a British commentator, who admitted singing God Save the King in the studio when it was sung in Westminster Abbey. The channel had several reporters along the route of the procession.

The Paris Metro station George V was temporarily renamed Elizabeth II 1926-2022.

Many people in France felt the French reaction to the Queen’s death laid to rest the question that Liz Truss, the UK prime minister, seemed incapable of answering: is Macron “friend or foe”. Peter Ricketts, a former British ambassador to Paris, was on French television saying Truss had made a “serious error”. “It’s time to rectify this and confirm that we are friends and allies,” he said.

Several national and local newspapers once again devoted their front pages to the royal farewell. The headline in Le Parisienwas “Elizabeth II: the funeral of the century”. The newspaper said: “The whole word looks to London today where the funeral of the Queen will be held.”

Le Figaro’s front page had a picture of the coffin and the headline “The Whole World Gathers in Memory of Elizabeth II”.

French journalists interviewed people outside the abbey, on the route of the funeral cortege and in pubs along the route.

It did not escape commentators’ notice that the funeral cortege came to a halt at Wellington Arch, a reminder of the Duke of Wellington and his defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte and the French at Waterloo.

Some remarked with clear admiration on British phlegm and the ability to queue patiently for long periods. Kim Willsher

New York

It has been almost 250 years since the US announced its independence from the British monarchy, but in New York City on Monday morning there was plenty to suggest that some affection remains.

A mix of American royal family enthusiasts, flag-bearing British tourists and scurrying local TV journalists filled the Churchill Tavern, a British bar a few blocks south of the Empire State Building, to watch the Queen’s funeral, the crowd observing an hour of hushed silence as the monarch was sent on her way.

Despite the early hour – the Churchill opened at 5.30am – seating was in short supply, with standing room only as people continued to arrive. Mourners were welcomed by a lifesize beefeater figurine outside, and a cruti, respectful atmosphere.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen the bar quiet for an hour and 10 minutes before, ever – nor would you ever really want it to be – but there was something quite surreal about that, and very respectful, and deeply moving, actually,” said Sinead Naughton, an Irish woman who owns the Churchill with her British husband.

A typical midtown Manhattan establishment, with a long wooden bar stretching down one side and scattered seating opposite, the Churchill is set apart from other watering holes by its swathe of Queen Elizabeth photos and paintings.

Naughton said many regular customers were British, and the bar has been open for every major British event since it opened 11 years ago. Naughton said she felt “we had to” open for the funeral.

Early on, there was chatter among the customers, but as the Queen’s coffin was carried towards Westminster Abbey the bar fell silent. By 6am, when the service started, there was only the occasional clink of coffee cups from the bar as staff kept the patrons fuelled.

Some of those present had dressed for the occasion, including Jean Shafiroff, who was sporting a large black hat. Shafiroff, an American who serves on the board of several charities, said she had met Prince Harry in 2019 at a charity event in London. She attended Margaret Thatcher’s funeral in 2013, but she said “the Queen’s funeral is a harder invitation to procure”.

She said: “Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II was a great role model for all people around the world. Her 70 years of service was extraordinary. We need more role models such as she.” Adam Gabbatt

Kenya

Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral on Monday was met by a fairly muted response in Kenya, a stark contrast to the flurry of reactions that followed news of her death, which elicited both mourning and anger in the east African country.

Kenya’s president, William Ruto, joined other world leaders in attending the Queen’s funeral, and the service was streamed on major news networks. But while her sending-off seized the attention of much of the world, it didn’t garner much national interest. On the streets and online, it was mostly business as usual.

Britain’s longest-reigning monarch became Queen in Kenya after she received news of her father’s death while on royal tour with her husband, Prince Philip. Some Kenyans remember the Queen’s “fairytale” first visit fondly.

“It’s the end of an era,” said Paul Ochieng, 49. “We grew up watching the Queen, and she became Queen here, so there’s a bit of a soft spot for her.”

But for others, she was a painful reminder of Britain’s brutal colonial past, when nearly 1.5 million Kenyans were forced into detention camps and subjected to torture and other atrocities in the 1950s during the British empire’s crackdown on the Mau Mau – Kenyan freedom fighters who opposed colonial rule. The violent suppression of the Mau Mau took place at the start of Elizabeth’s reign, and many of the crimes were committed in her name. Faced with legal pressure, the UK government agreed, in 2013, to pay £20m pounds to Kenyan torture victims.

“We are being gaslit to mourn someone who watched over our collective suffering,” said Suhayl Omar, 24, a Kenyan researcher with the Museum of British Colonialism. “The fact that Kenyan leaders saw it fit to declare national mourning is an indication of the continued cycle of colonial violence that we continue to face.” Caroline Kimeu

India

Just as response to the death of Queen Elizabeth II was muted in India, there was little commotion around her funeral. Unlike other countries in south Asia that sent their heads of government to attend the funeral, India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, did not attend, and instead the ceremonial head of state, President Droupadi Murmu, travelled to the UK. The funeral was not broadcast on any Indian networks and there were no public screenings.

However, there were some in India who watched it online from the privacy of their own homes. Alexander Balakrishnan, 24, a student in Delhi, who was born in the UK but moved back to India when he was four, said he had always been an avid watcher of all royal events, from the weddings to jubilees, as it gave him a sense of connection to where he was born.

“I’ve been glued to the television for the past 10 days, watching coverage of the queue and all the people sharing their memories of the Queen,” said Balakrishnan. ‘“I thought the funeral was very moving and simple, which I guess is how she wanted it. There was a sense of finality; you really felt that this was the last goodbye. It was sad but you also know that she lived this great, full life.”

Balakrishnan said the British monarchy remained a divisive institution in India. “I think 50% of people see the royal family as just a symbol of the empire; they think we are done with them, there’s no patriotism or connection left to them in India. The other 50% see them as ultra-celebrities. So some people here are mourning the Queen as the most famous person in the world.”

The muted response to the Queen’s funeral in India was in part due to this complex legacy, said Balakrishnan, but he believed it also had more cultural factors.

 “I think one of the reasons there has been so little response to the funeral here is because people in India are so used to getting funerals done so quickly,” he said. “It’s either the same day or the next day, so this idea that it’s 10 days later is hard for people to relate to.”

Yasmin Kaura, 43, a pilates teacher in Delhi, was among those who had been moved by the Queen’s death and who watched the funeral privately at home.

“I’ve felt very sad the last few days when I was watching people pay their respects,” she said. “But today during the funeral, I felt like everybody was ready to say goodbye. Even in that cathedral, which usually seems so large and intimidating, somehow it felt small and cosy, like a very intimate funeral.”

Kaura added: “Through wars and pandemics and tabloid nonsense, she never let it provoke her and she stood strong through it all. And let’s not forget, Queen Elizabeth was always a woman in a man’s world but she never let it show. It’s hard not to admire that. There’s not going to be a queen for at least another generation, and I don’t know if anyone will do it as well as her again.” Hannah Ellis-Petersen

Jamaica

Bishop Herro Blair, who met the Queen twice, woke up at 3.30am on Monday to make sure he did not miss a minute of her final send-off.

“I was touched by the crutinize of the moment,” the 76-year-old said by phone from Kingston. “It didn’t matter who it was from, whatever country it was, everybody was so dignified. Everybody paid homage; everybody honoured her the way she should be honoured.

 “I could have shed a tear; my eyes were wet because I was touched, not just by her hands but by her life.”

The Queen ascended to the throne in 1952, a decade before Jamaica gained independence from Britain. Many on the Caribbean island now want to sever ties with the monarchy. Given that Jamaica’s time zone is six hours behind the UK’s, the state funeral was mainly a draw for early birds and diehard royalists.

Blair, the president and founder of the Deliverance Evangelistic Association, added: “I would take a guess that most Jamaicans woke up for it this morning. I believe that although we are moving to a republic some time sooner or later, the majority of Jamaicans still, if they do not love the monarchy, love the Queen.”

However, Carrol Richard, a spiritual life coach, noted that many associate the royal family with British colonialism and slavery. She said: “There are a lot of people who are still disappointed – and disappointment goes to varying degrees of anger – with what they felt the Queen stood for and what they felt she should have stood for. People like that would probably not even look at the funeral.”

Richard, 63, did tune in and was awed by the spectacle. “Royalty is such an amazing experience. It’s all the pomp and the order and discipline. Everybody is just extremely controlled and doing their part, but more than that, it’s the reverence that so many paid to the Queen that really stood out to me.”

Mikael Phillips, 50, an opposition member of parliament who in 2020 filed a motion backing the removal of the monarch, said: “It was an excellent send-off for someone who has served all her life as a queen and as a mother. It was done with precision and fitting for the life that she lived.

But in my mind I wondered what it would have been like if we had taken that step towards republicanism, and what does the future hold for us. It’s the end of an era for us as a country, the Commonwealth and for the British people, just considering what does the future hold and what approach the new king will take towards what is ahead of him.” David Smith

Solomon Islands

Residents of Solomon Islands with TV sets paid their final respects to its head of state, watching events in London and Windsor from the former British protectorate in the Pacific. While some people went out for their usual social activities and to enjoy the sea breeze, big screens were set up at the Anglican church compound in the capital, Honiara, for its members to pay their respects, while others went to the Pacific casino, a popular venue in the city.

One of those watching was Connie Grouse, 67, who was working for the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation at the time of the islands’ independence in 1978.

“As someone who grew up when the Queen started to reign, this is very emotional for me because I sat tonight reminiscing about my younger days, as I have high respect for the Queen,” she said. “May our Queen Elizabeth, the longest-reigning monarch, rest in peace. I am very happy that I get to witness the funeral procession of our head of state and I’m glad that I get to see this historical moment.”

The sense of history was also running through other viewers at the casino. Timothy Asi, 40, described the funeral service as a historic moment and said he felt privileged to watch. “Today is a day that I earmark as a day that will go down in history for me. I am very proud to say that when I grow old, I will sit back and gladly tell stories about the funeral to my future grandchildren.” He said he held the late Queen in high respect as head of the Commonwealth.

Wasi Vaekesa, 27, said: “Today is a sad day and a historical one for me as well.” 

 

 

ATTACHMENT NINE (A) – from the Tehran Times

·          

·         HOW CHARLES WILL RULE AFTER QUEEN ELIZABETH’S DEATH

·         Thu September 22, 2022

·          

TEHRAN- Queen Elizabeth’s death follows a record 70-year reign that reflects to a large degree Britain’s declining global influence, from an empire that once dominated large swathes of the world to what is now a middle-ranking economy. 

She was head of state of the United Kingdom and 14 other countries, some of whom have considered switching to a republic. The role of the monarchy outside of the UK is controversial as countries won their independence with revolutions against British colonial rule. 

That’s not to say the role of the monarchy inside the UK has not been contentious. The death of Queen Elizabeth, aged 96, has been met with praise, but her reign was more than often overshadowed by scandals involving her family. 

These varied from public anger over taxpayer money going to the royal institution to the many cases of infidelity among the Queen’s family to the series of racism reports. 

One of the biggest scandals involves her second son Prince Andrew, who faced allegations of sexual assault by a minor. The child accused Andrew and his billionaire friend, Jeffrey Epstein of keeping her as a slave. In an infamous TV interview, Andrew said that he had no regrets about his association with Epstein. This statement received enormous public backlash. 

The Queen’s grandson Harry and his wife Megan launched a devastating attack on the Queen’s family in a TV interview, which included allegations of racism which linger on today and Meghan saying she had been pushed to the brink of suicide.

There have been scandals involving infidelity, including Queen Elizabeth’s younger sister Princess Margaret, allegations surrounding her husband Prince Philip and her eldest son and heir to the throne King Charles when he was married to his former wife Diana. 

The revelations of King Charles’s infidelity during his marriage to Diana made him extremely unpopular in the public eye.

In June expensive celebrations in the UK marking the Queen’s 70 years on the throne came against the backdrop of soaring bills for families across the country, with inflation rising to record levels and energy and fuel prices sky-rocketing.

While ordinary Brits have been forced to cut their spending, the budget of senior British monarchy members such as the late Queen and King Charles have continued to rise over the years.

Last year taxpayers forked out £102.4 million to fund expenses such as travel, the upkeep of palaces and the family’s official duties that involve shaking hands with the public and flying abroad. The figure is up more than 17 percent on the previous year with campaigners saying the family’s finances are indefensible. 

The campaign group Republic denounced the expenses saying “as always, while the rest of us face a cost-of-living crisis and continued squeezes on public services, the royals walk off with hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. We need to put the monarchy on a proper budgetary footing, just like any other public body. We need to slash that budget down to below £10m, and only fund what’s required for the functions of the head of state.”

The accession of King Charles to the throne has put the spotlight on the 73-year-old’s own finances. Charles flew between his royal homes at an average cost of £15,000 a time for the taxpayer. This is despite being seen in public campaigning on environmental issues.

King Charles has controversial links to the terrorist al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s family. Reports show Charles sat down with Bin Laden’s brothers and accepted a one point two-million-dollar donation. The meeting is said to have taken place shortly after Bin Laden died. 

Charles is reported to have agreed to the donation toward his charity despite objections from his advisers. 

The news came just a month after King Charles was accused of accepting bags of cash amounting to more than 3 million dollars from a senior Qatari politician. 

It is still not clear what exactly this money was used for; the charity claims the money was passed on to another account immediately. Reports say the King’s advisor hand counted the cash.

In February police said they had begun an investigation into another of Charles’s charities after reports emerged that honors were offered to a Saudi national in return for donations.

King Charles’ accession has also led to renewed calls for former colonies in the Caribbean to remove the monarch as their head of state and for Britain to pay slavery reparations. There are doubts in the region about the role a distant monarch should play in the modern day.

The chair of the Bahamas National Reparations Committee, Niambi Hall-Campbell, says “as the role of the monarchy changes, we expect this can be an opportunity to advance discussions of reparations for our region.” 

European nations forced more than ten million Africans into the Atlantic slave trade up until the 19th century. Those who survived the brutal voyage were forced to labor on plantations in the Caribbean and the Americas.

Jamaican reparations advocate Rosalea Hamilton said an acknowledgment by King Charles at the Kigali conference about slavery offered “some degree of hope that he will learn from the history, understand the painful impact that many nations have endured till today” and address the need for reparations. 

Charles make no mention of reparations in the speech he made at Kigali. The Advocates Network, which Hamilton coordinates, published an open letter calling for “apologies and reparations”.

Last year, Jamaica’s government announced plans to ask Britain for compensation for forcibly transporting an estimated 600,000 Africans to work on sugar cane and banana plantations that made British slaveholders extremely rich.

Jamaica has signaled it may soon follow Barbados in ditching royal rule. A survey showed the majority of Jamaicans favor ditching the British monarch.

Mikael Phillips, an opposition member of Jamaica’s parliament, in 2020 filed a motion backing the removal. “I am hoping as the prime minister had said in one of his expressions, that he would move faster when there is a new monarch in place,” he said.

To get a picture of how King Charles will possibly rule, one of the clearest ideas comes from secret memos between the new king and senior government ministers released in 2015 after a long legal battle won by the Guardian newspaper.  

They revealed the extent of lobbying King Charles had pursued with the government of then Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2004 and 2005.  

The memos show how he demanded Blair and other top government figures take immediate action to improve recourses for the British army fighting in Iraq, 18 months after the UK joined America and invaded the West Asian country. 

Other lobbying attempts revealed in the memos led to criticism over the heir’s meddling in politics but also indicate how Charles plans to be more outspoken than Queen Elizabeth. 

The same year, another legal battle paved the way for the release of government papers that showed Charles has been receiving secret cabinet papers for decades, making him privy to the government’s inner workings. 

At a time of growing inequality, many are asking why does Britain have a wealthy, controversial royal family? Over the years the public opinion, especially among the younger generation, has shifted towards abolishing the undemocratic institution.
 

AND... ATTACHMENT NINE (B)

 

QUEEN’S DARK LEGACY STILL LIVES ON

By Saeed Azimi, September 10, 2022 – 22:1

 

TEHRAN— Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-serving monarch of the Great Britain, died on Thursday. Since then, British media is trying to whitewash and rebrand her colonialist efforts in a complex psycho-op consisting of various stages.

Phase 1: Whitewashing

The whitewashing phase began by giving the Queen a semi-divine stature, indicating that she is resting peacefully in heaven and is looking at her loyalists from up. It all began with Daily Mail posting an article saying, “A cloud formation resembling Queen Elizabeth appeared above an English town just an hour above her death.”

“Leanne Bethell, who lives in Telford in England’s west Midlands, shared a photo to Facebook of a cloud formation resembling Queen Elizabeth just an hour after her death,” Daily Mail wrote in an article. 

The article cited anonymous Facebook users commenting on the picture, saying, “You only see it if you look for it. Maybe it is a sign or maybe we are just looking for a sign from above, who really knows.”

“All I do know is this lady devoted her life to us so with the utmost respect. R.I.P Queen Elizabeth II,” another user seemingly commented according to the English media. 

“My girly Liz always watching over us,” another anonymous Facebook user commented as per Daily Mail.

The article was published while some photojournalists and experts are on the belief that the snapshot is heavily edited.

I consulted a prominent photojournalist and graphic designer. He told me on the condition of anonymity that the pictures are taken with two different cameras, but he is almost certain that the pictures are edited. 

“The shape of the leaves cannot remain the same in two different pictures taken by two different cameras,” he said, adding, “The only thing different in the pictures that is real is the change of cars.”

The same article continued, “Rainbows appeared above Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle as the death of the Queen was announced,” posting a video and several images.

Daily Mail quoted several Twitter users as saying that the rainbow made them cry and indicated that the Queen has sent them “a sign.”

“The rainbow at Windsor Castle made me cry. The rainbow Queen sent us a sign,” it wrote, quoting an anonymous Twitter user. 

The article cited another Twitter user, which is of course anonymous, saying, “A rainbow breaks out, as the Union Jack is lowered to half-mast at Windsor tonight. A remarkable image. Farewell, Ma’am.”

The efforts of the highest-circulated daily in the UK to whitewash the efforts of a monarch, who was heavily engaged in the colonization of African countries. According to the statistics published in May 2020, the paper had an average daily readership of approximately 2.180 million. Obviously, the royal family was thinking of how to make an instant impact regarding the old monarch’s death, and what opportunity better than publishing what you desire in the most read daily across the UK?

Phase 2: Rebranding colonialism

The Western mainstream media attempted to imply that the entire world is in mourning for the 96-year-old monarch, and that she was the “Queen of Hearts,” but this is a far-fetched reality. Certainly, some leaders, such as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have referred to Queen Elizabeth II as a “stalwart of our times”, France’s Emmanuel Macron referred to her as “The Queen”. But there are many people in Africa, Argentina, and other countries who are celebrating her death and jubilantly voicing their happiness on social media. 

Ironically, the BBC spoke of Queen Elizabeth’s “longstanding relations” with Africa. Apparently, the wording has now changed! Colonialism has turned into “longstanding relations”! 

Posting a video on BBC News Africa’s Twitter account on Friday, the BBC social media team captioned it: “We take a look back at Queen Elizabeth II’s longstanding relationship with Africa.”

If the BBC wants to coin a new term, that’s fine, but they can’t deviate the truth. History speaks for itself.

Ironically, the team decided to warn the audience against exercising freedom of speech, cautioning in a later tweet, “While we encourage a robust debate on our page, we would like to ask everyone to be respectful and to follow our community guidelines. Any posts which do not meet this criteria will be removed.”

Obadele Kambon, an associate professor at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, told The Africa Report that the decision to honor Queen Elizabeth’s memory in Ghana betrays the struggles of Africans for freedom from colonial rule.

“For us to decide to honor this woman, I would say that in many ways it is a betrayal all of those Africans who have perished at the hands of the British,” Kambon said. “Per the records of the Brits, I am not someone who will celebrate her. She was an enemy to Black people.”

Recent polling from Afrobarometer shows that only 46% of people surveyed said that former colonial powers are having a positive economic and political influence on the continent. That is less than China (63%) and the United States (60%) but more than Russia (35%).

Few deny that the British colonial empire profited itself by plundering the resources of other countries, oppressing minorities, and utilizing excessive violence. As a result, the delight of Africans and Black people is completely justified. After years of oppression, they were finally given the chance to express themselves. 

“I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating,” tweeted Uju Anya, an associate professor of second language acquisition at Carnegie Mellon University. She later deleted her post.

The tweet, however, caught the eyes of Jeff Bezos, eccentric billionaire who owns The Washington Post, saying, “This is someone supposedly working to make the world better? I don’t think so. Wow.”

Anya later replied to Bezos, saying, “If anyone expects me to express anything but disdain for the monarch who supervised a government that sponsored the genocide that massacred and displaced half my family and the consequences of which those alive today are still trying to overcome, you can keep wishing upon a star.”

Someone should question Bezos about what he has done to make the world a better place. Bezos is the billionaire who became 57% richer during the Covid-19 outbreak, when everyone else was losing money, according to CBS. He enriches himself by stealing other people’s assets, much like the late British monarch. He is in no position to talk about “making the world a better place.”

Many people in England’s former colonial regions, such as Africa, India, and the Caribbean, are recalling a brutal past and lamenting the monarchy’s role in the slave trade.

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) broke bridges with the rest of the world hours after Queen Elizabeth II’s death was announced, saying that they will not be among those grieving the British royal. The party, led by Julius Malema, said she would be remembered for her role in a tragic moment in South Africa, a former British colony, and Africa’s history of colonialism.

The South African party further stated that the monarchy serves as a reminder of a particularly terrible chapter in African history.

“Elizabeth Windsor, during her lifetime, never acknowledged the crimes that Britain and her family in particular perpetrated across the world. In fact, she was a proud flag bearer of the atrocities because during her reign. When the people of Yemen rose to protest British colonialism, Elizabeth ordered a brutal suppression of that uprising,” the party said in a statement.

The Red Berets, as the party’s members are nicknamed, says that South Africa’s association with Britain has been one of agony, misery, death, despair, and dehumanization for black people under the leadership of the British royal dynasty.

“She willingly benefitted from the wealth that was attained from the exploitation and murder of millions of people across the world. The British Royal Family stands on the shoulders of millions of slaves who were shipped away from the continent to serve the interests of racist white capital accumulation, at the center of which lies the British royal family,” it added.

In 1913, the British Empire commanded 23 percent of the world’s population at its peak.

In an opinion piece in The Washington Post published hours after the 96 year-old monarch’s death, Karen Attiah, a Ghanaian-American writer and editor, wrote, “Black and brown people around the world who were subject to horrendous cruelties and economic deprivation under British colonialism are allowed to have feelings about Queen Elizabeth. After all, they were her ‘subjects’ too.”

The statement is totally true. The British public and the mourners of the queen are ignorant about Britain’s colonial past.

Elizabeth Graham, a professor at University College London, wrote in The Guardian about this issue, saying, “I’ve talked to students in various classes over the years and they say that they do not learn about British colonial history – either in Asia, Africa or the Americas (other than the US) – in school. I carry out Maya research in Belize – a British colony until 1981, yet few people in England know of the existence of Belize. Even when big media companies that create documentaries contact me to ask about the ancient Maya, they always arrange trips to Mexico and Guatemala, and are ignorant that a third of the ancient Maya world lies in Belize.”

She then questioned a politician’s legitimacy in making informed decisions regardless of the past experiences, writing, “How can any politician make an informed choice about, say, immigration to Britain from former colonial territories when they have learned little about the British empire and its far-reaching impact? In addition to political and commercial activity, the empire acted as a vehicle for spreading the idea of the superiority of everything British: language, literature, schooling, governance, etc. It should not be surprising that one consequence is that many people in the world choose to come to Britain.”

Social media users from historically colonized countries such as Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Barbados, Ireland, and others have frequently referenced to the British colonial empire’s history of violence and criminal actions, saying that these battles made their country hazardous.

As the royal family announced the queen’s death, anti-monarchy tweeters took a more direct approach. They emphasized not only the sordid history of British rule, but also the queen’s role in exacerbating it, whether through history-obscuring initiatives, direct orders for violent military crackdowns on colonial dissent in Yemen, or her other efforts to halt the mass secessionist movements that occurred, and succeeded, during her reign.

Slave trade atrocities, heartbreaking pictures of poverty and neglect caused by hundreds of years of exploitation are among the many observations these folks have made over the years. Even if they have not witnessed these situations, their grandparents have told them about these heinous insights. All of this cannot be abandoned overnight in favor of compassion for someone who aided the violent British colonization.

The inclusion of an iconic Indian jewel on Elizabeth’s crown (which Camila now wear), as well as the bleached remnants of empire officials who were murderous bigots, were never properly addressed, with apologies, trillion-dollar reparations, or even basic admission.

Never in her life had the old monarch apologized or even publicly admitted to the oppression, torture, dehumanization, and expropriation inflicted on people in the British colonies prior to and after her rise to the throne.

If Britons are dissatisfied with the monarch now, what do they think their previous colonial “subjects” have felt during their entire lives? Especially after the central palace panicked after Prince Harry married Black woman Meghan Markle? It’s no surprise that inhabitants of Barbados avoided William and Kate on their March visit, much to the displeasure of royal subjects.

You may believe that one lady cannot compensate for decades of injustice, oppression, and severe brutality. I agree with you, but here’s the truth. In that regard, Queen Elizabeth achieved almost nothing.

She repeatedly covered up the Commonwealth’s misdeeds with measures like Operation Legacy, as she lounged in the luxury offered in large part by international thievery. Does anyone believe that Britain’s following rulers will fare any better after 70 years of this?

What the media should do

Now is the moment for the media to educate the public about the queen’s dark side and shine light on certain important topics that the royal family has purposefully covered.

Hours after the old monarch’s death, notable media personality Jemele Hill tweeted, “Journalists are tasked with putting legacies into full context, so it is entirely appropriate to examine the queen and her role in the devastating impact of continued colonialism.”

She later said on Twitter, “The Queen as a symbol means many things to many people — and that is fine. It’s fine to write about, discuss, analyze, critique or celebrate.”

The Queen’s record is riddled with enough ambiguity, action, and passivity that it’s easy to see why people of color could perceive her differently than the devoted crowds weeping outside Buckingham Palace.

While the queen’s involvement in colonialism and its disastrous impact on Black people continues to bite, the current generation has an up-close look at her connection with her mixed-race daughter-in-law Meghan Markle.

Markle said that she began having suicide thoughts when pregnant with Archie, her son in early 2019.

“I just didn’t want to be alive anymore,” Markle told Oprah Winfrey in one of the most viewed interviews of all time. “And that was a very clear and real and frightening constant thought.”

During the same interview, Prince Harry expressed his dissatisfaction with the family’s lack of support when British media members and many others hurled racially charged insults at Markle. 

“For us, for this union and the specifics around her race, there was an opportunity – many opportunities – for my family to show some public support,” Harry stated.

Earlier, many people in the United Kingdom and throughout the world urged the queen to deal with the repercussions from concerns that Buckingham Palace had made no formal response to George Floyd’s murder and the global Black Lives Matter movement.

It’s difficult to envision the queen supporting BLM — or anti-racism in general — when, in her 69 years on the throne, she failed to address the institutional racism that persists in the British monarchy.

Documents uncovered in a 2021 probe in The Guardian shed light on Elizabeth’s continuous exemption from race and gender discrimination legislation.

David Pegg and Rob Evans, investigative journalists, said they uncovered files at the National Archives as part of an ongoing investigation into the royal family’s use of an ancient parliamentary procedure called queen’s consent to surreptitiously influence the wording of British laws.

They describe how the queen’s chief finance officer once advised government servants that “it was not, in reality, the habit to assign colored immigrants or foreigners” to clerical posts in the royal family, despite the fact that they were allowed to work as domestic staff. 

“The exemption has made it impossible for women or people from ethnic minorities working for her household to complain to the courts if they believe they have been discriminated against,” the journalists found.

Buckingham Palace, surprisingly, did not contest their results. Instead, officials stated flatly that there is a distinct procedure for hearing discrimination allegations.

When Antigua and Barbuda celebrated 40 years of independence from Britain in 2020, calls for reparations for slavery became bolder. Frustration with the queen and with colonization became evident. 

“I think most Antiguans would want to replace the queen now,” historian Ivor Ford told BBC News during the celebration.

Makeda Mikael, an Antiguan businesswoman, recounted how, as a kid, she was forced to attend queen-celebrating festivities unknowingly and against her will.

“We didn’t know as much about our history then as we do now,” Mikael related. “In school, I wasn’t taught African or Caribbean history. So I knew everything about British and European history and nothing about ours.”

She told the BBC she and others would continue to demand reparations.

“England has enjoyed the benefit of our slave labor right up to today, and they need to be honest, admit it, and find a way to reconcile,” Mikael said. “Most people couldn’t care less if [Elizabeth] is head of state or not. The queen is not a significant part of anybody’s agenda.”

Queen Elizabeth II, who possessed a projected net fortune of approximately $12 billion, never publicly discussed restitution.

“Along with a number of colonies in North America, the Caribbean formed the heart of England’s first overseas empire,” explained David Lambert, professor of Caribbean history at the University of Warwick.

Lambert explained in a white paper for the British Library that people from various European powers, including France and England, began to settle in the Caribbean in the early 17th century.

“The English settled St Kitts in 1624, Barbados, Montserrat, and Antigua in 1627, and Nevis in 1628,” Lambert wrote. “Around the same time, France established colonies in Martinique and Guadeloupe. In this way, the Caribbean came under the control of many competing European countries, joining Spain, which had established its first colonies in the region more than a hundred years before.”

Slavery was abolished in the early nineteenth century, according to Lambert, and the enslaved were granted freedom throughout the British Caribbean in the 1830s.

Will the world expect King Charles, the next ruler, to atone for the harsh experiences of British colonization? Without a doubt. Is it even possible? Obviously not. Brits never change. History has repeatedly proven us correct.

Elham Abedini, an expert on international affairs focusing on UK affairs, told the Tehran Times correspondent on Thursday, “I suppose the UK would face some challenges, and public opinion against the monarchy would increase. King Charles has a scandalous background, including his (alleged) role in Princess Diana’s death, and some other issues regarding his financial activities. In recent years, we witnessed an increase in the number of people who are demanding an end to the monarchial system in the UK. The decreasing popularity of King Charles and his wife worsened their position among the Britons.”

On the future of the UK after the monarch’s death and challenges the new Prime Minister Liz Truss might face, the expert told the Tehran Times, “The UK faces fundamental domestic and international challenges such as the energy crisis, inflation, and the Ukraine war. These are the most critical challenges for Liz Truss, and what we are witnessing is that she is committed to fixing these and has prioritized such issues. Her main challenge is convincing the British public opinion that sanctions against Russia are vital. At the same time, it creates important challenges for the UK regarding energy and food supply necessary for their interest if they want to continue Boris Johnson’s policies in supporting Ukraine.”

 

 

ATTACHMENT TEN (A) – From The Independent

 

VLADIMIR PUTIN’S ‘IRON DOLL’ SAYS RUSSIA SHOULD HAVE NUKED QUEEN ELIZABETH II’S FUNERAL 

See video at: https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/jamie-raskin-january-6-ray-epps-v2bc727f0

 

A Russian propagandist has claimed Vladimir Putin should have nuked Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral, while all the “best people” were gathered in London.

Olga Skabeyeva, dubbed the Kremlin’s “Iron Doll”, made the claims on Monday during a discussion with Andrey Gurulev, a military commander and Member of the State Duma.

“Why should we bomb Ukraine or Germany? There is Britain – the root of all evil,” Gurulev said, sparking a shocking response from Skabeyeva.

“Then we should have done it today, when all the best people were at the [Queen’s] funeral... God forgive me.”

 

            AND… ATTACHMENT TEN (B) – From the Daily Express

 

‘SCALE OF THE DELUSION!’ RUSSIA’S PLAN TO NUKE QUEEN’S FUNERAL RIDICULED

Vladimir Putin’s propaganda machine continues to make threats as a number of British prisoners in Ukraine are released.

By CATHERINE MEYER-FUNNELL   00:14, Thu, Sep 22, 2022 | UPDATED: 07:01, Thu, Sep 22, 2022

 

GB News presenter Dan Wootton has hit back at Russia’s claims that they should have nuked Queen Elizabeth’s funeral on Monday in order to target all the Western leaders gathered there.

On his show on Wednesday evening, the host blasted the “scale of the delusion” being shown on state TV as Russian propaganda continues to threaten the UK.

In a segment taken from Russian state TV, reservist military commander and MP Andrey Gurulev argues for Putin’s right to use nuclear weapons alongside anchor Olga Skabeyeva.

He says: “If there is a real threat to Russian territory, we are fully entitled to use nuclear weapons.

“Why should we bomb Ukraine or Germany? There is Britain – the root of all evil.”

Ms Skabeyeva then retorts: “Then we should have done it today [Monday] when all the best people were at the [Queen’s] funeral...God forgive me.”

Mr Gurulev adds: “When Britain is turned into a Martian wasteland, what will NATO’s Article 5 be about?

“Defending the Martian wasteland? There will be nothing left there.

“An unshakable island – it will be shakable. I assure you they would all back off.”

Mr Wootton responds to the clip by saying: “That, ladies and gentlemen, is the scale of the delusion that we’re dealing with.

“But I don’t believe that anyone on that TV set actually believes what they were spouting.”

In more positive news for the UK, five British citizens being held by the Russians have been released as part of a prisoner swap achieved through mediation by Saudi Arabia.

 

ATTACHMENT ELEVEN – From Time

 

THE FUTURE OF THE BRITISH MONARCHY IS MORE UNCERTAIN THAN EVER

BY YASMEEN SERHAN/LONDON   SEPTEMBER 9, 2022 5:00 PM EDT

 

A near-universal refrain in the commemorations for the late Queen Elizabeth II, who died Thursday at the age of 96, has been her role as a symbol of stability in Britain as well as a constant in an increasingly inconstant world. She was “a changeless human reference point in British life,” former Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in his tribute to the monarch on Friday. More than just a symbolic face of the nation, the Queen was also Britain’s lodestar and a source of comfort at a time of seemingly unending turbulence. The challenge now facing the country is how to move on without her.

While the path forward for Britain is clear (it has, after all, done this many times before), the future of the British monarchy feels less certain. King Charles III inherits the throne at a time when the monarchy as an institution is still broadly supported in Britain, with a slight majority of 62% in favor, according to a June poll. But the outpouring of support and admiration for the Queen should not be mistaken for unwavering support for the Royal Family as a whole, especially after recent fallout over the treatment of Prince Harry and Meghan as well as the sexual-assault allegations facing her son, Prince Andrew. The biggest test facing the new King is whether he can emulate his mother’s image of stability and preserve the institution that she spent so much of her life trying to protect.

The Queen, who ascended the throne at just 25 years of age, had a lifetime to prove herself. Charles, who at 73 is the oldest monarch to ascend the throne in British history, will not have the same advantage. So much of Charles’s public image has been shaped by his time as the Prince of Wales, including salacious periods of his private life—including his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, who as his wife now takes the title of Queen Consort, and his high-profile split from Princess Diana—as well as his vocal positions on issues as wide-ranging as climate changehedgerowsChina, and the British government’s controversial tactics to stymie immigration. Whereas the Queen maintained a reputation of impartiality, opting to stay above the fray and leave the politics to the politicians, Prince Charles did the exact opposite, even going so far as to wade into the highest levels of politics when he wrote a series of letters in 2004 and 2005 known as the “black spider memos,” lobbying government ministers on a number of issues, in a clear violation of the monarchy’s neutral and ceremonial role in British politics.

“Charles has activist tendencies,” says Richard Fitzwilliams, an expert on the Royal Family. Perhaps because, for the vast majority of his life, his primary job was to pursue his interests through his various foundations and charities.

“He doesn’t have the same level of mystique that Queen Elizabeth II cultivated very successfully over her life,” Brooke Newman, a historian of early modern Britain at Virginia Commonwealth University tells TIME. Beyond her love of corgis and horses, “she was very careful not to articulate a position on really much of anything. She became an icon around the world because people could project their hopes and dreams and fantasies and outrage on her and on the institution because she embodied the Crown in a way that I think is going to be impossible for Charles to do because he already represents certain things.”

But for the monarchy to continue to be seen as a source of national unity and for the King to be able to carry out his ceremonial duties without inviting allegations of partisanship—something that even occasionally dogged his mother’s strictly-impartial reign—Fitzwilliam said that the new monarch will need to keep his opinions in check. Charles has acknowledged this reality in the past and, in his first national address since ascending the throne, conceded that as his role changes, “it will no longer be possible for me to give so much of my time and energies to the charities and issues for which I care so deeply.”

Preserving the Royal Family’s symbolic value is only part of the new King’s challenge. Ensuring that the institution remains fit for purpose at a time when monarchies and heredity privilege seem increasingly anachronistic, is another. Here, Charles and his mother were largely in lockstep. Both recognized the imperative of slimming down the Royal Family—both in cost to the taxpayer and public appearance—in line with public opinion. Under Charles, that effort is expected to be taken even further by shrinking the Royal Family down to just seven active working royals—who are tasked with participating in official engagements, meeting foreign dignitaries, and representing the monarch in their absence—down from the current 10.

But the greatest challenge facing Charles will be his ability to match the popularity of his predecessor, which was largely untainted by the scandals of those around her. When TIME spoke with mourners gathered in the immediate aftermath of the Queen’s death, it was clear that no one expected Charles’s reign to rival that of his mother’s. “It will never be the same,” one civil servant, who requested anonymity to speak freely, told TIME outside Buckingham Palace. “Every monarch creates their own impression on the country.”

This doesn’t necessarily diminish the pressure he stands to face, nor will it provide any consolation should the monarchy’s perception take a turn for the worse. “Charles has had a lot of ups and downs,” Warren Cabral, who went to Buckingham Palace on Thursday to pay his respects to the Queen with his wife and son, told TIME on Thursday, “but he’s inheriting the Crown at its peak.”

Under Charles, the monarchy is unlikely to remain at its Elizabethan heights. Quite aside from his own popularity—which could take a hit when Netflix releases its next installment of “The Crown,” which is expected to retell the story of the disintegration of his marriage to Princess Diana, later this year—Charles will have to contend with a flurry of other challenges, not least the potential breakup of the United Kingdom, the unraveling of the Commonwealth, and reckoning with the unsavory parts of the Royal Family’s past and its colonial legacy.

But unlike his mother, Charles will not bear the burden of shepherding the Crown for the next 70 years. He just needs to do so long enough to pass it on to the next generation in one piece.

 

ATTACHMENT TWELVE – Also From Time

AFTER QUEEN ELIZABETH II’S DEATH, MANY INDIANS ARE DEMANDING THE RETURN OF THE KOHINOOR DIAMOND

BY CHAD DE GUZMAN   SEPTEMBER 9, 2022 7:31 AM EDT

 

Shortly after British monarch Queen Elizabeth II passed away on Sept. 8, the word “Kohinoor” began trending on Indian Twitter.

It was a reference to one of the world’s most famous gems. The Kohinoor diamond is just one of 2,800 stones set in the crown made for Elizabeth’s mother, known as the Queen Mother—but the 105-carat oval-shaped brilliant is the proverbial jewel in the crown.

In India, it is notorious for the way in which it was acquired by the British.

The history of the Kohinoor

When it was mined in what is now modern-day Andhra Pradesh, during the Kakatiyan dynasty of the 12th-14th centuries, it was believed to have been 793 carats uncut. The earliest record of its possession puts it in the hands of Moguls in the 16th century. Then the Persians seized it, and then the Afghans.

The Sikh Maharajah, Ranjit Singh, brought it back to India after taking it from Afghan leader Shah Shujah Durrani. It was then acquired by the British during the annexation of Punjab. The East India Company got hold of the stone in the late 1840s, after forcing the 10-year-old Maharajah Dunjeep Singh to surrender his lands and possessions.

The company then presented the gem to Queen Victoria. Prince Albert, her consort, asked for it to be recut and it was set in the crowns of Queen Alexandra and Queen Mary before being placed in the Queen Mother’s crown in 1937.

The Queen Mother wore part of the crown at her daughter’s coronation in 1953. The Kohinoor has been among the British crown jewels since then, but governments in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India have all laid claim to the diamond.

Britain’s controversial possession of the Kohinoor diamond

While no plans for the future of the gem have been disclosed, the prospect of it remaining in the U.K. has prompted many Twitter users in India to demand its return.

“If the King is not going to wear Kohinoor, give it back,” wrote one.

Another said the diamond “was stolen” by the British, who “created wealth” from “death,” “famine” and “looting.”

It is not the first time that the diamond’s return has been sought. Upon India’s independence in 1947, the government asked for the diamond back. India made another demand in the year of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation. These demands fell on deaf ears, with the U.K. arguing that there are no legal grounds for the Kohinoor’s restitution to India.

British-Indian author and political commentator Saurav Dutt says the chances of the U.K. returning the jewel are slim.

True, the British recently facilitated the return of the Benin Bronzes—72 artifacts looted by British soldiers in the 19th century—to the Nigerian government. But Dutt says the British royal establishment is still “married to this romantic version of empire, even though it is long dead, and has lost its power.” The Kohinoor is a symbol of that power, Dutt argues, and in turning it over, he believes the Royals “would essentially be eviscerating themselves.”

At the very least, King Charles III must acknowledge the “black history” of the Kohinoor diamond, Dutt says.

“A recognition of the fact that it was obtained through stealth and deception would be a significant step at this stage, that lays the groundwork for the next generation to be able to give it back,” he tells TIME.

Many Indians may not have that patience. In the wake of the Queen’s death, there is only one demand on Indian Twitter: “Now can we get our #Kohinoor back?”

 

 

ATTACHMENT THIRTEEN – Once Again, From Time

SCENES FROM AROUND THE WORLD IN THE AFTERMATH OF QUEEN ELIZABETH II’S DEATH

 

BY CHARLIE CAMPBELL/EDINBURGH  SEPTEMBER 9, 2022 6:07 PM EDT

 

Braving strong wind and rain, a silent line of mourners snaked to the wrought iron gate of Edinburgh’s Holyrood Palace on Friday, patiently waiting their turn to read the official notice announcing Queen Elizabeth II’s passing. To one side, flower bouquets piled against the granite wall of an improvised memorial garden—most with heartfelt messages attached to the only monarch most Brits have ever known.

Across the United Kingdom, the death of the Queen has left a chasm. At Balmoral Castle, where Britain’s longest-serving monarch died aged 96 on Thursday afternoon, floral tributes continue to amass. At London’s St Paul’s Cathedral, a service of prayer and reflection on Friday was attended by 2,000 members of the public as well as London Mayor Sadiq Khan and U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss, who last saw Queen Elizabeth on Tuesday when she asked to form a government. Truss is the 15th Prime Minister the Queen had met; the first was Winston Churchill.

Arriving at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday evening, the unhappy news hit Britons hard. Most were home or crowded into pubs to enjoy an after-work libation. Within hours, a crowd of thousands gathered outside Buckingham Palace in London in solemn remembrance, finally breaking into muffled cheers of “God save the King” when Charles III arrived Friday to a home he has known for 70 years as prince but now entered as sovereign for the very first time. Accompanied by Queen Consort Camila, the new King, dressed in a dark suit, greeted the throng as he examined the tributes left to his revered, departed mother.

“[Queen Elizabeth] encompasses so much of what is Britain,” Eleanor Allingham, from Edinburgh, told TIME outside Buckingham Palace on Thursday. “She was a huge role model for everyone, every woman, every British person.”

But the Queen was in fact the constitutional head of state for 14 other nations, including Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Belize, Jamaica, Tuvalu, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. All have also been paying their own tributes. In a statement, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, “For most Canadians, we have known no other Sovereign. She would proclaim ‘it was good to be home’ when returning to her beloved Canada. She was indeed at home here, and Canadians never ceased to return her affection.”

See photos at https://time.com/6212321/photos-queen-elizabeth-ii-world-mourning/

 

 

 

ATTACHMENT FOURTEEN – From G.U.K.

 

‘A BRUTAL LEGACY’: QUEEN’S DEATH MET WITH ANGER AS WELL AS GRIEF IN KENYA

Politicians pay warm tributes but memories of colonial atrocities prompt fierce criticism too

By Caroline Kimeu, September 11, 2022

 

But many on the streets in Nairobi were indifferent or unaware of the news. Some younger Kenyans spoke of it in detached tones. To a number of them, she was a distant figure, better known through fictional portrayals of her on popular TV series such as The Crown.

A wave of criticism also flooded online spaces. During her reign, British soldiers committed widespread atrocities against Kenyans at the height of Mau Mau uprising between 1952 and 1960. Roughly 1.5 million people were forced into concentration camps where they were subjected to torture, rape and other violations. Reports later showed the British had made concerted efforts to destroy and conceal official records of their brutal crackdowns.

Observers say the erasure of history had consequences that have stretched on to the present. “I don’t remember learning about the ills of the colonial empire,’’ said Dr Njoki Wamai, an assistant professor in politics and international relations at the United States International University-Africa. “Many of us have had to educate ourselves in public spaces, and because of the legacy of colonial education in Kenya, the Queen has been venerated and treated as an iconic figure.”

Even so, harrowing tales of British colonial rule have been passed on through generations. “When you sit with your grandparents and they tell you their stories, the pain is almost tangible. You can feel it,” said Nyambura Maina. “I refuse to centre the pain others are feeling over the pain our people went through.”

Kikonde Mwamburi, 33, said: “Death should not be used to sanitise her brutal legacy. I’m glad this obtuse culture is being questioned by younger generations.”

Rather than pay tribute to the Queen, a number of Kenyans chose to honour the independence movement. The words “Mau Mau” and “Dedan Kimathi”, the leader of the uprising, trended through the early hours of the morning.

Of high praise from the country’s leadership. “Political elites benefitted from the empire either through political or economic power,” said Wamai. She believes the British legacy of violence is downplayed for economic reasons.

Kenya has strong economic and trade ties with the UK and is a part of the Commonwealth, membership of which bolsters countries’ lobbying capacity and provides business and education opportunities.

But the association’s geopolitical relevance has been challenged in recent years and King Charles III will be pressed to strengthen ties with Commonwealth countries and solidify Britain’s soft power. Earlier this year, the royal family’s efforts to do so were subverted in Jamaica, after leaders and the public called for slavery reparations and an apology for crimes against humanity.

The Queen maintained strong relations with leaders of Commonwealth countries over her 70-year reign, including many of Kenya’s presidents. Experts say King Charles may face an exacting task in sustaining those ties amid criticism of the British empire in former colonies across the globe, and that he can expected to face growing calls to address colonial injustices.

 

ATTACHMENT FIFTEEN – From the Encyclopedia Brittanica

 

OSAMA BIN LADEN

Saudi Arabian militant

By The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica • Last Updated: Aug 1, 2022 • 

 

      Born:   1957 Riyadh Saudi Arabia

      Died:   May 2, 2011 (aged 54) Abbottabad Pakistan

Founder:   al-Qaeda

 

Osama bin Laden, also spelled Usāmah ibn Lādin, (born 1957, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia—died May 2, 2011, Abbottabad, Pakistan), founder of the militant Islamist organization al-Qaeda and mastermind of numerous terrorist attacks against the United States and other Western powers, including the 2000 suicide bombing of the U.S. warship Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden and the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon near Washington, D.C.

Early life

Bin Laden was one of more than 50 children of Muhammad bin Laden, a self-made billionaire who, after immigrating to Saudi Arabia from Yemen as a labourer, rose to direct major construction projects for the Saudi royal family. By the time of Muhammad’s death in an airplane accident in 1967, his company had become one of the largest construction firms in the Middle East, and the bin Laden family had developed a close relationship with the Saudi royal family.

Osama bin Laden studied business administration at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, where it is likely that he also received instruction in religious studies from Muammad Qub, brother of the Islamic revivalist Sayyid Qub, and Abdullah Azzam, a militant leader. His time at the university was key to his future role as leader of al-Qaeda, not only in influencing his radical views but also in providing him with the skill to market al-Qaeda.

Building al-Qaeda

Shortly after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, bin Laden, who viewed the invasion as an act of aggression against Islam, began traveling to meet Afghan resistance leaders and raise funds for the resistance. By 1984 his activities were centred mainly in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he collaborated with Azzam to recruit and organize Arab volunteers to fight the Soviet occupation. Bin Laden’s financial resources, along with his reputation for piety and for bravery in combat, enhanced his stature as a militant leader. A computer database he created in 1988 listing the names of volunteers for the Afghan War led to the formation that year of a new militant network named al-Qaeda (Arabic: “the Base”), although the group remained without clear objectives or an operational agenda for several years.

In 1989, following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia, where he was initially welcomed as a hero, but he soon came to be regarded by the government as a radical and a potential threat. In 1990 the government denied his requests for permission to use his network of fighters to defend Saudi Arabia against the threat of invasion posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Bin Laden was outraged when Saudi Arabia relied instead on U.S. troops for protection during the Persian Gulf War, leading to a growing rift between bin Laden and the country’s leaders, and in 1991 he left Saudi Arabia, settling in Sudan at the end of the year.

In the early 1990s bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network began to formulate an agenda of violent struggle against the threat of U.S. dominance in the Muslim world. Bin Laden publicly praised other groups’ attacks on Americans, including the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. In 1994, as bin Laden expanded his group’s infrastructure in Sudan and trained Islamic militants to participate in conflicts around the world, Saudi Arabia revoked his citizenship and froze his assets, forcing him to rely on outside sources for funding.

In 1996, under heavy international pressure, Sudan expelled bin Laden, and he returned to Afghanistan, where he received protection from its ruling Taliban militia. Later that year bin Laden issued the first of two fatwās (Arabic: “religious opinions”) declaring a holy war against the United States, which he accused, among other things, of looting the natural resources of the Muslim world, occupying the Arabian Peninsula, including the holy sites of Islam, and supporting governments servile to U.S. interests in the Middle East. Bin Laden’s apparent goal was to draw the United States into a large-scale war in the Muslim world that would overthrow the existing world order and establish a single Islamic state.

To this end, al-Qaeda trained militants and funded terrorist attacks. In 1998 bin Laden ordered an operation larger than any of al-Qaeda’s previous operations—simultaneous bombings of U.S. embassies in NairobiKenya, and Dar es SalaamTanzania, which altogether killed 224 people. The United States retaliated by launching cruise missiles at sites believed to be bin Laden’s bases in Afghanistan. Another al-Qaeda bombing in 2000 targeted the USS Cole, an American warship harboured in Yemen, and killed 17 sailors.

The growth of the organization was attributed in part to bin Laden’s charisma. He was known to be a skilled orator, able to manipulate a variety of rhetorical strategies and to make his message easily accessible even to the uneducated. At the end of the 20th century, bin Laden was thought to have had thousands of militant followers worldwide, in places as diverse as Saudi Arabia, Yemen, LibyaBosniaChechnya, and the Philippines.

The September 11, 2001, attacks and the U.S. pursuit of bin Laden

In 2001, after 19 militants associated with al-Qaeda staged the September 11 attacks, the United States led a coalition that overthrew the Taliban in Afghanistan. In December 2001 bin Laden went into hiding after evading capture by U.S. forces in the Tora Bora cave complex. In the following years, U.S. forces searched for him along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, during which time bin Laden remained absent from the public eye. Then in October 2004—less than a week before that year’s U.S. presidential election—bin Laden emerged in a videotaped message in which he claimed responsibility for the September 11 attacks. After that he periodically released audio messages, including in 2008, when he threatened retaliation for the deaths of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and in 2009, when he challenged the nerve of the new U.S. president, Barack Obama, to continue the fight against al-Qaeda.

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Meanwhile, U.S. forces had continued to hunt for bin Laden, who was still thought possibly to be hiding either in Afghanistan or in the tribal regions of Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan. U.S. intelligence eventually located him in Pakistan, living in a secure compound in Abbottabad, a medium-sized city near Islamabad. On May 2, 2011, bin Laden was killed when a small U.S. force transported by helicopters raided the compound. His body, identified visually at the site of the raid, was taken out of Pakistan by U.S. forces for examination and DNA identification and soon after was given a sea burial. Hours after its confirmation, bin Laden’s death was announced by Obama in a televised address. Several days after Obama’s announcement, al-Qaeda released a statement publicly acknowledging bin Laden’s death and vowing revenge.

Later that month al-Qaeda released a final audio message said to be from bin Laden, purportedly recorded by him shortly before he was killed. In the message, bin Laden praised the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings of early 2011 and called on al-Qaeda followers to help people struggling against unjust governments.

 

ATTACHMENT SIXTEEN – From ABC News

BIN LADEN'S FAMILY EMBRACED CAPITALISM

ByABC News

Oct. 1, 2001 -- While the world may be focusing on one bin Laden, there are dozens of others, who together comprise the second richest family in Saudi Arabia and one of the most important families in that nation's banking business. 

Even Osama bin Laden has trouble remembering all of his 51 siblings. When asked once by a reporter to list their names, he could barely recall a dozen before giving up amid his own laughter.

But members of the bin Laden clan living in the United States weren't laughing in the days following the attacks. They were fearing for their lives — and fleeing the country.

Thousands of miles away from the mountains of Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden may be in hiding, some of his many siblings reel at the attack he delivered to the bin Laden name.

Osama's father was an illiterate laborer who turned a construction business into a worldwide conglomerate. Now, the family members are "kind of like the Rockefellers or the Forbeses of Saudi Arabia," explains ABCNEWS consultant Jonathan Winer.

Capitalists and Philanthropists

If a consumer buys a Snapple, VolksWagen or an Audi in the Middle East, they've bought it from the bin Ladens, who have the exclusive franchise on the brands. The bin Laden family business employs 32,000 people in 30 countries, has a revenue of $5 billion a year and is invested everywhere from construction to manufacturing to financial services to insurance to biological research.

And some of the bin Ladens carry out their business ventures in the United States, based primarily on the East Coast, from as far south as Florida to as far north as Boston, and with offices in Rockville, Md., in between.

The Boston bin Ladens, for instance, own several units in a luxury condo and 16 percent of Hybridon, a Boston, Mass.,-based biotech company engaged in cancer research — and technology that someday could be used to defend against biological attacks.

And while their brother was allegedly sponsoring the first Trade Center bombing in 1993, the other bin Ladens were donating millions to Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., for Muslim scholarships and art.

The family also has some interesting political connections through the Carlyle Group, their financial advisers. The firm hired former Secretary of State James Baker and former President George Bush as consultants. Bush met with the family twice.

Last year, former President Carter met with 10 bin Ladens who donated $200,000 to the Carter Center in Atlanta, Ga.

Feud Over Ideals

So where did the paths diverge? How did one child from a family of global entrepreneurs come to be the enemy of the capitalist West?

The initial changes started when, as a college student, Osama became engrossed in fundamentalism. At the age of 22, he took up the Afghan fight against the Soviet Union.

The rupture with his family came in 1991 when Osama denounced the presence of America in Saudi Arabia to fight the Gulf War while other bin Ladens were making millions building airstrips and military housing for U.S. troops.

Further, after a terrorist bomb attack in 1996 killed 19 soldiers and destroyed military housing, the family got a $150 million contract to rebuild what was destroyed.

Since then it has been a bin Laden civil war — brother against brother. Some have tried to live in peace in the United States, but felt forced to flee because of their brother's acts.

The Two bin Ladens

No matter how they try to distance themselves, or denounce Osama, the FBI is very interested in learning more about the family business and has subpoenaed all their records. A recent French Intelligence report reveals a web of bin Laden companies both good and bad.

Investigators are trying to make sure no family member is funneling money to the blackest sheep of all. "They say they don't support anything he is doing, that he is a pariah now in the family," says Winer.

But they have been quite secretive over the years like a number of families in the Middle East about how the financial network actually operates. He adds, "It is a very tangled web of relationships that needs to be sorted out."

What emerges from the intricate web is a picture of two bin Ladens: One, a 6-foot 4-inch, 44-year-old soft spoken terrorist who moves through the shadows of Afghanistan, using a body double to confuse his enemies, and sharing rat-infested caves with his three wives and 15 children.

The other, some of the most prominent supporters of the West in the Muslim world, living in luxury in Saudi Arabia.

And, perhaps in an ultimate irony, the family is now building a trade center in Beirut, Lebanon, with a design that looks all too familiar. "It looks like the World Trade Center — a single tower not two," describes Winer. "It could almost be the same building."

 

ATTACHMENT SEVENTEEN – From Reuters

RAGS TO RICHES

By Katie PaulTom ArnoldMarwa Rashad and Stephen Kalin

 

In Saudi Arabia, the Bin Ladens are known as the Kennedys of Jeddah for their wealth and tragedies. They built Saudi Arabia’s roads, mosques and palaces. Family patriarch Mohammed died in a plane crash, as did the son who succeeded him. Younger son Osama plotted the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

Mohammed arrived in Saudi Arabia from Yemen during the 1920s as an impoverished teenager, blind in one eye. He sought his fortune amongst the pilgrims and hustlers of the Red Sea port of Jeddah.

After founding a small construction firm in 1931, he won the favour of then King Abdulaziz by completing a palace for him within 20 days, according to a biography by former Saudi Binladin Group executive Khalaf Al Sibea. He became Saudi Arabia’s go-to builder, earning contracts for the kingdom’s most strategically significant projects.

As the conglomerate grew, the Bin Laden family, consisting of some 70 children and dozens of wives, cultivated ties with King Abdulaziz’s sons and grandsons to secure the alliance’s longevity. Contracts were awarded and expanded through those relationships, rather than a formal bidding process. Many were bestowed on a cost-plus basis, in which the contractor earns a fee on top of expenses. The problem with this model is that there is often no incentive for the contractor to keep a lid on costs.

The family came under scrutiny at home and abroad after Sept. 11, 2001, when Osama, one of Mohammed’s younger sons, brought notoriety to the Bin Laden name.

In Saudi Arabia, the Bin Ladens are known as the Kennedys of Jeddah for their wealth and tragedies. They built Saudi Arabia’s roads, mosques and palaces. Family patriarch Mohammed died in a plane crash, as did the son who succeeded him. Younger son Osama plotted the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

Under the quiet stewardship of chairman Bakr bin Laden, the company kept its footing and the company went on to reach the height of its power during the reign of King Abdullah, who took the throne in 2005.

During Abdullah’s 10-year rule, oil rocketed above $100 a barrel and the kingdom went on a spending spree. Saudi Binladin Group snared contracts to manage construction of new projects worth tens of billions of dollars, including a Riyadh financial district, a new airport in Jeddah and an economic city on the Red Sea coast meant to house 2 million people.

The company handled the kingdom’s most sensitive projects, including expansions of the two holy mosques in Mecca and Medina. For such deals, senior Bin Laden brothers, often Bakr, Saleh and Saad, held negotiations directly with King Abdullah and a special unit within government the monarch created for them, according to one Jeddah businessman who has known the family for decades.

Those contracts generally involved Saudi Binladin Group’s “Rush Projects” division, designed to perform work at short notice for the government, he said. The rush division also handled construction of King Abdullah’s new palace in Jeddah.

Not far from that palace, Bakr built a villa of his own with marble corridors and swimming pools looking out onto the Red Sea, which he opened regularly for traditional all-male parties to cultivate the family’s royal relationships, said a source who attended one such event.

As they prospered at home, the brothers expanded the business internationally, making particular inroads in Africa. Around 2011, they first floated the idea of an initial public offer of shares in the company, by then a behemoth with more than 500 subsidiaries.

With the company thriving, Bakr began to step into semi-retirement and spent much of his time at his mansion in Egypt’s Sharm al-Sheikh. He still managed the company’s relationship with the senior royals, hopping back over the Red Sea in his private jet for important meetings.

According to a Saudi Binladin Group executive, succession at the company seemed sure to follow a clean path to Bakr’s brothers Saad and Mohammed, then down to the next generation via his son Nawaf. All of that changed on the night of Nov. 4, 2017 when Saudi Arabia launched its anti-corruption drive.

 

ATTACHMENT EIGHTEEN – From PBS “Frontline”

 

ORIGINS OF THE BIN LADEN FAMILY

Excerpted from a report dealing with prominent Saudi families of Yemeni origin. Although FRONTLINE cannot vouch for the accuracy of this report, it does come from French intelligence sources.

A PBS “Frontline” examination of the Bin Laden family’s interests and supporters calls the relationship between Osama’s kin and the Saudi royal family “quite exceptional in that it not simply one of business ties: it is also a relationship of trust, of friendship and of shared secrets.”

Today one of the biggest construction groups in the kingdom [of Saudi Arabia] and the Middle East, the "bin Laden empire" traces its origins to Sheik Mohammed bin Laden, a native of the Chafeite (Sunni) Hadramout who emigrated [from South Yemen] to Saudi Arabia at the beginning of the century.

The beginnings of his activity are shrouded in mystery. It is said that, having satisfied King Abdul Aziz with construction work on the royal palace, Mohammed bin Laden was awarded a much more prestigious contract: the renovation of Mecca. Whatever the actual circumstances, it is a fact that the Saudi royal family gave the bin Laden family--and group--exclusive rights to all construction of a religious nature, whether in Mecca, Medina or--until 1967--the Holy Places in Jerusalem. This enabled the bin Ladens to establish an industrial and financial empire which now extends far beyond religious construction projects.

The relationship between the bin Ladens and the Saudi royal family is quite exceptional in that it not simply one of business ties: it is also a relationship of trust, of friendship and of shared secrets. This is particularly the case with regard to the group's present-day leaders and the Soudairi clan.

Thanks to the renovation of Mecca, Sheik Mohammed bin Laden did not become merely Kin Abdul Aziz' official contractor, but his friend and confidant as well. This friendship has been handed down to their children. The bin Laden sons went to the same schools as the numerous offspring of King Abdul Aziz and they all followed the same path.

 One of the connections which still explains many of the personal ties existing throughout the Middle East is the Victoria College in Alexandria, where the bin Laden boys attended classes along with schoolmates such as King Hussein of Jordan, Zaid Al Rifai, the Kashoggi brothers (whose father was one of the king's physicians), Kamal Adham (who ran the Saudi [security] services under King Faisal), present-day contractors Mohammed Al Attas, Fahd Shobokshi and Ghassan Sakr and actor Omar Sharif.

The relationship of trust between the royal family and the bin Laden group has never been repudiated, although it is known to have undergone some serious crises. The most important was doubtless the 1979 Mecca affair. Because the bin Laden company had the exclusive contract for repairs in the Holy Places, its trucks entered and left Mecca at all hours without being inspected. And the rebels used "bin Laden" trucks to get weapons into the city. One of the bin Laden sons, Mahrous, was actually arrested on account of his ties with the Islamists, but was later freed. He is currently manager of the group's Medina branch.

The reason is as follows: after studies in England, where he had kept company with Fadli (son of the ex-sultan of the Abdin region in South Yemen, now leader of a Yemeni fundamentalist group and arrested in Aden last January), Mahrous struck up friendships with a group of Syrian Moslem Brothers in exile in Saudi Arabia. Subsequent Saudi intelligence investigations showed that these Moslem Brothers had taken advantage of Mahrous to use bin Laden trucks without his knowledge.

There was a touch of irony to the episode: when the insurrection broke out, the Saudi security services had to go for help to the bin Ladens, the sole parties in possession of maps of Mecca enabling the Saudi (and Western) police to find their way through the city's underground passageways.

In any case, the episode also demonstrated the strength of the ties between the royal family and the bin Laden Group. Had it been some other group, there is no doubt that Mahrous--whether accomplice or patsy--would have been thrown into prison and the group barred from further economic activity in the kingdom, the sentence serving as a warning to others. This was not the case.

Likewise, the Saudi authorities' decision to issue an arrest warrant for Osama bin Laden on 16 May 1993 does not threaten to affect the relationship between the bin Ladens and the royal family. Osama, one of Mohammed's youngest son, has been known for years for his fundamentalist activities. ...The arrest warrant was issued both because of his support for fundamentalist groups involved in terrorist operations in Algeria and Egypt and his ties with upstart religious circles that tried to establish an independent human rights organization in Saudi Arabia at the beginning of May.

Contrary to appearances, both the Osama and the Mahrous incidents testify to the bin Laden's influence within the kingdom.

The ties of friendship binding bin Laden family members to King Fahd and his brothers make them prime confidantes and advisors. They play an obvious advisory role in Saudi-Yemeni relations. Still, they hold very few economic or financial interests in their ancestral homeland and certainly do not flaunt their family origins.

King Fahd's two closest friends were: Prince Mohammed Ben Abdullah (son of Abdul Aziz' youngest brother), who died in the early '80s and whose brother, Khaled Ben Abdullah (an associate of Suleiman Olayan), still has free access to the king; and Salem bin Laden, who died in 1988.

Like his father in 1968, Salem died in a 1988 air crash...in Texas. He was flying a BAC 1-11 which had been bought in July 1977 by Prince Mohammed Ben Fahd. The plane's flight plans had long been at the center of a number of investigations. According to one of the plane's American pilots, it had been used in October 1980 during secret Paris meetings between US and Iranian emissaries. Nothing was ever proven, but Salem bin Laden's accidental death revived some speculation that he might have been "eliminated" as an embarrassing witness. In fact, an inquiry was held to determine the exact circumstances of the accident. The conclusions were never divulged.


FRONTLINE Editors' Note:

The above paragraph is inaccurate. Salem bin Laden was piloting a light aircraft, not a BAC 1-11, when he crashed. As for "secret Paris meetings between US and Iranian emissaries" in October 1980, such meetings have never been confirmed.

In spite of Salem's death, the bin Ladens are still part of the small group of friends surrounding the king which includes, in particular, Prince Khaled Turki Al Soudairi (married to one of Fahd's sisters), Prince Faisal Ben Turki Al Abdullah (married to another sister and father of Prince Abdullah Ben Faisal, head of the Royal Jubail Commission) and the family of Moona (Fahd's wife), the Ibrahims.

As trusted servants of the royal family, the bin Ladens have also often acted as chaperones to the king's sons, helping them get their start in business. This was the case with both Prince Mohammed Ben Fahd and Prince Daud Ben Nayef, two of the most active second-generation princes and both at the head of financial empires during the '80s. Both princes were often encountered along with one or another of the bin Laden sons at the head of international companies.

Appointed governor of the Eastern Province in the mid-'80s, Prince Mohammed Ben Fahd resigned from the chairmanships of his companies, putting Prince Saud in his place. The latter, named vice-governor of the Eastern Province last June, has also since withdrawn from a number of business activities.

There was also a political aspect to Salem bin Laden's financial activities. Like Ali Ben Moussalem, Salem bin Laden played a role in the US operations in the Middle East and Central America during the '80s.

 On his death in 1968, Sheik Mohammed left behind not only an industrial and financial estate but also a progeny made up of no less than 54 sons and daughters, the fruit of a number of marriages. The lastborn came into the world in 1967 and is presently a student in Boston.

In an initial phase, the group was headed by Mohammed Bahareth, brother of Mohammed's first wife and uncle of his oldest children. As of 1972, Sheik Salem bin Laden, the eldest son, took over as his father's successor, with the assistance of several brothers.

Upon Sheik Salem's death, the leadership of the group passed to his eldest son, Bakr, along with thirteen other brothers who make up the board of the bin Laden group. The most important of these are Hassan,Yeslam and Yehia.

Most of these brothers have different mothers and different nationalities as well. Each has his own set of affinities, thus contributing to the group's international scope. Bakr and Yehia are seen as representatives of the "Syrian group"; Yeslam, of the "Lebanese group". There is also a "Jordanian group." Abdul Aziz, one of the youngest brothers, represents the "Egyptian group" and is also manager of the bin Laden group's Egyptian branch, which employs over 40,000 people. Osama bin Laden is, incidentally, the only brother with a Saudi mother.

Given the size of the family and the financial empire, the bin Ladens have obviously not managed to escape internal conflict.

One of the most significant clashes involved Ali bin Laden, Salem's youngest son and Bakkr's older brother. Ali currently lives between Beirut, Damascus and Paris. Some have said that the break took place over religious reasons. In fact, our information tells us that Ali bin Laden felt smothered under the weight of the bin Laden empire and chose freedom. This distancing has been accompanied by financial disputes, as the other brothers are in no mood to share the group's dividends with Ali and turn a deaf ear to his repeated demands for remittances.

This said, relations between Ali and his brothers had thawed during recent years. His son Mohammed, now completing his studies in Paris, is set to take on important duties within the group at the appropriate moment. It should be noted that he is currently in discussions with French weapons manufacturers and is strengthening his ties with the Saudi Defense Ministry.

In turn, Mahrous bin Laden is still a member of the group's board of directors. His mistakes during the '70s are still a sticking point, however, and he is primarily involved in the organization's Medina branch without engaging in activity at the central level...a way of getting himself forgotten.

Yeslam bin Laden chose the same path as his brother Ali, but without a family break. Very early on, and in consultation with Bakr and Hassan, he decided to move to Europe, where he heads up a portion of the group's international activities. He divides his time between Geneva and Paris. This choice also stems from his marriage with a woman of princely (but Iranian) family, Mirdoht-Sheybani. He is one of the most "Westernized" of the bin Laden brothers, and we are told that his household language is French.
It was only in 1972, four years after the death of Sheik Mohammed, that the [bin Laden] organization was given a group structure in order meet the needs of its expanding activities. Named Binladen Brothers for Contracting and Industry, the group is headquartered in Jiddahh.

With 1991 sales of SR 125 billion, the group is ranked 32 in Saudi Arabia.

After winning its spurs in the rebuilding of Mecca, the group extended its activities to the broad area of construction and infrastructural works, the Mecca-Medina highway, tens of thousands of housing units, etc., It also entered into agriculture, irrigation and representation of foreign groups (Audi, Porsche and the Dutch Heras Hekwerk group, which it represents for fencing and steel distribution). At the beginning of the `80s, it associated with Hunting Surveys Ltd (UK) for prefab construction and with the Dutch Pander Projects group for distribution of luxury products.

The group is extremely discreet with regard to its financial activities, contracts and projects. On the one hand, the group is a family business and does not have to account to anyone; on the other, its ties with the royal family increase its aura of mystery. Its main contracts are not decided at the industrial or economic level, are not run through the Saudi bureaucracy, but instead emanate directly from discussions held with the seraglio of power.

A discrete link thus exists between the bin Laden group, the royal family and the Chamberlain, Ali Ben Mousalem, a link about noone wishes to speak.

There have been many instances of companies which have seen their contracts withdrawn after having made their association with the bin Laden group the object of publicity judged inappropriate by the group.

This concern for avoiding any and all publicity is also emphasized by the fact that, in contrast to the majority of Saudi companies, the bin Laden group rarely if ever buys advertising space in industry publications.

Rarely, then, does one know in advance just what the next bin Laden project will be: generally, the information is there when it is all over. A number of significant projects have been noted in Saudi Arabia itself during recent years:

* A $296 million contract with other companies such as Ditco (Ben Zagr), Saud Ben Birdgis, Al Mouraiban, Kara, etc., for the construction of a ring freeway around Riyadh.

* A SR1.3 billion contract for construction of housing units for the security forces in Jiddahh.

* A SR1.3 billion contract for similar units for the National Guard at Mecca.

* A SR1.1 billion contract for construction of the Kharaj Military City near Riyadh.

* A SR1.1 billion contract for the Mecca Royal Divan.

* A SR4 billion contract for expansion of the Mecca Holy Places.

Several other major projects in Saudi Arabia have been noted recently:

* Construction and improvements at the Riyadh Airport for the Al Salem Aircraft Company, including construction of nine hangars, as part of one of the five offset programs in the US-Saudi Peace Shield agreement. Scheduled for completion in 1995, these operations are to transform Riyadh's King Khaled International Airport into one of the world's largest, ranking with Singapore, Frankfurt, etc.

* A $10 million contract for construction of a molded plastics factory at Jubail, in partnership with the Swiss group Buss AG, in the framework of the Jubail regional expansion plan and in cooperation with Prince Abdullah Ben Faisal and Saudi Formaldehyde Chemical Co. (SFCCL), founded in November 1990 at the initiative of the Jubail-Yanbu Royal Commission and businessman Mazen Al Lahiq.

 The bin Laden group is represented in most Saudi cities (Riyadh, Damman) and in a number of capital cities in the region: Beirut, Cairo, Amman, Dubai.

* With over 40,000 employees, the bin Laden group in Egypt, managed by Abdul Aziz bin Laden, is that country's largest foreign private group. Sheik Salem had good relations with one of the largest local contractors, Osman Ahmed Osman, going back for many years. Together with the Saudi Shobokshi group, the bin Laden group is currently negotiating a $400 million contract for construction of a paper plant.

* The bin Laden group, represented by Yehia bin Laden, is also holding negotiations with the Lebanese authorities for a $50 million share in the project to rebuild central Beirut, within the framework of the Solidere project and in conjunction with the Al Baraka group and the Ben Mahfouz group. In 1981, the bin Laden group also set up a local company, Sarco SAL, directed by the Sarkissian brothers, but which has not shown any activity.

* The bin Laden group's domestic and regional activities are complemented by international operations. The group set up a representative firm in London, Binexport, in November 1990, but its international business is handled by the SICO offices in Geneva.

The bin Laden family has been present in international finance for many years. With regard to France, this was the case with the Banque Al Saoudi, whose vicissitudes in recent years are common knowledge. Shored up by Banque de France in 1989 to avoid bankruptcy, it was partially taken over by Banque Indosuez, becoming Banque Francaise pour l'Orient, which has just merged with Rafik Hariri's Mediterranee group.

It is interesting to note that the bank's honorary chairman was none other than Prince Mohammed Ben Fahd, and its board of directors included Sheik Salem bin Laden, Sheik Bogshan and Khalid Ben Mahfouz. Banque Al Saoudi and Indosuez' special connections in the Middle East were instrumental in financing a portion of the weapons contracts of the `70s and `80s.

Banque Al Saoudi was 75%-owned by the Paris-based Saudi Arab Finance Corporation, which also controlled a number of other companies: 75% of Saudi Finance Corporation (Saudifin), headquartered in Geneva and in turn controlling the Saudi Arab Finance Corporation and the Arab Finance Corporation International, both in Luxembourg..

Generally speaking, the same set of shareholders was involved: Salem bin Laden, Khalid Ben Mahfouz, Salam Ahmed Bogshan, Saad Khalil Al Bahjat, Taha Baksh, etc.

In London, the bin Laden group also controls the Abdoulla brothers' Evered Holdings.

Since 1980, the bulk of the bin Laden group's international activities are routed through the Geneva offices of Saudi Investment Company (SICO), which was established on 19 May 1980 and whose capital was increased to SF100 million on 30 April 1991.

Located at 13 rue Ceard, the company is chaired by Yeslam bin Laden. Board members are Beatrice Dufour, Baudoin Dunant and Tilouine el Hanafi.

Beatrice Lafour is Yeslam bin Laden's sister-in-law. She is of Iranian origin and is married to a Swiss financier.

Baudoin Dunant, one of French-speaking Switzerland's leading lawyers, is on the boards of over twenty companies in Geneva, Fribourg, Morges, Nyons, etc. He received international publicity in 1983, when he represented Swiss banker Francois Genoud. Genoud, an admirer of Hitler and heir to the rights to Geobbels' writings, had helped finance the FLN during the Algerian Ward and was on trial for participation in international terrorism.

This unseemly publicity did nothing to shake the confidence of Yeslam bin Laden, doubtless an indication that the lawyer is top-notch in his profession (he is also counsel to the financial group of William Kazan , who is currently liquidating a major portion of his banking investments).

During the `80s, the board of directors also included members of the Swiss Wyss family, a branch of which controls the Holderbank Company, which has just signed a $100 million contract with Qatar National Cement. Also on the board were members of the Shakarshi family, whose name is linked to a money-laundering scandal and drug trafficking in Zurich. A Shakarshi family member was also a director of the SICO London branch.

As a result of these scandals and bent on avoiding any publicity, the bin Ladens decided that it was necessary to break publicly with the Shakarshis. In actual fact, the Shakarshis were never overly troubled and it appears that the Zurich company was just another CIA front used to finance the Afghan resistance.

The tie between Yeslam bin Laden and the Shakarshi family would thus seem quite consistent with both family and royal policy. Our information tells us that Yeslam bin Laden continues to maintain relations as usual with the Shakarshi group.

One might also note that the chairman of board of the Zurich Shakarshi company was Dr. Hans Kopp. Kopp is an important lawyer (his wife was then Justice Minister, since resigned) known for his international activities, particularly with the American [intelligence?] services (since the `60s), and is close to the Swiss defense industry (Oerlikon-Buhrle/Contraves).

The Geneva-based SICO is the parent house for the Group's international financial activities and investments, with branches in London and Curacao. The Curacao branch, established in 1984, manages the bin Laden group's partnership with the American Daniels Realty Corporation (Duspic), part of the Fluor Corporation conglomerate. It is partly through the bin Ladens' influence that the Fluor group was one of the major recipients of reconstruction contracts in Kuwait.

Despite a few recent attempts (particularly with the Swiss Contraves group), the bin Laden family has never been directly involved in weapons contracts and has never been bent on adding this activity to its portfolio.

At most, it might be said that the activities of Salem bin Laden in the context of Irangate and Contragate, or of Yeslam bin Laden within his association with the Shakarshi family, have placed the family at the center of these negotiations, but solely as a guarantor or as a representative of the interests of the royal family. The real contracts have been signed directly by members of the royal family: Prince Mohammed Ben Fahd or Prince Saud Ben Nayef.

The bin Laden family (and Yeslam bin Laden in particular) have thus had long-standing and close ties to the London/Geneva-based Albilad company, created in the `70s by Mohammed Ben Fahd and taken over by Saud Ben Nayef in 1984. Albilad was the main instrument for negotiation of the Anglo-Saudi Al Yamama agreement. Saudi interests were represented by businessman Wafik Said, while the British side was represented by Jonathan Aitken, currently a minister in the Major government. It might be noted that a major player in these negotiations was none other than Mark Thatcher, son of the former Prime Minister and very close to Wafik Said.

Nonetheless, while the bin Laden group does not deal directly in armaments, it is an obvious presence in the big military-related construction contracts. We have mentioned a few of these above. At present, its most important contract is for the Riyadh Airport, through the intermediary of the Al Salam Aircraft company, in the framework of the compensation contracts stipulated by the Peace Shield agreement.

ATTACHMENT NINETEEN – From Devex.com

https://res.cloudinary.com/devex/image/fetch/c_fit,f_jpg,h_80,w_200/https:/neo-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/0129/7510/kll.jpg

www.sbg.com.sa

www. sbg.com.sa

·         Overview

·         Careers

·         Experience

·         Contact

·         Offices

·         Organization TypeWorks & Construction, Service Providers

·         Staff10,000+

·         HeadquartersSaudi Arabia

·         Founded1931

Saudi Binladin Group

Saudi Binladin Group (SBG) is a multinational construction conglomerate and is headquartered in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Saudi Binladin Group recently signed a US$1.23 billion contract to construct the tallest building in the world, Jeddah Tower in Jeddah and US$3.4 billion to construct Doha Metro in Doha.

The history of Binladin begins in 1931 During the Kingdom’s early years, under the reign of King Abdul Aziz Al Saud, my late father , Mohammed Binladin founded the Mohammad Binladin Organization as a general contracting company. Binladin’s history and growth intertwined with that of the kingdom’s ever since. As Saudia Arabia prospered, developed and became active on the international front, Binladin evolved simultaneously. Under the leadership of my late brother, Salem M. Binladin, the company’s activities expanded from road works and constructions to diversified activities with numerous offshoots worldwide. To prepare for an ambitious and more active international role, the Saudi Binladin Group (SBG) was set up to incorporate various Binladin companies under a single association.

The bin Laden group is represented in most Saudi cities — Riyadh, Dammam — and in a number of capital cities in the region (Beirut, Cairo, Amman, Dubai). According to a synopsis by the PBS news program Frontline:

·         in Egypt the SBG is headed to goby Omar bin Laden as Chairman, Khaled bin Laden as CEO, Tarek Helmy as General Manager, and represents that country's largest foreign-owned private equity group, with over 40,000 employees.

·         in Lebanon the SBG, represented by Yehia bin Laden, has been holding negotiations with the local authorities for a $50 million share in the project to rebuild the Beirut Central District within the framework of the Solidere Project and in conjunction with the al Baraka Group and the bin Mahfouz Group in London the SBG set up a representative firm called Binexport in November 1990.

On 20 December 2005, the government of Saudi Arabia awarded a consortium of Saudi and Emirati companies, including the Saudi Binladin Group, a $26.6 billion contract to build King Abdullah Economic City.

The Group is constructing Abraj Al Bait Towers in Mecca and has been contracted by Kingdom Holding Company to build the Jeddah Tower.

On 11 September 2015, while doing construction work in the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, one of the Group's cranes collapsed due to high winds causing 118 deaths and almost 400 injuries. As a result, the Saudi king banned the firm from taking new projects while having its current projects reviewed. The Saudi government removed the ban on the Binladin Group in May 2016, allowing them to bid on new projects.

Saudi Arabia Projects:

1.    Royal Terminal, Jeddah

2.    King Abdulaziz International Airport, New Haj Terminal, Jeddah

3.    Al Faisaliyah Center

4.    Madina-Qassim Expressway

5.    Um Alqura University, Makkah

6.    Lotus Compounds, Jeddah

7.    Alameera Noura University

8.    Abraj Al Bait Towers, Makkah

9.    Jeddah Tower, Jeddah

10.     King Abdullah Economic City

11.     Jamaraat Bridge

12.     Saudi Arabia National Guard Housing Project

International Projects:

1.    Blaise Diagne International Airport, Senegal

2.    Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Malaysia

3.    Sharjah International Airport Expansion & Development, UAE

4.    University of Sharjah, UAE

 

 

ATTACHMENT TWENTY – From the Sunday Times via the BBC

PRINCE CHARLES ACCEPTED £1M FROM OSAMA BIN LADEN'S FAMILY - REPORT

·         Published  31 July, 2022

·          

·         The Prince of Wales accepted a payment of £1m from the family of Osama Bin Laden, the Sunday Times reports.

·         Prince Charles accepted the money from two of Osama Bin Laden's half-brothers in 2013, two years after the al-Qaeda leader was killed, it adds.

The Prince of Wales's Charitable Fund (PWCF) received the donation.

Clarence House said it had been assured by PWCF that "thorough due diligence" had been conducted, and the decision to accept the money lay with the trustees.

"Any attempt to characterise it otherwise is false," it told the BBC.

Clarence House also said it disputed a number of points made in the newspaper's article.

Bin Laden was disowned by his family in 1994 and there is no suggestion that his half-brothers had links to his activities.

 See also:

·         No inquiry into cash donation to Charles charity

·         Charles suitcase of cash 'would not happen again'

·         Prince Charles 'accepted a suitcase with 1m euros'

According to the Sunday Times of London, Charles met with Bakr (above) and Shafiq bin Laden, the half-brothers of Osama bin Laden, in London in 2013, to broker the payment.

·         Bakr bin Laden (born 1946) succeeded Salem as the chairman of the Saudi Binladin Group; major power broker in Jeddah.

·         Shafig bin Laden, the half-brother of Osama, was a guest of honour at the Carlyle Group's Washington conference at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel on September 11, 2001, and was among the 13 members of the bin Ladin family to leave the United States on September 19, 2001 aboard flight N521DB.

The heir to the throne took the money despite objections from advisers at Clarence House and PWCF, the Sunday Times reports, citing multiple sources.

However, Sir Ian Cheshire, chairman of PWCF, told the newspaper that the 2013 donation was agreed "carefully considered" by the five trustees at the time.

"Due diligence was conducted, with information sought from a wide range of sources, including government," Sir Ian added.

"The decision to accept the donation was taken wholly by the trustees. Any attempt to suggest otherwise is misleading and inaccurate."

The PWCF awards grants to UK-registered non-profit organisations to deliver projects in the UK, Commonwealth and overseas.

After it was revealed this week that Prince Charles’ personal charity, the Prince of Wales Charitable Fund, accepted $1.2 million from the family of Osama bin Laden, 9/11 families are “pissed off” — and questioning whether the royal should ever be a monarch.

“I don’t think he should be king of anything,” Jim Riches — who lost his 29-year-old firefighter son, Jimmy Riches, in the attack — told The Post. “He is an incompetent. A regular person would see what they did … yet he turns around and takes their money. I’m pissed off. He should put himself in my shoes. If it was his son [who died in the World Trade Center], he would be completely different.”

Charles, 73, met with Bakr and Shafiq bin Laden, the half-brothers of Osama bin Laden, in London on Oct. 30, 2013, to broker the payment, according to the Sunday Times of London.

Dispatches from the BBC’s sultans of Briticism were quick to follow...

 

ATTACHMENT TWENTY ONE From the BBC (dymond)

No rule has been broken, no law has been broken. All appropriate checks were carried out and even the Foreign Office was called upon to give its opinion - it cleared the donation.

So how is this front page news?

A source at the Prince of Wales's Charitable Fund told the BBC that "the sins of the father" - that's Osama Bin Laden - should not disqualify other members of the family from making a donation. Which makes sense.

But equally, did Prince Charles or his inner circle really think it was a good idea to take money from the Bin Ladens? Or did they think it was fine so long as it was never made public?

Because once it was public - however many checks were made and rules were followed - it was always going to look horrible.

Just like the enormous cash donation from a former Qatari Prime Minister or the letter from Prince Charles's close friend and aide promising a knighthood to a Saudi citizen who had promised and made substantial donations.

Ministers and members of parliament are, in the end, governed by the ballot box. The Royal Family derives its position and authority from a different place, from a settled acceptance by the public that overall they bring credit to the country.

Does a donation from the Bin Ladens - however remote from the evildoing of a disowned son - fit into this model of monarchy?

Osama Bin Laden was top of the US' "most wanted" list. He is believed to have ordered the terror attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 - which killed almost 3,000 people - including 67 Britons.

He was killed by US forces in 2011.

A PWCF source told the BBC that "though the name [Bin Laden] has very unhappy history, the sins of the father should not be visited on the rest of the family, which is an eminent one in the region."

The source added that the donation had been cleared by the Foreign Office.

 

Osama Bin Laden was disowned by his family nearly 20 years before the reported donation

This is not the first time that Prince Charles or his charity have been scrutinised over its donations.

It was reported last month that Prince Charles accepted a suitcase containing a million euros in cash from a former Qatari prime minister - one of three cash donations totalling around £2.5m.  (See below)

Clarence House said at the time that donations from the sheikh were passed immediately to one of the prince's charities and all the correct processes were followed.

The Charity Commission later decided against launching an investigation into the donation.

In February, the Metropolitan Police began an investigation into claims the charity offered honours help to a Saudi citizen.

Turns out... they did.  (See Attachments Thirty Five and Thirty Six, below)

Clarence House said the prince had "no knowledge of the alleged offer of honours.”

 

ATTACHMENT TWENTY TWO From the BBC (gardner)

 

"To millions of Saudis, the name Bin Laden is totally innocuous. In the West and much of the rest of the world, it will forever be associated with the 9/11 terror attacks of 2001.

But in Saudi Arabia, it is a byword for the Jeddah-based construction firm that used newfound oil wealth to fund mosques, palaces and other buildings by royal decree.

The family were not originally Saudi: they came from a part of southern Yemen, the Hadhramaut, that has produced many of Jeddah's most successful and wealthy entrepreneurial families.

Osama, one of the many sons of the company's founder, who emigrated from Yemen in the early 20th century, was long known as the "black sheep of the family".

He spent much of the 1980s in Afghanistan helping the mujahideen fight the invading Soviet army, so essentially he was on the same side then as the CIA and Pakistan.

But by the 1990s, he had become a radical Islamic extremist and the family disowned him in 1994. Osama Bin Laden then moved first to Sudan, and soon after to Afghanistan. The rest is history.

 

ATTACHMENT TWENTY THREE From the New York Post

9/11 FAMILIES ‘PISSED OFF’ PRINCE CHARLES TOOK $1M FROM BIN LADEN’S BROTHERS

By Michael Kaplan  August 2, 2022 4:39pm 

 

MORE ON:  KING CHARLES III

·                     King Charles III carries out new royal duties while in mourning for Queen Elizabeth II

·                     Prince William, Harry reunion needed ‘extended negotiations’ after Queen’s death

·                     Putin congratulates King Charles despite past Hitler jibe

·                     ‘One day I will lead the family’: Prince William steps up to his new role

 

After it was revealed this week that Prince Charles’ personal charity, the Prince of Wales Charitable Fund, accepted $1.2 million from the family of Osama bin Laden, 9/11 families are “pissed off” — and questioning whether the royal should ever be a monarch.

“I don’t think he should be king of anything,” Jim Riches — who lost his 29-year-old firefighter son, Jimmy Riches, in the attack — told The Post. “He is an incompetent. A regular person would see what they did … yet he turns around and takes their money. I’m pissed off. He should put himself in my shoes. If it was his son [who died in the World Trade Center], he would be completely different.”

Charles, 73, met with Bakr and Shafiq bin Laden, the half-brothers of Osama bin Laden, in London on Oct. 30, 2013, to broker the payment, according to the Sunday Times of London.

According to the Sunday Times of London, Charles met with Bakr (above) and Shafiq bin Laden, the half-brothers of Osama bin Laden, in London in 2013, to broker the payment.

“I’m personally surprised that anyone would take blood money connected to the person responsible for murdering 3,000 lives,” said Monica Iken, whose husband Michael Patrick Ikendied in the Twin Towers on 9/11. “It’s shocking and makes my skin crawl … I will never go to England. I thought they were our allies but I would not support what he supports.”

By the same token, Iken added, Charles should steer clear of the 9/11 Memorial Museum: “The families would be in an uproar if he went there.”

Prince Charles’s advisers reportedly warned of outrage if word of the transaction leaked. But Gordon Haberman, whose daughter Andrea Lyn Haberman perished in the Trade Center attack while on her first business trip to New York City, wonders if the bin Laden brothers actually wanted the news to get out.

 “He should give the money back and be investigated for any other money he’s received from sources such as this one,” Eagleson told The Post. “I think it’s a good question as to whether or not he should be made king. Maybe [not receiving the kingship] will be a consequence of the investigation.”

Taking the funds, Eagleson added, “is disgraceful to the lives lost on 9/11 and the lives lost through terror funding.”

A former firefighter himself, Jim Riches told The Post that he “picked up body parts for eight months [at the Trade Center] after 9/11.”

As he sees it, “This is all about greed and a willingness to take money from anyone. It’s a horrible thing. Taking that money soils them.”

The royal family, Riches added, “have money and yet they are for sale. Three thousand people are dead [because of the attack planned by bin Laden] and you take money from the guy’s brother? It’s a shame and it’s horrible.”

 

ATTACHMENT TWENTY FOUR From Time

 

PRINCE ANDREW'S HOPE OF ROYAL REHABILITATION MAY HAVE DIED WITH QUEEN ELIZABETH II

 

BY CHAD DE GUZMAN   SEPTEMBER 13, 2022 7:26 AM EDT

 

A heckler’s arrest in Scotland Monday afternoon has thrust an estranged Prince Andrew back into public view, and cast an awkward shadow on the royal family as it mourns the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

The heckler called Prince Andrew a “sick old man” as the disgraced royal walked behind the Queen’s coffin during a solemn procession to St. Giles Cathedral in the Scottish capital Edinburgh.

The appearance was one of the rare public sightings of Andrew since his fall from grace over his friendship with convicted sex offender the late Jeffrey Epstein. Earlier this year, Prince Andrew settled out of court in a civil case brought by Virginia Guiffre, a victim of Epstein’s sex trafficking ring when she was 17. She had accused Andrew of sexual assault and battery.

Andrew may have joined his siblings last Thursday at the Queen’s Scottish summer residence Balmoral, as they gathered at her bedside before she passed away. But the royal family is keen to draw as little attention to him as possible, says Giselle Bastin, an associate professor and a British royalty expert at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia.

“They don’t want it to be about William and Harry’s feud,” she tells TIME. “They don’t want it to be about Prince Andrew, and his potentially allegedly shady dealings with Jeffrey Epstein and so on.”

Prince Andrew’s future

The palace revoked Prince Andrew’s military titles and royal patronage last January, in the wake of Guiffre’s assault allegations. This meant that at the Edinburgh procession, he was the only child of the Queen in civilian attire. King Charles III, Princess Anne, and Prince Edward all wore military uniform.

Prince Andrew will be allowed to wear a uniform at the Queen’s final vigil at Westminster Hall but not at the funeral on Sept. 19 or any other proceedings. (The Queen’s grandson Harry, who renounced his royal title and duties in 2020, must also wear civilian clothes at the funeral.)

This marks a departure from the way in which the Queen protected the image of her second son during the last months of her reign.

At Prince Philip’s funeral in March 2021, the Queen reportedly ordered no military uniforms to be worn to avoid embarrassment for Prince Andrew. He was also given visibility during the memorial at Westminster Abbey, escorting his mother in and out of the church—a prominence widely noted in the British press.

According to conservative U.K. broadsheet the Telegraph, Andrew reportedly talked to the Queen in June about reinstating his royal status. He also wants his daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, to become working royals.

King Charles III will now have to decide whether to fund his disgraced brother. After leaving the Royal Navy in 2002, Prince Andrew has not had any full-time paid job, although he acted as the U.K.’s special representative for international trade for 10 years and has been receiving a £20,000 ($23,000) annual pension.

When Prince Andrew was a working royal, he made as much as £250,000 ($292,000) yearly. His reinstatement would run counter to King Charles III’s long-reported inclination towards paring back the royal family to only a few key members to save on cost.

At the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, she was flanked only by working royals during her appearance at the Buckingham Palace balcony—a stark contrast to the scene 20 years prior. Prince Andrew was not there due to a coronavirus infection.

“Who we saw at the final balcony appearance of Queen Elizabeth II, during her Jubilee, will be what we see going forward [without her],” says Bastin.

 

 

ATTACHMENT TWENTY-FIVE – From the Guardian U. K.

 

KING CHARLES’S STAFF NOTIFIED OF REDUNDANCIES DURING CHURCH SERVICE FOR QUEEN

Exclusive: Employees said to be livid and shaken as up to 100 Clarence House employees told they could lose jobs

By Pippa Crerar and Caroline Davies  Tue 13 Sep 2022 13.24 EDT

·          

Dozens of Clarence House staff have been given notice of redundancies as the offices of King Charles and the Queen Consort move to Buckingham Palace after the death of the Queen, the Guardian has learned.

Up to 100 employees at the King’s former official residence, including some who have worked there for decades, received notification that they could lose their jobs just as they were working round the clock to smooth his elevation to the throne.

Private secretaries, the finance office, the communications team and household staff are among those who received notice during the thanksgiving service for the Queen, at St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh on Monday, that their posts were on the line.

Many staff had assumed they would be amalgamated into the King’s new household, claiming they were given no indication of what was coming until the letter from Sir Clive Alderton, the King’s top aide, arrived. One source said: “Everybody is absolutely livid, including private secretaries and the senior team. All the staff have been working late every night since Thursday, to be met with this. People were visibly shaken by it.”

In his letter, seen by the Guardian, Alderton wrote: “The change in role for our principals will also mean change for our household … The portfolio of work previously undertaken in this household supporting the former Prince of Wales’s personal interests, former activities and household operations will no longer be carried out, and the household … at Clarence House will be closed down. It is therefore expected that the need for the posts principally based at Clarence House, whose work supports these areas will no longer be needed.”

The King’s private secretary added: “I appreciate that this is unsettling news and I wanted to let you know of the support that is available at this point.”

He added that certain staff providing “direct, close, personal support and advice” to Charles and Camilla would remain in post. No final decisions are understood to have been taken, as a consultation period, which will begin after the state funeral next Monday, needs to be completed first.

Staff who are made redundant are expected to be offered searches for alternative employment across all royal households, assistance in finding new jobs externally and an “enhanced” redundancy payment beyond the statutory minimum.

A Clarence House spokesman said: “Following last week’s accession, the operations of the household of the former Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall have ceased and, as required by law, a consultation process has begun. Our staff have given long and loyal service and, while some redundancies will be unavoidable, we are working urgently to identify alternative roles for the greatest number of staff.”

It has not yet been confirmed whether the King and Queen Consort will eventually live at Buckingham Palace. At present, only parts of Buckingham Palace are habitable as it is undergoing major reservicing works that are expected to last years.

There is speculation that the King, who is rumoured not to be particularly fond of the palace, would use it for official purposes such as receptions, audiences, investitures and banquets, while retaining nearby Clarence House as his London home.

When his office was asked about this in 2017, when he was still Prince of Wales, officials said that Buckingham Palace would remain as the headquarters of the monarchy and official home of the sovereign. No detailed information about his likely living arrangements have been given recently.

According to Clarence House’s annual review earlier this year, the King employed the full-time equivalent of 101 staff. There are 31 in the private secretaries’ office, including private and assistant private secretaries, research, administrative and equerry staff.

A similar number work in his treasurers’ department, while he employs 12 in his communications office. The 28 members of his household staff include four chefs, five house managers, three valets and dressers and a couple of butlers. According to the most recent sovereign grant report, the Queen employed 491 full-time staff.

There is also the question of whether the King would retain use of Windsor Castle for weekends, and Sandringham House in Norfolk, which the late Queen visited over the Christmas period. The King and Queen Consort also have a residence at Birkhall on the Balmoral estate, Highgrove in Gloucestershire, and Llwynywermod, a cottage in Wales.

The new Prince and Princess of Wales have recently relocated to Windsor, and moved into Adelaide Cottage, while retaining their Kensington Palace apartment for official purposes.

When the Queen Mother died, the Duke of York took over Royal Lodge at Windsor. While some of her 83 members of staff were redeployed within other royal households, others were let go.

 The headline and introduction of this article were amended on 14 September 2022 to clarify that staff were notified of redundancies, rather than being given individual notices of redundancy, as the rest of the article made clear.

 

ATTACHMENT TWENTY SIX Also from the Guardian U. K.

 

COMMENTS upon the ABOVE

 

Podiatrist Christhell Hobbs, 57, is a regular attendee at royal events and was in the throng for Kate and William’s wedding.

He said of the staff facing redundancy:”I think it’s sad. They have families they have to support.”

Hobbs, who left Farilight near Hastings in East Sussex first thing in the morning to see the Queen’s coffin arrive on Tuesday evening, added: “Many of them have put in many good years of service and now they’re told ‘we don’t want you’. You have to be human about this.”

Korina Massicat, 22, from east London, is studying politics at Durham University. A student: “[these are] people who’ve been working hard and are faithful and loyal. Nobody deserves to be fired because someone dies.”

Lexi, 26, a fashion student at Central St Martins in London who was right outside the palace gates, said: “It’s quite shocking. I don’t get it, she only just passed away. It’s more important to get the funeral done – I don’t think this was a good time to do it right now.”

Gary Taylor, 54, from Gray’s End, is a property developer and an enthusiastic royalist. He kept a royal scrapbook as a child but conceded: “It is bad timing. It’s not what you would expect because it’s so soon.”

A sizeable contingent in the crowd refused to believe the news, even when shown online. “That’s scaremongering, that is”, said one woman, looking disgusted. Another said “people aren’t prepared to hear negative stuff at the moment”.

 

ATTACHMENT TWENTY SEVEN And furthermore, from the Guardian U. K.

 

IT’S ONE LAW FOR KING CHARLES THE BILLIONAIRE AND ANOTHER FOR HIS STRUGGLING SUBJECTS

 

It is only proper that the new King pays no inheritance tax – says the state that makes citizens choose between heating or eating

 

By Aditya Chakrabortty  Thu 15 Sep 2022 01.00 EDT

·          

During that soggy afternoon when the Queen was still said to be only ill, the BBC’s Clive Myrie was filling time. Only hours before, he noted, Liz Truss had been making “a rather important statement” on just how families would pay their heating bills this winter. All was now “insignificant”. It was, the usually excellent presenter later admitted, “a poor choice of word”.

Except it wasn’t. If anything, it was painfully on the nose. The man on the TV unwittingly but precisely anticipated how the financial crisis engulfing millions of Britons would be treated in the coming days: as a matter of no consequence. In Tuesday’s Daily Mail, it took until page 28 to crop up. In that day’s Sun, page 20. The Times and the Telegraph yawned it off altogether.

Our MPs have been worse. Last Thursday, the new prime minister set out a plan to cap energy costs. Tagged at 
£150bn, it’s easily the single biggest fiscal intervention by any government since the second world war – a vast sum that these Tory tailenders seem determined to spend as badly and unfairly as possible. To take one example: the 4.5 million people on pre-pay meters will get zero extra help from Truss. And another: the churches and community centres hosting the food banks that will be a lifeline to millions this winter will only get a few months’ help.

Rather than scrutinise these measures, MPs spent two long days delivering tributes to the monarchy, such as this from the former minister Tracey Crouch: “Our six-year-old took my hand in his and said, ‘Don’t worry, Mummy: the King will look after us now.’ He is right. God save the King.” Thus were you served by your representatives – and now parliament is shut for 10 days, and the next month will be dominated by party conferences.

As youngsters, both the prime minister and Keir Starmer were in favour of abolishing the monarchy. They have first-hand knowledge not only of republican feeling but also of the wider ambivalence that often greets the royal family. Yet they haven’t even tried to represent this pluralism of opinion, which is one of the defining features of any democracy. Instead what we get is a grand show of state power, complete with the army, the navy and the BBC’s Nick Witchell.

During this period of enforced mourning everyone is told what to think, even while millions of people worry over how to eat. The official mood is an ersatz mawkishness. Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, instructed Auden. Today’s equivalent is Norwich City Council closing bike racks, and Morrisons turning down the beeping at its checkouts – while Center Parcs was all set to turf out holidaymakers for the day of the funeral. Would Her Majesty really have minded if kids went on a waterslide or, come to that, Poundland shut this Monday? I assume she wasn’t a regular.

Away from such performances, the isle is full of noises – a sense of chaos suspended. For an idea of the devastation to come, speak to Paul Morrison. A policy adviser at the Methodist church, he has been analysing the financial diaries recently filled in by visitors to food banks, debt clinics and other church-based projects.

Right now, he finds, a little over half of respondents – 56% – can carry on without falling into debt. It may mean walking an hour to the job centre, rather than taking a bus; it can be thrown off even by the smallest accident, but with luck it can be done.

Scroll forward two weeks, though, and add in higher energy prices, ­and everything changes. Even with Truss’s new measures, just 2% of his group can survive financially. The other 98% are wiped out. Years of reporting have shown me that the very poor are the best budgeters in the country – better than any pinstriped auditor. They can account for every pound in and every pound out. Come 1 October, they will have no margin to cushion them.

And so they will sink into the depths beneath any safety net. Meanwhile, others will float above the law of the land. It has not been widely reported, but King Charles won’t have to pay a penny of inheritance tax on the vast estate passed to him by one of the wealthiest women in the world. Nor is he under any legal obligation to pay income tax; he does so voluntarily. This has been the arrangement only since 1993. For decades beforehand, the monarchy paid no tax at all.

When that came to light, the public outcry, coupled with the anger of ordinary taxpayers asked to stump up for repairs to Windsor Castle, forced the Queen and her eldest son to rethink their affairs. When John Major announced this deal in the Commons, he defended the lack of inheritance tax as being in the service of “the overwhelming wish of people in this country”. The people in this country were, of course, never asked.

When Dennis Skinner asked on which portion of her assets – which, in today’s figures, include the £16bn crown estate, the £650m duchy of Lancaster, and the estates at Balmoral and Sandringham – would be taxed, Major saw red. Only the fact that it was Skinner’s birthday, he replied, stopped him from responding “in the beastly way in which I would otherwise have responded to the ludicrous question that he asked me”. The self-styled boy from Brixton has, inevitably, placed himself at the very forefront of this week’s National Grovel.

Yet the former MP for Bolsover asked exactly the right question, about how far the constitutional monarchy was answerable to her democracy – and the real answer is that, despite what the textbooks say, our parliamentary democracy remains accountable to the royal family. As my colleagues Rob Evans and David Pegg have revealed over the years, more than 1,000 laws have been vetted by the Queen or Charles before they were even put in front of parliament.

Under the procedure of Queen’s or King’s consent, ministers alert the monarch to any draft bill that might affect their private wealth. Since their assets span everything from country estates to housing, much of which the public don’t even know about, that grants them a huge amount of power over the very process of drafting the laws that govern the rest of us.

Prefer not to sell your houses, Charles? Then your tenants will just have to tolerate this 21st-century feudalism. Don’t want those pipelines running through your land in Scotland, ma’am? Then you will be exempt from the law covering everyone else – and no one at Holyrood will be told, until they read it in the Guardian.

“Do you know that there is a duke in Scotland who can ride ninety miles without leaving his own estate?” asks a character in Victor Hugo’s 1869 novel The Man Who Laughs. “Do you know that Her Majesty has £700,000 sterling from the civil list, besides castles, forests, domains, fiefs, tenancies, freeholds, prebendaries, tithes, rent, confiscations, and fines, which bring in over a million sterling?”

“Yes,” comes the reply. “The paradise of the rich is made out of the hell of the poor.”

One law for King Charles the billionaire, another for you. Bailiffs for the poorest in society, privileged exemption for the very richest. A society with all the latest technology and sophistication, yet still in the shadow of medieval feudalism. Except even John of Gaunt couldn’t have counted on the unstinting support of the Daily Mail.

 

ATTACHMENT TWENTY EIGHT   Now, yet another from G.U.K.

 

AFTER THE FUNERAL, THE BIG QUESTION: WAS THIS QUEEN BIGGER THAN THE MONARCHY ITSELF?

For 70 years, the institution was moulded in her image. Today’s outpouring reflects that legacy – and the problem King Charles will face

By Marina Hyde  Mon 19 Sep 2022 09.53 EDT

 

For 70 years, the institution was moulded in her image. Today’s outpouring reflects that legacy – and the problem King Charles will face

Thousands of words may have been spoken and sung at the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, but the most intensely eloquent moment of all was a silence. It came after the mournful last post had sounded, and before the rousing, cheery notes of the reveille, itself followed by God Save the King. That’s quite a key change. In that silence hung the scale of what is being orchestrated, and the eternal fragility of it, too. For all the tears shed, all the moving personal respects paid, all the pilgrimages to London, all the uncomplaining hours queued, all the streets lined, all the flowers reverentially laid, these things are not allowed – cannot be allowed – to overwhelm the essential premise of royalty: the idea that no one is bigger than the club.

Every royal rite of passage is choreographed to create a sense of renewal. From births to weddings, the populace is encouraged not simply to celebrate, but to take the sense that the institution of the crown is being revitalised and strengthened. Even funerals are not allowed to be any different. We can never quite work out whether we want royals to be just like us or nothing like us, but in this they are wholly other. Among ordinary people, a funeral is a funeral, and doesn’t end with the apotheosis of the living.

In part, the nine-year-old Prince George and his seven-year-old sister, Charlotte, joined the procession behind the Queen’s coffin as it entered Westminster Abbey today to show love for a great-grandmother. But courtiers also welcome the children’s high-profile presence as a reminder to the people that the Windsors are long and strong in heirs. It’s a family show, and sons and daughters have to be put on the stage. A handwritten card on the Queen’s coffin today bore the inscription “In loving and devoted memory. Charles R”. Twenty-five years ago, at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, an envelope on the coffin had read simply “Mummy”.

 

But those at the palaces who coordinate these stunningly beautiful, matchless spectacles – who spend years and even decades rehearsing for them – know there is always jeopardy. The magic sometimes doesn’t work. Barely four years ago, you couldn’t move for knowing commentators explaining that the marriage of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle had dazzlingly renewed the House of Windsor, as part of a brilliant strategic modernisation by the crown. Those takes were soon retired, either quietly, or loudly and viciously. Meanwhile, the Abbey today contained plenty of representatives of former royal families for whom the ineffable trick at some point stopped working. Fit your own air quotes, but the funeral guest list included people who style themselves as the Prince of Venice, the Custodian of the Crown of Romania, and Tsar Simeon II of Bulgaria. Underpinning much of our crown’s bravura pageantry is the painstaking sense that nothing, ever, can be taken for granted.

In this abiding enterprise, silence often remains golden. US politicians, a Disneyfied White Rabbit, the mindfulness coaches of today – at different times, all these have uttered a line the Queen never spoke but seemed to spend her life of service embodying: “Don’t just do something – stand there.” The mourning period and funeral have seen the institution giving a masterclass in enduring and mostly wordless spectacle. Big guns have been brought out, figuratively and literally. Ordinary people who revered her sense of duty have felt it their own duty to pay her their respects. Many have surprised themselves by feeling far more emotional than they’d imagined (though without question this is not universal). They were not ready for a 96-year-old sovereign to go.

At the funeral of his agent in 1999, the actor Bill Murray fixed the Hollywood audience with a deadpan stare. “There are so many people here today,” he began, “that I would so much rather be eulogising.” He then moved to looking directly into the eyes of certain members of the audience. “Like you. And you. And you. And you. And you.” You can’t do this at a state funeral, of course, despite today’s congregation boasting several candidates for getting “the look”. Fortunately, Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman seems to have discovered a diary clash at the last minute, while 13th fairy Vladimir Putin was never on the list. But the Chinese vice-president, Wang Qishanmade the cut, as did Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and the authoritarian Egyptian prime minister, Mostafa Madbouly. Spare a thought/laugh for the many puffed-up presidents and prime ministers and global bigwigs present in the Abbey imagining their own future send-offs, and realising that compared to this, those would tend toward the low-key.

But still they pay obeisance, with even the Japanese emperor submitting to the supposed indignity of park-and-ride coaches to the Abbey. For all her celebrated lack of vanity, one can’t imagine those image-conscious courtiers would ever have let the Queen herself be just another figure emerging from an international dignitary bus. So there remains something undeniably unique about her final event, in a church whose building was begun by Edward the Confessor almost a thousand years ago. All flags on public buildings in the United States have flown at half-mast for a full 10 days. Landmarks around the world shone red, white and blue, or went dark. It is difficult to imagine another figure for whom all these things would have been done.

Was she, then, bigger than the club? After initial scepticism about her youth on accession, Winston Churchill very quickly came to believe that the Queen was something more than merely special. “All the film people in the world, if they had scoured the globe, could not have found someone so suited to the part.” For 70 years, Elizabeth II created a version of the monarchy that many of her supporters came to worry would work only with her at the centre. For the past 10 or 20 years of her life, this was something that could be said, and was. Over the past 10 days, the hush has descended. As her son ascends to the throne at the age of 73, all manner of people hold their breath to see if her youth policy will be borne out.

For, unprecedented in most living memory, the period of national mourning since the Queen’s death has been tinged with a sense that it could never be this way again. There is something in the sheer longevity of reign and the breadth of historical upheaval in which she nonetheless remained an iconic constant that feels simply unrepeatable. Do they make them like they used to? To many, today felt not just like watching a moment in history, but watching the embodiment of a now-vanished past pass finally into history. From David Beckham to non-famous mourners to foreign politicians to local mayors, it’s striking that so many different people found themselves in front of cameras over the past 10 days producing exactly the same phrase: “We’ll never see her like again.”

 This article was amended on 20 September 2022. An earlier version said the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, attended the funeral. While previous reports said he had intended to do so, in the end Egypt was represented by the prime minister, Mostafa Madbouly.

·         Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

 

ATTACHMENT TWENTY NINE  And finally, Monday’s last from the GUK

 

DEAR KING CHARLES, IF YOU’RE SERIOUS ABOUT REFORMING THE MONARCHY, THIS IS HOW TO START

The hard work of being monarch now begins – and here are five things you can do right now to improve things

 

By Stephen Bates   Tue 20 Sep 2022 09.25 EDT

 

Dear King Charles,

The captains and the kings have departed, the last presidents and princes are heading for the airport. After the funeral, the hard work of being monarch begins.

The red boxes are piling up, and Liz Truss will be dropping by for a weekly audience, smugly patronising you. So what should your priorities be? If you are truly serious about reforming the monarchy, here are five issues, helpfully offered, to which you might (but probably won’t) bend your brain.

Inheritance and corporation tax

If you really want to express solidarity with your subjects, particularly at a time of economic hardship, you could add some additional tax payments. All right, yes, you have paid income tax voluntarily since the age of 21, but large amounts of the royal resources are exempt. The royal family have generally been extremely reluctant to pay tax – they avoided income tax entirely from 1910 to 1994, usually pleading poverty – and they still don’t have to pay inheritance or corporation tax.

It is very difficult to separate state assets – the stuff the royals cannot sell like the crown jewels, the Rembrandts, the Rubenses and the 7,000 other paintings in the royal collection, to say nothing of George V’s stamp collection, which is valued in excess of £100m – but you do have private resources, such as those professionally managed for you. And you do have the sovereign grant, currently £86.3m, and 25% of the £312m current revenue of the crown estates, which gets paid back to you by the government for carrying out your royal duties.

But you have private assets too – and those are the ones we can only estimate, like Balmoral and Sandringham with their large estates. The Sunday Times Rich List reckoned this year that the Queen was worth £370m (way below the likes of Richard Branson and Paul McCartney but not to be sneezed at). That would make for a tidy inheritance tax bill on assets worth more than £500,000, but the royals are exempt and the Queen’s will will be sealed – so we’ll never know exactly what she’s passed on, unless you let a little light in on the magic. You could call it levelling up.

A slimmed-down monarchy

You have vowed to get rid of some of the flunkies, hangers-on and minor royals, though that did not get off to a particularly good start when your staff at Clarence House received notice of redundancy in the middle of last week , just as they were working flat out on the transition arrangements for you. But slimming down usually refers to the part-time royals who bulk out attendances at events and get paid when they do so. The trouble is, there’s a bit of a labour shortage at the moment, what with Prince Andrew sunk below the waterline and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in voluntary exile in the US. It puts a lot of work on the royals who are left, such as you and Camilla, the Queen Consort, the Prince and Princess of Wales, Prince Edward and Sophie and Princess Anne. Maybe you will just have to cut back on royal visits.

Giving up Buckingham Palace

Why not? It’s draughty and cold, falling to bits with chunks of masonry dropping off. Grand but, well, just not very homely. There are 775 rooms, hundreds of bedrooms and bedroom suites, 92 offices, 19 state rooms and a swimming pool and the central London position would make it perhaps not a shelter for homeless people, but an ideal luxury hotel. Trump Green Park, perhaps? It can’t actually be sold, but perhaps could be leased out and hired back for special balcony occasions and state dinners. Or, if that’s too drastic, why not open it to the public all year round instead of just in the summer? There are hints you may turn Balmoral into more of a museum than it is already.

Reforming the honours system

Do we really still need the Order of the British Empire, or other imperial relics? Couldn’t they be renamed something more inclusive? And while we’re at it, could awards be given solely on merit, not to party donors, chief executives and cronies of the prime minister? Such people don’t really need it to enhance their status and stature (nor do film stars, sports heroes or other eye-catching recipients, nice though it is to see their smiling faces in the media in the dog days after Christmas). Longstanding nurses and cleaners may be less glamorous, but more of them would certainly be worthier candidates, especially for a government that supposedly wants to enhance their status without necessarily paying for it.

Banning leaky pens

That’s something you could definitely do, and an inky-fingered nation would rejoice. If it’s true you take your pillow and toilet seat with you whenever you’re away from home, surely you could take your own pen? You used a fountain pen for those spiky black spider memos you used to write privately to ministers, but perhaps you could have a decent ballpoint pen for those sudden signing sessions without the risk of a pen malfunction incident. No one would notice. Promise.

·         Stephen Bates is the Guardian’s former religious and royal correspondent. His latest book is The Shortest History of the Crown.

 

ATTACHMENT THIRTY From the Guardian U,K.  


THE FINAL FAREWELL’: WHAT THE PAPERS SAID ABOUT THE QUEEN’S FUNERAL

Powerful images dominated the newspaper front pages after a nation gathered to say goodbye to its longest-serving monarch

By Graham Russell    Mon 19 Sep 2022 22.56 EDT

 

After 10 days of national mourning, remembrance and no small amount of expectation, newspapers around the world gave their front pages over to Queen Elizabeth II’s final journey back to Windsor.

The Guardian’s main image displays the bearer party taking the Queen’s coffin up the steps into the darkened entrance of the George VI Memorial Chapel at Windsor Castle, above a report from Caroline Davies on the most intimate part of the day: a family farewell. Other contributions from Jonathan FreedlandEsther Addley and Marina Hyde (See Attachment Twenty Eight) assess(ed) the future, past and present of the monarchy.

The Mirror chooses a similar image in a poster front page for its tribute edition, displaying the cherished items on top of the coffin to full effect. A subdued headline in small font says simply “… until we meet again”.

The Times again chooses a wrap front page, showing the coffin entering Westminster Abbey with the headline: “Carried to her rest”. The back page carries a quote from Hubert Parry’s From Songs of Farewell: “Leave then thy foolish ranges, For none can thee secure But one, who never changes, Thy God, thy life, thy cure.”

The Express uses its wrap to signal a farewell to the past and a look at the future. The Queen’s coffin dominates the front page alongside the headline “God rest our Queen”, while a tearful, saluting King Charles III adorns the back, with the exclamation: “God save the King”.

The Financial Times looks from above at the coffin in the nave of Westminster Abbey and chooses a quote from Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, for its headline: “People of loving service are rare in any walk of life. Leaders of loving service are still rarer.”

The Telegraph homes in on a tender moment for its main image, showing King Charles placing the Company Camp Colour of the Grenadier Guards on the Queen’s coffin. “An outpouring of love” is the headline, above Hannah Furness’s five-column report on the day.

The Sun stays with its royal purple colouring and is one of few papers to feature the crowds that gathered for the farewell. Across a picture of the funeral cortege processing along the Long Walk to Windsor, the upbeat headline is “We sent her victorious”. The back page of its wrap features the coffin being lowered into its final resting place.

The Mail opts for image of the coffin being lowered into the vault at St George’s chapel, Windsor, with the headline: “Her final journey” for its bumper 120-page edition.

Metro captures King Charles’s sombre expression as he gazes at the flower-strewn hearse on its arrival at Windsor Castle. The crowds lining the Long Walk form the back page of its wrap.

The i carries a historic note in its headline: “The end of the Elizabethan age” and describes in its trademark bullet points how Monday’s “spectacular military display” brought London to a standstill.

The Northern Echo shows proceedings in London and opts to use a quote from BBC presenter Kirsty Young for its headline: “She made history, she was history”.

The National in Scotland gives its front page to Pipe Major Paul Burns of the Royal Regiment of Scotland, who signalled the end of the Westminster Abbey funeral service with a powerful rendition of Sleep, Dearie, Sleep on the bagpipes.

The Daily Record showed the Queen’s coffin being taken into Windsor Castle, with the headline “Rest in peace, Queen Elizabeth”.

Further afield, the timings allowed Australian papers enough time to place their own poignant tributes on their front pages. Amid debate about whether Charles should be Australia’s head of state, Tuesday’s papers were united in covering the occasion in subdued tones. The Age (“The final farewell”) and Sydney Morning Herald (“We’ll meet again”) both showed the Queen’s coffin being guided into Windsor Castle, while the Herald Sun and Daily Telegraph sought to capture the feeling of readers with their headlines: “Thank you, our Queen”, and “Rest in peace, Ma’am” respectively.

Adelaide’s Advertiser went with the headline “Eternal Queen”, and Queensland’s Courier Mail went for “Thank you, our Queen”. National paper the Australian calls the late monarch “Elizabeth the great” and focuses on the grief-stricken expression of King Charles for its image, with the headline: “We’ll meet again”, perhaps an echo of Welby’s reference to Vera Lynn’s song, which the Queen used in a broadcast during the worst of the Covid pandemic.

 

ATTACHMENT THIRTY ONE From Agence France-Presse

HONG KONG ARRESTS HARMONICA PLAYER AT QUEEN VIGIL FOR SEDITION

Man played British national anthem and pro-democracy protest song to crowds gathered during funeral

 

Agence France-Presse in Hong Kong   Tue 20 Sep 2022 09.49 EDT

 

A Hongkonger who played a harmonica to a crowd outside the British consulate during Elizabeth II’s funeral was arrested for sedition, according to police and local media

Crowds of Hongkongers have queued to pay tribute to Britain’s late monarch this week, some expressing nostalgia for the city’s colonial past at a time when Beijing is seeking to purge dissent.

Hundreds gathered outside the consulate on Monday evening as Britain was holding a state funeral, sharing live streams on phones as well as laying candles and flowers.

At one point, a man started to play songs on a harmonica, according to an AFP reporter on the scene, including the British national anthem and Glory to Hong Kong, a popular song during huge, sometimes violent pro-democracy protests in 2019.

The mourners outside the consulate applauded the performance and shone their phone lights, with many later shouting the protest chant “Hongkongers add oil” and singing Glory to Hong Kong.

Local reporters later photographed the harmonica player being questioned by police and detained.

On Tuesday, police said a 43-year-old man surnamed Pang was arrested outside the consulate for “seditious acts”. A police source confirmed to AFP that the man arrested was the harmonica player.

After 2019’s democracy protests, China has cracked down on dissent in Hong Kong using national security legislation and charges of sedition.

The latter is a colonial-era law that had fallen into obscurity for decades until prosecutors reintroduced it in the aftermath of the protests.

The song Glory to Hong Kong contains the popular protest chant “liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times”, which has been declared by the courts to be a threat to national security.

A man in his 60s was charged earlier this year for performing without a licence after playing the song on his erhu, a Chinese two-stringed instrument, at a bus terminus.

Oliver Ma a Filipino-Hong Kong buskerwas arrested three times in 2020 and 2021 when singing the English version of the protest song on Hong Kong streets.

Hong Kong was a British colony for more than 150 years and while the financial hub was returned to China in 1997, the past is engraved into its landscape, from street names and the ubiquity of English to the common law legal system.

In the week since the Queen’s death more than 13,000 people signed a condolence book in the city’s British consulate.

 

ATTACHMENT THIRTY TWO from Vanity Fair

 

PRINCE HARRY AND MEGHAN MARKLE RETURN TO CALIFORNIA AFTER QUEEN ELIZABETH’S FUNERAL

The royal couple was originally in Europe to support a number of charities they work with when the monarch died.

 

BY Emily Kirkpatrick, 9/22/22

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle finally headed home to California this week after Queen Elizabeth’s death extended their visit overseas.

The royal couple flew home from the UK on Tuesday following their mourning period, and one day after attending the late monarch’s funeral service. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex happened to be in Europe at the time of her death as they were on a scheduled trip overseas to attend a number of events in support of the charities they work with, including the One Young World Summit and the lead-up celebrations for the Invictus Games taking place in Düsseldorf next year. So, when the queen suddenly took ill, Harry was able to rush from Scotland to be with the rest of his family. He and Meghan then stayed through Monday in order to attend the state funeral and committal service before Queen Elizabeth’s private burial. In the lead up to the funeral, the Sussexes also attended a number of events in remembrance of the monarch. On September 10, they joined Prince William and Kate Middleton in greeting mourners and well-wishers gathered outside Windsor Castle to share their remembrances of the late royal.

In his first statement about his grandmother posted to the Archewell website following her passing, Harry highlighted the queen’s commitment to serving the United Kingdom, writing, “In celebrating the life of my grandmother, Her Majesty The Queen—and in mourning her loss—we are all reminded of the guiding compass she was to so many in her commitment to service and duty. She was globally admired and respected. Her unwavering grace and dignity remained true throughout her life and now her everlasting legacy.” He also added on a personal note, “Granny, while this final parting brings us great sadness, I am forever grateful for all of our first meetings — from my earliest childhood memories with you, to meeting you for the first time as my Commander-in-Chief, to the first moment you met my darling wife and hugged your beloved great-grandchildren. I cherish these times shared with you, and the many other special moments in between. You are already sorely missed, not just by us, but by the world over.” Harry concluded, “Thank you for your commitment to service. Thank you for your sound advice. Thank you for your infectious smile. We, too, smile knowing that you and grandpa are reunited now, and both together in peace.”

While on this extended trip, Harry and Meghan left their two children, 3-year-old Archie and 1-year-old Lilibet, back home in Montecito with the Duchess’s mother, Doria Ragland. The pair have been living in the ritzy California neighborhood popular with celebrities since 2020 when they officially stepped down from their positions as senior royals.

 

ATTACHMENT THIRTY THREE from People

KATE MIDDLETON SAYS QUEEN ELIZABETH WAS ‘LOOKING DOWN ON US’ WHEN 5 RAINBOWS APPEARED OVER BALMORAL

The Princess of Wales said the royal family felt the presence of the late monarch when five rainbows graced the sky above the Queen’s beloved escape in the Scottish Highlands, where she died Sept. 8

By Janine Henni  Published on September 22, 2022 02:57 PM

 

 “In Scotland, how many rainbows turned up?” Prince William asked his wife at Windsor Guildhall on Thursday. You hardly ever see rainbows up there, but there were five.”

“Her Majesty was looking down on us,” Princess Kate replied.

Rainbows similarly broke through the crowds at two other historic U.K. landmarks in recent days. Shortly before Queen Elizabeth’s death was announced on Sept. 8, a double rainbow broke through the clouds over Buckingham Palace. The day before her funeral, on Sept. 18, another rainbow ignited the sky over the Palace of Westminster, as the Queen’s coffin was lying in state.

Kate Middleton and Prince William Step Out Following Queen’s Funeral to Thank Staff and Volunteers

As the royal family continues mourning, the new Prince and Princess of Wales made their first appearance Thursday following the state funeral at Westminster Abbey and committal service at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, showing appreciation for those behind the scenes who facilitated the Queen’s final televised funeral ritual.  “Her Majesty was looking down on us,” Princess Kate replied.

Rainbows similarly broke through the crowds at two other historic U.K. landmarks in recent days

Around 800 people attended the committal, and the rite had a more intimate feel than the state funeral. The pews were filled with some of the people who knew the Queen best — in addition to members of the family, the congregation was made up of past and present members of the Queen’s Household, including from the private estates. Also in attendance were governors-general and prime ministers from Commonwealth nations. IAN

On Monday evening, Queen Elizabeth was laid to rest in the King George VI Memorial Chapel alongside husband Prince Philip, father King George VI, mother Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and sister Princess Margaret.

For the young woman never meant to be monarch, the end brought a quiet homecoming.

“She had no wish to see a statue of herself or to even have a separate burial chamber within St. George’s Chapel,” historian Robert Hardman, author of Queen of Our Times: The Life of Elizabeth II, tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story.

“As her cousin Margaret Rhodes once said to me, ‘She wanted to make her father proud.’ “

 

 

ATTACHMENT THIRTY FOURfrom Hunger

OPINION: WHETHER YOU LIKE THE QUEEN OR NOT, THIS HAS BEEN MASS HYSTERIA

 

By Danny Price, 21 September 2022

 

So the Queen died, Lizzie kicked the bucket, she’s out of here. Let’s be real, she was 96, she had great innings, and this was expected. Was it sad?….for me, no, but for a lot of people, it was devastating. We’re talking about the person whose head is on every coin and every banknote. People genuinely believe that there was some sort of connection between them and the monarch. 

But however you feel about Queen Elizabeth II, it is impossible to deny that this is the end of an era. It’s the end of an era that in all honesty seems a lot like a great big indoctrination scheme. And let’s be clear, it still is. 

The Queen’s passing didn’t shock the world but make no mistakes about it, we are shocked. On one hand, we have extreme royalist loyalists, and people who are genuinely saddened by this situation, and on the other hand, we have everyone else. In 2021 a YouGov survey indicated that only 31% of people aged 18 to 24 thought that we should have a monarch. The country has now been divided again. But that’s nothing new, is it? Brexit, the pandemic, strikes, immigration, race, class, sex… The list goes on. 

The UK has never been more separated than in recent times. The country is pretty much an analogy of that time some of us saw “the dress” in different colours, except that our divides actually affect people’s lives. We are split. And we’re not talking about even splits or logical splits.

Right now it seems like it’s the most irrational sides that are the ones getting what they want. We had wall-to-wall 24-hour coverage in relation to the Queen’s passing/funeral/the ‘Queue’, yet very little on the other important issues. There’s beem hardly anything in regards to the millions of people affected by the floods in Pakistan. There’s nothing much about the Russians retreating from Kharkiv. Climate change and Covid-19 deaths are vastly ignored. These are important things that affect us, yet we have been reduced to some sort of opt-in system.

If we want to know about other issues, we had better go looking for those stories ourselves because the news channels have only been interested in reporting on the monarchy and this extravagant 12-day mourning period we’ve just experienced. Post funeral, too, this attitude appears to have been milked as much as possible. Even two days after the funeral, the headlines are more focused on Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby ‘skipping the Queue’ to see the Queen’s coffin. The majority don’t want this, but the minority is telling us we’re having it. How very democratic.

What we are seeing right now, with our eyes is nothing short of cult crutini.

We’ve had BBC reporters call the cost of living crisis — something that will see thousands of people die this winter because of the government’s inaction — “irrelevant” in comparison to the Queen’s passing. We’ve had hospital appointments, some for cancer patients, being rescheduled or cancelled. Theme parks were closed, flights were cancelled, and an amateur Sheffield football team are being investigated for playing a match in the days after her death… Center Parcs was initially planning on turfing out paying customers on the day of the funeral until due to backlash they reconsidered. Bike racks and kids’ rides were closed, and supermarkets removed the ‘beeps’ from self-service scanners. Whether you like the Queen or not, this has been mass hysteria. 

When people rightfully pointed out exactly how ridiculous it all is, they were crutin “disrespectful”. When people exercised their right to free speech, they were arrested. One woman filmed authorities following her around Edinburgh because she was holding a sheet of white paper. It was insanity: “Mourn the monarch or face persecution”, seemed to be the sentiment of the day. 

Climate change and Covid-19 deaths are vastly ignored.And forget about bringing up colonialism, as you would have surely been met with the response of “now is not the time”. So, when is the right time? When will it be the right time to talk about all the people who died at the hands of our monarchy? When will it be the time to discuss a formal apology to the ancestors of the brutally murdered — that is, people who were killed without dignity for not handing over their land in name of the Queen? And when are we finally going to put a lid on this insidious racism spawned from the monarchy? If not now then when?

Because let’s be straight, the actions of the monarchy have played a huge role in the existence of racism in this country. The crutinizeion of black and brown colonies invaded by British soldiers set a standard for how many citizens have viewed and treated those with different ethnic backgrounds ever since. The damage caused by this has been vast. Racism is unfortunately not a rare occurrence in Great Britain — racism is rife. Discrimination is everywhere, and it has descended from the top. You could even go as far as to say that racism is the only working example of the ‘trickle-down’ economics system that is now being championed by our unelected Prime Minister, Liz Truss. 

On the 5th of September, Chris Kaba was shot and killed by a metropolitan Police Officer. Police believed that the soon-to-be father, Chris was “armed and dangerous” — he wasn’t. What we have here is a case of history repeating itself — when Mark Duggan was murdered by police in 2011, it was headline news. Thousands took to the streets in protest. Back then people said that it would happen again, and 11 years later, it has, but the response has been very different. 

There’s been a blasé investigation, a delayed suspension of the officer, a lack of arrests, and even an unsettling amount of authorities who are threatening to quit in protest if the officer responsible loses his job — yes, you read that correctly. Coverage has been sparse, and I can guarantee that the Met and their PR were sighing in relief that the pressure was taken off them in light of the Queen’s death. Equality is really not our strong point in the UK; the Queen coverage is more important than justice, but we could have guessed that.

People in other countries and media in other countries are saying that this is the beginning of societal collapse in the UK. Earlier this month, Professor Eliot Jacobson stated that the UK is likely to be the first world country to implode due to Brexit, government spending, corruption, and inflation. There’s also the fact that global businesses are simply not investing and are instead actively withdrawing business… This should be terrifying. With an estimated cost of over £6bn spread across the 12 days of mourning, a state funeral, a coronation, and the rebranding that comes with having a King, we, as a country simply can’t afford to mourn to this extent.

And just when you think it couldn’t get any worse, there came Prince Andrew, gliding down into the grounds of the proverbial ‘secondary school’ of the public eye, ready to serve under the new King Charles III. In the last two years, Charles has pretty much only done two things that have come to the public’s attention: one, accepting millions of Euros from a Qatari sheikh in a suitcase and/or carrier bag, and the other… accepting millions of pounds from the Bin Laden family for his charity. Charles will be a fine King.

But back to Andrew, who was presented with a sexual abuse lawsuit by Virginia Giuffre, and had ties to a notorious sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein. He is probably the most hated royal in the country, but we can’t be surprised that he’s looking to make a comeback. It was always said that he would be gradually reintroduced to “public service”, we just never thought it would be this soon after the scandal. People are being called disrespectful for expressing how they feel… But when it comes to Meghan Markle, it’s a completely different kettle of fish.

At the end of last week, The Daily Mail has run 15+ stories specifically about Meghan. Avid Mail readers are saying that her crutini was a contributing factor to the Queen’s death, and she’s even been crutinize for holding the hand of her husband, Prince Harry. Twitter is a flood of Daily Mail patriots creating the hashtag #GOHOMEMEGHAN, and they even elevated it to ‘trending status’ on Twitter last week.

Then there’s the funeral itself, broadcast on pretty much every terrestrial television channel (bar channel 5) in an attempt to achieve maximum grieving. Really? Did we really need every channel to show the exact same thing? Of course, we didn’t.

Make no mistake about it, what is happening right now in the United Kingdom is a deep hyper-madness that I fear we will never recover from. A weird patriotism that has severely blinded anyone who lacks the most basic common sense. Thousands of people have been sentenced to death this winter due to our government. Hundreds of thousands of people are homeless whilst the person who owns the most land on the planet lay in state. 

News networks are ignoring the institutional racism stemming from the people who are meant to keep our streets safe. There’s no attention to our new Prime Minister Liz Truss’ plan to burden the British taxpayer with £130bn to try and solve the energy crisis. The EU, meanwhile, is going ahead with their windfall tax on big energy companies. 

It’s a shame and it’s a joke.

What we need is real honest media to be asking the right questions and reporting the right issues. We need to crutinize the Conservative government for their draconian actions. We need to ask why is it right that the government, which costs the British public in excess of £54.6 million per year, have only been in session for 5 days out of 61. Whether you voted for the Tories or not, it’s simply not right and it needs fixing. But in order for that to happen, things need to be discussed and reported.

On the World stage, the UK has looked bad for a while now, but with the passing of the Queen, and the country’s reaction to it, we’re heading towards dangerous territory in terms of our reputation and our functionality. In the end, it will only be the citizens who will suffer.

 

 

ATTACHMENT THIRTY FIVE from the G.U.K.

TWO MEN QUESTIONED IN CASH-FOR-HONOURS INQUIRY LINKED TO KING CHARLES’S CHARITY

Met confirms two men interviewed under caution over allegations linked to Prince’s Foundation

 

By Jamie Grierson and Robert Booth  Fri 23 Sep 2022 11.30 EDT

Two men have been questioned under caution by officers investigating cash-for-honours allegations linked to King Charles III’s charity the Prince’s Foundation.

In a brief statement, the Metropolitan police confirmed that on 6 September officers interviewed a man in his 50s and a man in his 40s under caution in relation to offences under the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925.

The force launched the investigation in February after media reports alleged offers of help were made to secure honours and citizenship for a Saudi national.

In September last year, the Sunday Times published claims that the billionaire Mahfouz Marei Mubarak bin Mahfouz paid tens of thousands of pounds to fixers with links to Charles who had told him they could secure the honour.

Bin Mahfouz was awarded a CBE at a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace in November 2016.

When the allegations surfaced, the Prince’s Foundation launched an internal investigation, which in turn led to one of Charles’s former closest aides, Michael Fawcett, 59, temporarily stepping down as the foundation’s chief executive.

On Friday, the Met provided a short statement to the Guardian, which said: “On Tuesday, 6 September, police interviewed a man aged in his 50s and a man aged in his 40s under caution in relation to offences under the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925.”

The Met previously said it had received a letter in September last year relating to the media reports and, after further inquiries, launched an investigation into allegations of offences under the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925.

Bin Mahfouz has been one of the biggest donors to Charles’s charities and even has a forest named after him, the Mahfouz Wood, at the 15th-century Castle of Mey, formerly the Queen Mother’s home and now one of Charles’s Scottish residences.

The donations of more than £1.5m helped fund renovations of residences used by Charles, and other charitable ventures. The Prince’s Foundation publicly lists Mahfouz as a patron.

The Met said officers had liaised with the Prince’s Foundation about the findings of the independent investigation into fundraising practices.

 

ATTACHMENT THIRTY SIX from the Kuwait Times

BIN LADEN FAMILY DONATED £1M TO PRINCE CHARLES CHARITY

 

London: Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, accepted a £1 million ($1.19 million, 1.21 million euro) donation to his charitable trust from the family of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, The Sunday Times reported.

Although there is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by the Saudi family members, the revelation increases scrutiny on the 73-year-old prince’s charity organisations, which have been rocked by allegations of criminal wrong doing.

Several of his advisers urged Charles not to take the donation from family patriarch Bakr bin Laden and his brother Shafiq — half-brothers of terror leader Osama — according to sources cited by the paper.

Charles, 73, agreed to the donation to the Prince of Wales Charitable Fund (PWCF) when he met with Bakr, 76, at Clarence House in London in 2013, despite objections of advisers from the trust and his office, the paper reported.

Ian Cheshire, chairman of PWCF, said the donation was agreed by the five trustees at the time.

British police in February launched an investigation into another of Charles’s charitable foundations over claims of a cash-for-honours scandal involving a Saudi businessman.

The head of The Prince’s Foundation resigned last year after an internal investigation into the allegations.

Michael Fawcett, chief executive of the foundation, had initially agreed to suspend his duties following newspaper revelations about his links to a Saudi national.

The man, tycoon Mahfouz Marei Mubarak bin Mahfouz, had donated large sums to restoration projects of particular interest to Charles.

Fawcett, a former valet to the Prince of Wales who has been close to Queen Elizabeth II’s heir for decades, is alleged to have coordinated efforts to grant a royal honour and even UK citizenship to Mahfouz.

Mahfouz reportedly denies any wrongdoing.

The Charities Commission, which registers and oversees charities in England and Wales, said in November it had opened a formal probe into donations received by Mahfouz’s charitable trust which were intended for the prince’s foundation.

The Prince’s Foundation, set up in 1986, is not regulated by the Charities Commission but is registered with the Scottish Charity Regulator.

The Scottish body in September launched its own probe into reports that the foundation accepted cash from a Russian banker previously convicted of money laundering.

 

ATTACHMENT THIRTY SEVENQE2’s PEANUT GALLERIES

 

Unsurprisingly, these and other articles on the Queen’s funeral generated an enormous buzz from their Peanut Galleries... a few of which we mention; many, many others (some sad and nostalgic, others angry and dismissive) on the assorted websites.

The Guardian’s study of the Queenly “power of pageantry: (Tuesdsay after the service) declared that “No country other than the UK could put on such a spectacle (Queen Elizabeth II: from public pomp to a private family farewell, 19 September).”  Some of the peanuts shelling for Elizabeth included these...

Not a single person out of step. Trumpets, drums, bagpipes, all heralding the end of an era. Cannons firing, bells ringing, Big Ben chiming, choirboys singing. Row upon row of servicemen and servicewomen, faces etched in solemn regard. Columns of guardsmen, helmets gleaming, plumes wafting, bearskins bobbing. Line after line passes soberly by – a river of scarlet and gold in an ocean of black. The crowds bear witness to it all, a nation joined as one in solidarity for a queen the like of which we will never see again. Unforgettable.
Jon Goldney
Gawler, South Australia

 I am on vacation from the US in the UK. While not normally a royal follower, I decided that I had to do the British thing and watch the Queen’s funeral. It was impressive. I am glad I live in a world that still has pageantry. I am glad I live in a world that can still have things that serve no practical purpose, such as kings and queens, and soldiers who have swords on their belts, fur on their hats, and move like trained dancers. I hope that there will always be room in this world for soldiers who aren’t carrying guns.
Emily Anne Lyons
Annandale, New Jersey, US

 Charlotte Higgins (It was a gilded royal funeral, an event that will only heighten our self-delusion, 20 September) pretty much said what I feel, and the historical details she added – about the disastrous funeral of George IV, for example – were fascinating. Let us hope that there will be far fewer feathers the next time. I was particularly impressed by her careful use of the word “fulsome” to describe the BBC’s commentary. A shame she felt that she had to add the words “and mawkish” after it in order not to be misunderstood.
Michael Bulley
Chalon-sur-Saône, France

 If Charlotte Higgins was reminded of RSC productions of Shakespeare’s history plays, the image may have been reinforced by the BBC camera picking out the portrait of one king in the abbey: Richard II.
John Pelling
Coddenham, Suffolk

 The mood of gritty realism that describes life in modern Britain (unemployment, food bank visits, unplanned pregnancies) was briefly punctured in Ambridge on Monday when a funeral was briefly mentioned in The Archers, after the actual event had taken place in a parallel unreal world. At least the whole of the BBC did not succumb to royal overkill.
John Petrie
Leeds

 How do you explain to granddaughters aged 10 and eight why not a single girl chorister was included in the three choirs represented at the Queen’s obsequies? There was one woman among the altos at St George’s chapel in Windsor, presumably brought in to beef up that line a bit. Girls sing the treble line just as beautifully as boys do, and it is high time we scrapped this ridiculous Anglican cathedral tradition, as they have already done at a few cathedrals.
Tully Potter
Tonbridge, Kent

 Farewell to the Queen. The funeral was emotional; it made us proud of our country. It also felt like the last hurrah of the British empire. The last hurrah of a former world power.
Hubert Schmitz
Brighton, East Sussex

 

Noted author Quentin Crisp was among the peanuts of the New York Post who defended... sort of... the King’s fiscal congress with Bin Ladens.

 

Quentin Crisp

2 August, 2022

I'm extremely sorry for the losses of our brave heroes and citizens but please stop going after everyone except our own Government. If you had any real commitment you would be protesting everyday in front of the White House & Capitol! This country deals in billions of dollars with Saudi's annually.

He had allies, too...

“I couldn’t agree more,” posted ET. “Our government is extremely corrupt and deal with blood money constantly and disrespect many who have lost their lives for this country and in all types of tragedies.”

 “Bush protected Saudi's in this country,” TF recalled, “by getting them out of the country after 9/11 happened.”

“Osama Bin Laden was but one of 12 sons in the Bin Laden family and was basically disowned by them due to his radical politics,” apologized MF. One son, Salem, was active in the United States prior to his death while flying an ultralight airplane. The Bin Ladens were investors and owned properties all over the world.

“The Bin Laden family had nothing to do with Osama Bin Laden and disowned him long before 9/11. And quite frankly,” HT wrote, (channeling Alex Jones).  “I’m tired of the 9/11 families lashing out at anyone or anything that comes from Saudi Arabia. The Bin Laden family is a very successful civil engineering and construction conglomerate.”

But others were less charitable...

MT expressed the problem simply.  Outside of the Queen and her late husband, this family is very dysfunctional.”

RE questioned the means of payment.  “It's simple if it was all overboard there would have been a wire transfer. Suitcases filled woth money is beyond belief. Charles shouldn't be King if the Windsors want the monarchy to continue. But don't underestimate them they have been exiling dubious family members for centuries.”

Everyone of these rich " how can I put it nicely" dirtbags has taken bribes for decades and that includes royals, politicians of every party...” was HP’s exasperated lament, “....the only thing they are loyal to is their bank accounts. But we peasants continue to work and pay taxes so the rich can leech off of us and pretend they care.