Although open to the idea that Princess Diana died of foul play, I never accepted the common belief that the royal family knew of or ordered the event. After the tragedy, the Queen simply did not have her act together. If she were in on it, she would have had an after-action game plan.Now the right-wing Daily Mail (London's print equivalent to Fox News) has a new article which demands some attention:
These fresh accounts include the astonishing claim that the Queen’s most senior and trusted courtier was seen in Paris, at the British Embassy, half an hour before the crash.The Daily Mail also cites a "Mr. X," an alleged wireless operator at the British embassy in Paris, who says that he was hustled out of his post at midnight, just as Diana and Dodi left the hotel.
Furthermore, they include a baffling allegation that the RAF crew which flew Tony Blair from his Sedgefield constituency to London to greet the Princess’s repatriated body had been on continual standby to make the flight from two days earlier — when Diana was still alive.
My take? First principle: Consider the source. I'm wondering why a conservative tabloid is trying to pin a murder on the royal family.
3 comments:
Check out this book about the death of Diana
probably for the same reason Fox News was blaming Democrats for cheating in the '04 election,
Some background: the Daily Mail along with its sister paper the London Evening Standard (known to generations of its opponents as the Rothermere press) is indeed right-wing, xenophobic, Tory, and possibly the UK's closest equivalent to 'Poujadist', which would be so even if it hadn't supported Oswald Mosley's fascist party in the 1930s.
Nonetheless, for a few years it has been publishing stuff that doesn't appear to make the 'royal' family happy. A major example being its coverage of the Burrell trial. The Burrell coverage also involved allegations regarding Prince Charles and his b*yfriend Michael F*wcett, who was accused of raping George Smith - the asterisks being meant to remind people that these allegations have been suppressed in the UK using the courts. Mr Smith, hardly surprisingly, suffered mental problems, and has since died, of what causes is not known, in his 40s. Burrell was said to have had the tape of an interview that Princess Diana conducted with Mr Smith.
Meanwhile, the Evening Standard covered the Linda Chopp story too in a way that on the face of it would not please the Windsors. Ms Chopp was the driver of a car involved in the crash which killed Princess Diana's then boyfriend Barry Mannakee. Her mother says it was an assassination. Ms Chopp emigrated to the US soon after, bringing to mind the phrase 'an offer she couldn't refuse'.
(The Evening Standard is a London evening paper, i.e. it comes out during the day, is read by many people on their way home from work in central London, and is very influential as a source of stories for the rest of the media). So what's going on?
Is it damage limitation? Subtle misdirection? The Rothermere press doing a clever job for the PR guys at one or both of the palaces? I don't think that's the whole of it at all... I don't think this can be filed in the same category as 'debates' on the 'constitution' run by the Times, or, to take a different analogy, the way the debate on the monarchy was always controlled by the monarchists themselves in Australia. Or for that matter the 'debate' in the UK on the EU, which is turned up and down according to expediency.
First, there is a succession issue, in terms of 'should Prince Charles ascend, or should the succession skip a generation?'. In some circles he is understood to be something in between an unsafe pair of hands and a stupid nutcase, who might try God-knows-what if he ever got his butt on the throne, jeopardising the whole business... For example, it was reported that he advised his friend 'Fatty' Soames to run for leadership of the Tory party. Soames was the guy who went to the media following Princess Diana's famous 'Panorama' interview, declaring that her unhappiness had become "mental illness" and that she appeared to be "in the advanced stages of paranoia." Few doubted that he'd been sent by her then husband to do this. Few doubted either that he came across a as a complete idiot and an arsehole. He is a buffoonish, snot-nosed character who, whilst it might cause amusement to decent people were he ever to lead the Tories, would obviously never actually do so. Prince Charles also seems to want to be crowned head of all religions (except the furthest-out factions of Scottish presbyterianism anyway), rather than just Anglican Christianity... Islam, Hinduism, and he usually doesn't forget to mention Zoroastrianism either. (Maybe he could be crowned 'Ahriman'?) He's also made comments such as if the UK had to leave the EU over the genetically modified food issue, then so what? Which surely hardly went down well in the Foreign Office, gang of upper-class monarchists or no. More importantly, it has been reported that he was iffy about the invasion of Iraq and was even told he wasn't welcome in the US for a while for this reason...
Which brings us closer to the big picture: money. The 'royal' family is a far bigger financial/business interest than is generally recognised. Its financial guy Basil Smallpeice was a key figure in coup plotting in 1975. So was family member Lord Mountbatten - and not just at that time either. In the Thatcher years there was talk of setting up a 'second Foreign office' under Prince Charles, to deal with...which states? None other than the kindred monarchical Gulf despotisms of course. The sort of places - and this includes Saudi Arabia - where the accompanying press pack splits from the 'royals' because they are supposed to be on 'private' visits. See also the 'royal' involvement in British Trade International, a vehicle not just in the Middle East but also in places such as Thailand. They are at the pinnacle of the social hierarchy in the UK. The belief that this is somehow separate from 'politics' and 'economics', although widely held, would take us back to the lunacy of mid-20th-century Parsonian functionalism, an outlook which personally I don't think can be taken seriously.
Consider the Olympics too. Family member on the International Olympic Committee (the queen's daughter). And there's talk of having the opening ceremony in 2012 marching up the Mall (a 'royal' processional street in London leading from Trafalgar Square to Buckingham Palace - think Habsburgs 1850), promoting the Windsor-monarchist brand worldwide to billions on live TV. That’s power. (Personally I think the monarchy won't be around by then, but...maybe a case of whatever does not destroy them makes them stronger?) And did I mention who got the contract to run the 'party organising' (ahem) for the Athens Olympics? None other than M*chael F*wcett. A connected family I think one might agree, even without going into the gambling/horse-racing industry connection (hello Dubai) and Meyer Lansky (Bahamas 1940s, Colony Club in London 1960s), and the case of the setting up of Brunei, and.............
For 40 years (if you want to date it back to the patching up of differences over Suez and the building of the microwave communications network), or 60 (back to the secret UKUSA intelligence pact), the UK has been a dependency of the US, and in the past 15 years the relationship has been one of increasing subordination. At the same time, the country is being run down. Personal debt is at unprecedented levels. The central areas of most British towns are now as run down as shit. The prisons are full to bursting, and new ones are always being built. (Although proportionally, the captive population is nowhere near what it is in the US - yet). It wouldn't surprise me if, given such a thing as an objective analysis, the conclusion would be that output in the UK has been falling for maybe 15-20 years. The main boom sectors are gambling, loansharking, financial scams (centre: the City), drugs (legal and illegal), protection (aka security), and State pork-belly-type contracts, notably computer databases. Plus of course weapons (the UK being the second largest arms exporter in the world). Huge, massive scams have been blatantly perpetrated, always involving the City, and get talked about in the media for five minutes and then forgotten. The 'royal' family's stockbrokers Cazenove's boast of involvement in all the big privatisations. (Their solicitors, meanwhile, Farrer's, also worked for the Bin Laden Group, but I digress).
A big ongoing heist is in 'education' in the UK, involving Windsor family stooges ('GEMS'), and with Dubai as a big centre for the scam. For a parallel, see Neil Bush in the US (chum of Boris Berezovsky). (Again, I digress, but there is now a large proportion of rich Chinese pupils at elite English private schools - who outnumber the children of Russian 'businessmen' - and there remain strong right-wing Tory financial links between the UK and Hong Kong).
The economy is so closely bound to the US economy that ties with the rest of the EU pale in comparison, and despite cheap talk, joining the euro currency is not on the horizon. (Not unless the euro merges with the dollar, anyway, but that's a whole nother scenario). Cracks are visible in many of the traditional institutions - notably the Church of England, the army, and the State propaganda ministy aka the BBC.
Mutterings occur in traditionalist Tory upper-class circles about this. One who has been especially lucid has been David Cornwell, better known as John Le Carré. There were also the 50 or so former diplomats who signed a statement against the Iraq war... Those in SIS or elsewhere in Whitehall who hold similar views must presumably find it less easy to talk... Which then relates to the position of the UK-based part of the world ruling class in the event of a major deterioration of relations between Israel and the Arab States. The dependency on the US involves heavy support for Israel, but meanwhile Arab money is big in London, the Foreign Office is full of orientalist ‘Arabists’, and the-companies known as Dubai (especially) and Saudi Arabia are key place for various big and even not-so-big businesses in the UK... Stir in some traditional right-wing anti-Semitism too, although this factor should not be exaggerated, being more a channel along which certain geological fault-lines can run, rather than a driving force.
Is the monarchist 'settlement' undergoing a secular decline, with cracks appearing, with some former friends looking beyond it? I think so... Or at least hedging their bets...
The Princess Diana crash issue is important to this, insofar as I think it would be completely unrealistic to imagine that French State security does not have enough evidence to bring down the Windsors in a short space of time. This crash happened in the centre of Paris embassyland, one of the most surveilled areas in the world. Could a car - even a small car such as a Fiat Uno, have 'disappeared' without being caught on camera? In a scenario in which, we are supposed to believe, no foul play was involved? Who could really believe it? Moreover, even if French agencies weren't asked for assistance beforehand (which I doubt - this was no Lillehammer), they must surely have been asked for it afterwards... Some bargaining chip!
The 'royals' are in a position where they are no longer automatically the horse worth backing, by all factions of the bourgeoisie and the traditionalist Tory right...
Anyway...the above lengthy ramble is offered for some ideas on how the 'Daily Mail' came to run the story about Fellowes!
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