PRINCESS DIANA SPENCER WINDSOR DIES IN PARIS HOSPITAL ON AUGUST 31 or SEPTEMBER 1st
WAS IT MURDER OR FATE?
Princess Diana
The following letters were written by Princess Diana to her butler and close friend Paul Burrell. They’re included in his book “A Royal Duty”. The ‘crash letter’ tells of Diana’s fears that she would die in a car crash a full 10 months before it actually happened. A new investigation is still underway in Britain as the letter has finally surfaced.
From October 1996:
“I am sitting here at my desk today in October, longing for someone to hug me and encourage me to keep strong and hold my head high. This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous.[ The princess then identified where she felt the threat and danger would come from] is planning “an accident” in my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for Charles to marry. I have been battered, bruised and abused mentally by a system for 15 years now, but feel no resentment, I carry no hatred, I am weary of the battles, but I will never surrender. I am strong inside and maybe that is a problem for my enemies. Thank you Charles, for putting me through such hell and for giving me the opportunity to learn from the cruel things you have one to me. I have gone forward fast and have cried more than anyone will ever know. The anguish nearly killed me, but my inner strength has never let me down, and my guides have taken such good care of me up there. Aren’t I fortunate to have had their wings to protect me…….
From August 1996:
It’s the 28th August 1996- 15 years of marriage have now been signed off.I never wanted a divorce and always dreamed of a happy marriage with loving support from Charles. Although that was never meant to be, we do have two wonderful boys who are deeply loved by their parents. A part of me will always love Charles, but how I wish he’d looked after me and been proud of my work. It has been a turbulent 15 years, having to face the envy, jealousy, and hatred from Charles’s friends and family-they have so misunderstood me and that has been painful and brought enormous heartache.I want so much to become Charles’s best friend as I understand more than anyone what he is about and what makes him tick.
From October 1996:
I just long to hug my mother-in-law, and tell her how deeply I understand what goes on inside her. I understand the isolation, misconception and lies that surround her and feel very strongly HER disappointment and confusion. I so want the monarchy to survive andrealize the changes that will take [sic] to put “the show” on a new and healthy track. I, too, understand the fear the family have about change but we must, in order to reassure the public, as their indifference concerns me and should not be.I will fight for justice, and fight for my children and the monarchy……."
*
I call on you to draw your own conclusion as to if she was murdered and by whom. But Diana truly knew that something was wrong a full year before her death in 1997. Let us recall her life and remember the kind and generous woman she was and the legacy she left behind.
DIANA'S CONTINUING CAUSE OF DEATH INQUIRY IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND AND AROUND THE WORLD IS STILL UNDER INVESTIGATION. HERE ARE SOME "RELATED" CHARITY AND AWARENESS WEBSITES I'M SURE SHE WOULD HAVE WANTED TO BE CARRIED ON TO HELP THOSE IN NEED AND HAVE THE TRUTH TOLD TO THE WORLD ABOUT HER EXTRAORDINARY LIFE AND FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS TO CHERISH HER MEMORY. MAY THE TRUTH BE TOLD ABOUT HER LIFE AND TRAGIC DEATH IN 1997 AT THE AGE OF 36.
Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed were murdered, Dodi's father Mohamed Al Fayed has told the inquest into their deaths in a car crash in Paris in 1997.
Harrods owner Mr Al Fayed claimed former prime minister Tony Blair, MI5, MI6 and the British ambassador to France were all part of the conspiracy.
And he said Princess Diana "knew Prince Philip and Prince Charles were trying to get rid of her".
He also said Diana had told him she was pregnant, and the couple were engaged.
"I am the only person they told," he said.
'Crocodile wife'
Asked by Ian Burnett QC, counsel to the inquest, if he stood by his claim that Diana and Dodi were "murdered by the British security services on the orders of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh", Mr Al Fayed replied: "Yes."
He also pinpointed alleged security forces in the ambulance crew, the then British Ambassador to France Sir Michael Jay and the princess's brother-in-law Sir Robert Fellowes as all being involved in the plot.
And he said Prince Charles was complicit, hoping to make way so he could marry his "crocodile wife" Camilla Parker Bowles.
My belief (they) were murdered was confirmed when I learned Lord Condon and Lord Stevens did not show the coroner the note
The Harrods boss also raised concerns about a note written by Diana's divorce lawyer, Lord Mishcon, after an October 1995 meeting. It outlined her fears there was a plot to kill her in a car crash.
The police agreed to hand it to the coroner only after Diana's former butler, Paul Burrell, produced a note from the princess making similar allegations in the Daily Mirror in October 2003. By that time, Sir John Stevens led the Met.
Mr Al Fayed said this delay confirmed his "belief that my son and Princess Diana were murdered".
In his evidence, Mr Al Fayed branded Prince Philip a "Nazi" and a "racist" and said: "It's time to send him back to Germany from where he comes."
"You want to know his original name - it ends with Frankenstein," he added.
Wooden box
Mr Al Fayed read out a statement detailing his main concerns about the crash, and the points he felt the inquest should address.
The following letters were written by Princess Diana to her butler and close friend Paul Burrell. They’re included in his book “A Royal Duty”. The ‘crash letter’ tells of Diana’s fears that she would die in a car crash a full 10 months before it actually happened. A new investigation is still underway in Britain as the letter has finally surfaced.
From October 1996:
“I am sitting here at my desk today in October, longing for someone to hug me and encourage me to keep strong and hold my head high. This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous.[ The princess then identified where she felt the threat and danger would come from] is planning “an accident” in my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for Charles to marry. I have been battered, bruised and abused mentally by a system for 15 years now, but feel no resentment, I carry no hatred, I am weary of the battles, but I will never surrender. I am strong inside and maybe that is a problem for my enemies. Thank you Charles, for putting me through such hell and for giving me the opportunity to learn from the cruel things you have one to me. I have gone forward fast and have cried more than anyone will ever know. The anguish nearly killed me, but my inner strength has never let me down, and my guides have taken such good care of me up there. Aren’t I fortunate to have had their wings to protect me…….
From August 1996:
It’s the 28th August 1996- 15 years of marriage have now been signed off.I never wanted a divorce and always dreamed of a happy marriage with loving support from Charles. Although that was never meant to be, we do have two wonderful boys who are deeply loved by their parents. A part of me will always love Charles, but how I wish he’d looked after me and been proud of my work. It has been a turbulent 15 years, having to face the envy, jealousy, and hatred from Charles’s friends and family-they have so misunderstood me and that has been painful and brought enormous heartache.I want so much to become Charles’s best friend as I understand more than anyone what he is about and what makes him tick.
From October 1996:
I just long to hug my mother-in-law, and tell her how deeply I understand what goes on inside her. I understand the isolation, misconception and lies that surround her and feel very strongly HER disappointment and confusion. I so want the monarchy to survive andrealize the changes that will take [sic] to put “the show” on a new and healthy track. I, too, understand the fear the family have about change but we must, in order to reassure the public, as their indifference concerns me and should not be.I will fight for justice, and fight for my children and the monarchy……."
*
I call on you to draw your own conclusion as to if she was murdered and by whom. But Diana truly knew that something was wrong a full year before her death in 1997. Let us recall her life and remember the kind and generous woman she was and the legacy she left behind.
[editor's note: This story was first published in a limited-edition commemorative special issue of TIME in 1998.]
Once upon a time there was a little girl who learned she had been expected to be a boy. So intent were her parents on having a son that she had to wait a week after her birth to receive a name, the Honorable Diana Frances Spencer. Two older sisters and the brother who eventually arrived had royal godparents, but her father and mother picked commoners — rich ones, certainly, but untitled nevertheless — to swear their faith for her at the baptismal font.
Her first memory was of plastic, a warm synthetic smell touched off by sunlight on her stroller. She also remembered visits to the churchyard grave of the child her parents conceived just before her, a boy who lived barely 10 hours. Had he survived, she often wondered, would she have existed? Or would her mother, having produced a male heir, have left her husband for another man sooner than she actually did, breaking up the family before Diana could be born? She wished she were her oldest sister, the firstborn, the star of the family: smart, extroverted, unafraid to greet their hated stepmother with an insolent burp. At nine, Diana would bravely declare that she would marry only once — and only for love — and never, never divorce. But even as she said that, she stared out, as she would often do, from beneath her bangs, never quite looking anyone in the eye. For her parents, once in love, were no longer.
Once upon another time this little girl would grow up and fall in love and marry a prince and grow so happy for such a splendid moment that the whole world paused to marvel and rejoice with her, falling in love with Diana in love. The sunshine of her shy smile outshone royalty. she became the most famous woman on earth. But she learned quickly that though she had become a princess and borne her husband an heir, she could never truly become his queen. And when she died, suddenly, the day after the 36th anniversary of her christening, the world, still in love, stopped for a very long moment to grieve.
Why did so many mourn her so, and why do they mourn her still? Was it because the feats and foibles of British royalty have always been such an integral part of the world's story — and because Diana acted out the latest chapters in Britain's thousand-year-old soap opera with such compelling charisma, with such a facility for manipulation and melodrama? Was it just that: the flawed heroine vanishes, and we are bereft of narrative? Or was it because her unexpected end gave emotional resonance to the profuse and sometimes conflicting details of her intensely scrutinized life, uncovering omens through tragic retrospective, inchoate but nevertheless consoling proofs of destiny and meaning? Or perhaps all of that is not quite the heart of the grieving. Perhaps the mourning was over something simple yet profound, something cosmic yet common...
What cannot be denied is that in the beginning there was majesty, that fascinating natural resource of her homeland, a country celebrated by its greatest bard as "this England ... this teeming womb of royal kings, fear'd by their breed and famous by their birth." Still, majesty is a concept that requires re-enchantment every generation or so — and in this time the spell was Diana.
Her mother-in-law, the Queen, had once worked the magic. Elizabeth had continued the task thrust upon her father, purging the dynasty of the scandal that had threatened to ruin it, brought on by her irresponsible playboy of an uncle, who shirked duty and gave up the throne for a forbidden marriage. Elizabeth furthered the reconstruction of the Windsors by making the clan work, making it the inspiring exemplar of ideal family life, albeit one adorned with crowns and tiaras. Elizabeth would serve. She would persevere. She would be dutiful. She would obey.
And then came Diana, the girl chosen to refresh the line, to bear its heirs, to be the new smiling face of the family. Despite the stately filigree Elizabeth had embroidered onto the Windsor facade, Diana found the dynasty dysfunctional, uncertain of its work, in truth more a firm than a family. Diana tried to serve. she tried to persevere. She tried to be dutiful. But in the end, she would not obey.
This disastrous turn of events nevertheless failed to dissipate popular fascination with the British royals. Indeed, it intrigued the world even more. For was this not to be expected of the line that had leavened history with domestic dramas both delicious and dolorous? Henry VIII and his six wives; the rivalry of a Virgin Queen and her all too lusty Scots cousin; the madness of George III and the cupidity of his sons; Victoria and the brood she produced to rival the Hapsburgs, marrying, marrying,marrying all over Europe.
Diana's catastrophic dalliance with the Windsors reverberated with history. It seemed as if the marriage and bitter divorce of Charles and Diana were inevitable evolutionary steps in the centuries-long intercourse between the Spencers and the Crown. For not only did the Spencers trace their descent from the same kings the Windsors claimed as ancestors, but in the 17th century alone, four of Diana's forebears were royal mistresses: Charles II was linked to three Spencer women, his brother James II to one. In the 18th century, Georgiana Spencer, the daughter of the first Earl of Spencer, scandalized the country not only with her many infidelities but also with her affair with the Prince of Wales, who may have been the father of one of her children. The same pathetic prince, after being abandoned by Georgiana, would pursue her sister Henrietta, who spurned him amid a comic seduction. In this century, a Prince of Wales again paid court to a Diana forebear: Lady Cynthia Hamilton, who chose instead to become the wife of the seventh Earl of Spencer and thus Diana's grandmother. The prince eventually turned to the American divorcee Wallis Simpson — and had to give up his throne for the woman he loved. What if Lady Cynthia had married the prince? The more cogent question is: Should not her decision have served as warning to her granddaughter to avoid a royal marriage?
History and its omens hovered around the marriage of Charles and Diana like uninvited guests bearing ill tidings. Tradition called for a wedding in Westminster Abbey. But Charles did not want to marry in Westminster, preferring St. Paul's Cathedral. He pointed out that a royal marriage had once been celebrated in the old St. Paul's: in the 16th century, Arthur, Prince of Wales, had married his Spanish bride Catherine there. It was an acceptable precedent — but an unfortunate one. Arthur died before the marriage was consummated, and Catherine, a prize because she was the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, was eventually wed to the new English heir, becoming the unhappy first of Henry VIII's six wives.
As for Diana, she wanted to avoid Westminster for reasons of personal history: her parents were married there in 1954. At that wedding, the Bishop of Norwich told the couple, "You are making an addition to the hoe life of your country on which, above all others, our national life depends." It turned out to be a blessing without efficacy. Indeed, the opposite was visited upon the Spencers. Diana wanted no part of that unintended curse. And so Charles and Diana were married in St. Paul's — in the end, a futile dodge.
The personal history of Diana before the Windsors was, of course, a premonition of the life of Diana the princess. In 1982, the year after the royal wedding, the journalist Penny Junor was almost apologetic about writing the biography of a 20-year-old "who has spent 19 of those years in almost total obscurity." What kind of life could possibly be told? And yet the details she related then possess a fatalistic glow now, hinting at the troubled Diana who would emerge over the next 15 years. While admiring of its subject, Junor's book nevertheless draws attention to Diana's imperfect virtues. "Diana was a compulsive washer," Junor wrote matter-of-factly, before cataloging how, in boarding school, Diana would not let a day go by without bathing, no matter how late it was, sneaking into the bathroom after lights were out even though it was strictly forbidden by the school, which allowed the girls to shower only three times a week. "She also had a compulsion for washing clothes" — and did more washing than any other student at school When she had time to visit her sisters, Diana would do their laundry too. After her marriage, she would write to an ex-nanny saying, "I do get annoyed at not being able to do my washing and general ironing." At nine years old, she was dusting the nursery to keep a less than thorough nanny out of trouble when her father came to check the room. Goodness may explain some of this fastidiousness. But only some. After all, this girl became the woman who admitted to bulimia and a regular program of colonic irrigation.
The child Diana, like the adult princess, had a capacity for drama and a penchant to seek comeuppance — locking a hated nanny in a room where she would not be discovered till evening, throwing the underclothes of an au pair onto the roof of the house and watching with glee as the items were rescued. She was an indifferent student: she froze at exams, was terrible at French, even did badly at needlework. But her limitations would serve her well. A penchant for popular culture and romance novels cultivated what many would later praise as her "common touch," her ability to talk to ordinary people about things they cared about. In school she was recognized as a do-gooder and received seldom-awarded prizes for helpfulness. As a teenager, she learned quickly that loving children was not the same as being able to care for them. She took her training as a kindergarten teacher very seriously.
She was aware of how things failed to work — even things inspired by love. The infidelities and disappointments that befell her family were proof enough. Her mother lost custody of her children because the court saw fit to punish her for adultery. Her father chose to marry a woman his children detested. Diana knew what it was like to be six years old and unable to explain to her friends why her mother was no longer around, how even her most courageous front could snap in a fit of anger. She knew what it was to be caught crying in secret. But she wanted to get family right. And when, one day, her prince came, she believed she had her opportunity, risked all, stumbled into the very nightmare she had sought to escape — and lost.
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." that declaration comes down to us from the magisterial heights of Tolstoy. But it is a false one. The happy family is a protean myth, shifting shape with the fashion of the times. The reality is that every unhappy family is alike. And, alas, unhappy families abound, trapped in cycles of aspiration and disappointment, of love and loss. The most augustly unhappy family in the world thus becomes a spectacular mirror for us all.
That is what is at the heart of our grief: simpler and yet more profound than a fascination with splendor; cosmic and yet as close to us as our parents, our brothers, our sisters, our children. In the ruins of Diana's life, we see the shadows and anxieties of the lives we are trying to build together — as husbands, as wives, as sons, as daughters. We shudder over our sorrow for Diana as if we were caught in paroxysms of self-pity. In embarrassment, we deny. In truth, we recognize.
Gerard Manley Hopkins voiced the emotion perfectly: Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed What heart heard of, ghost guessed ... It is the plight we were born for. It is ourselves we mourn for.
MASSACHUSETTS STATE SENATOR EDWARD KENNEDY DIES OF CANCER
August 26, 2008
ON THIS DAY IN 2009:
Obama leads tributes to Kennedy
President Obama: "Senator Kennedy touched so many lives"
US President Barack Obama has led tributes to Senator Edward Kennedy, who has died from cancer at the age of 77.
Mr Obama described Sen Kennedy as an extraordinary leader and "one of the most accomplished Americans ever to serve our democracy".
Lawmakers from both main parties praised a man who, but for a scandal in 1969, might have become president.
A Democratic senator since 1962, the liberal stalwart championed issues such as education and healthcare reform.
He died late on Tuesday at his home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, his family said in a statement. He was diagnosed with brain cancer in May 2008.
US media reports say his body will lie at the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston until his funeral at a church in the city on Saturday.
He will then be buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, near to the graves of John F Kennedy and another of his brothers, Senator Robert Kennedy.
'Passion and vigour'
In a televised tribute, Barack Obama called Edward Kennedy a colleague, a counsellor and a friend.
He always believed that our best days were still ahead, but it's hard to imagine any of them without him
"In the United States Senate I can think of no-one who engendered greater respect or affection from members of both sides of the aisle," he said.
"His ideas and ideals are stamped on scores of laws and reflected in millions of lives," he said.
Former President George W Bush, who was criticised by Sen Kennedy over Iraq, described him as "a man of passion who advocated fiercely for his convictions".
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, praised his determination to make quality health-care available to all Americans, while Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, also added his voice.
"No one could have known the man without admiring the passion and vigour he poured into a truly momentous life," he said.
The BBC's Richard Lister in Washington said Senator Kennedy, known affectionately as Teddy, would be remembered as one of the most effective legislators in American history.
Daniel Sandford, BBC News, Washington
President Obama was leading the tributes, saying that Senator Kennedy was the greatest US senator of our time.
But the praise was coming from right across the political divide. The Republicans were also praising him, saying that he was the kind of man that you couldn't help but like even if you disagreed with him.
That kind of praise has been echoing across the morning shows - they all broke into special coverage of the kind that is normally reserved for when former presidents die.
But of course all of the coverage has also included the controversies in Edward Kennedy's life, not least of all the death of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick bridge in 1969.
He was skilled at forging alliances across party lines: pushing an education initiative with Mr Bush and immigration reform with Republican John McCain.
But he was a fierce critic of the Bush administration too - particularly on Iraq and when allegations of US military abuses there emerged.
He will also be remembered as a staunch supporter of Irish nationalism - at one time calling for British troops to leave Northern Ireland - although he was later involved in the peace process leading to the Good Friday Agreement, our correspondent adds.
In the UK, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Sen Kennedy would be mourned in every continent. "I am proud to have counted him as a friend," he said.
And UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon praised him as a man who "was a voice for those who would otherwise go unheard".
Obama endorsement
Edward Kennedy was, at his death, the third-longest senator in US history.
EDWARD MOORE KENNEDY
1932 Born, youngest of nine children
1962 Becomes country's youngest senator
1963, 1968 Brothers President John F Kennedy and Senator Robert F Kennedy both assassinated
1969 "Chappaquiddick incident" - Kennedy flees scene after road crash in which his young passenger dies
1980 Runs unsuccessfully for Democratic nomination against sitting President Jimmy Carter
He became a Massachusetts senator in 1962, replacing his brother John when he resigned to become president.
He was the only one of four brothers not to die a violent death. His brother Joseph was killed in an air crash in World War II, and both John F Kennedy and presidential hopeful Robert F Kennedy were assassinated in the 1960s.
He was widely expected to be the next Kennedy in the White House, but he was never able to fully overcome a scandal in 1969 when he drove a car off a bridge at Chappaquiddick near his home, killing his female passenger.
The incident helped derail his only presidential bid, more than a decade later.
But he remained active in politics right up until his death, famously endorsing Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination during a tight race with Hillary Clinton last year.
US MEDIA REACTION TO TED KENNEDY'S DEATH
Kennedy was at the center of the most important issues facing the nation for decades, and he did much to help shape them. A defender of the poor and politically disadvantaged, he set the standard for his party on health care, education, civil rights, campaign-finance reform and labor law
He was a Rabelaisian figure in the Senate and in life, instantly recognizable by his shock of white hair, his florid, oversize face, his booming Boston brogue, his powerful but pained stride. He was a celebrity, sometimes a self-parody, a hearty friend, an implacable foe, a man of large faith and large flaws, a melancholy character who persevered, drank deeply and sang loudly. He was a Kennedy.
Seared in my memory: When I interned at the Heritage Foundation, I would pop into Mass at Saint Joseph's on the Hill. And I would almost always find myself sitting near Ted Kennedy. He's responsible for things that are deeply offensive to my conscience and diametrically opposed to the teachings of the Catholic faith, and he probably led some people astray by his example. But our faith also teaches that we are all sinners and that there is redemption. He had some incredibly good forces in his life, not least among them his sister, Eunice, who just died. I pray for the repose of his soul. R.I.P. Senator Kennedy.
Elected first in 1962, the 77-year-old Massachusetts liberal was rooted in the civil rights and Great Society battles of that decade, but his enduring strength was an ability to renew himself through his mastery of issues and the changing personalities of the Senate. Nowhere was this clearer than in Kennedy's early support of Barack Obama in 2008, when the young Illinois Democrat needed to establish himself against more veteran rivals for the White House. Kennedy not only campaigned for Obama but, at risk to his own health, opened the Democratic National Convention a year ago in Denver and returned to Washington repeatedly last winter to cast needed votes to move the new president's economic recovery agenda.
In many ways, he was the last man standing, straddling a mythic family mantle of fame and a vaunted career of political service, all the while wearing the crown of Camelot decades after its heyday...the senator's death brought to a close a storied political era - of assassinations, Jackie O, Palm Beach, Chappaquiddick - and a lifetime of both tragedy and public service.
In losing Kennedy, Obama loses a key Senate dealmaker at a crucial moment in legislative negotiations over the health care bill. Though an icon of Democratic liberalism, Kennedy was known to colleagues as a jovial pragmatist, whose many friendships with colleagues across the political and ideological spectrum made him one of the Senate's most influential players.
MADONNA BEGINS "HARD CANDY" WORLD TOUR/ NASA ROLLS OUT SPACE SHUTTLE
August 24, 2008
Madonna raves on as tour begins
By Ian Youngs Entertainment reporter, BBC News, Cardiff
The stage show involves 250 crew and £1m of jewellery
Madonna has begun her new world tour in Cardiff, proving to fans that she can still cut it on stage at the age of 50.
In a typically energetic performance, the pop superstar played two hours of hits from her 25-year career.
It featured radically reworked versions of some of her old favourites, such as a techno remix of Like A Prayer and a rock take on Borderline.
"She gets better with age," said Lewis Aldous, 23, from Brentwood, Essex.
He said Madonna looked "incredible", adding: "She looks like she's in her 30s. This is the most fast-paced tour of recent times, especially Like A Prayer."
Maria Paradisis, 32, who travelled from Sydney, Australia, for the show, said Madonna's dancing was "mesmerising".
Excerpts of Madonna's performance and fans' reaction
"She can still shake it like she's a 20-year-old," she said.
'Disappointed'
But some fans at the Millennium Stadium were not so happy with her latest reinvention.
"She didn't do any of the traditional stuff that everyone loves her for," said Susan Harvey from Cardiff.
"For £85 a ticket, I was really disappointed."
The show is split into four sections - Pimp, Old School, Gypsy and Rave
Danielle Wheeler, 26, said she was "not as good as Kylie", while Stephanie Olokopa, 20, from London, gave the show six out of 10.
"She was late and she didn't even thank the people," she said.
The show was first of 51 dates for the pop superstar, who celebrated her birthday a week ago.
It involved 250 crew, 16 dancers, eight costume changes and £1m of jewellery.
The concert was split into four sections - Pimp, Old School, Gypsy and Rave.
Madonna appeared on a jewel-encrusted black leather throne with the letter M written on its back.
Opening with Candy Store, the first track of her latest album Hard Candy, the Pimp section was characterised by revealing and risque black outfits for Madonna and her troupe.
When a classic white convertible rolled on, it took Madonna and her dancers out into the crowd, with Madonna donning the driver's white top hat before pushing the car back.
Old School
The intricately planned visual spectacle was as potent as the music, and Madonna is the master at using colour, costume and choreography to full effect.
She was raised on podium for Vogue with four female dancers wearing long black gloves and boots and very little else.
The set included old and new hits
After that, it was into the Old School segment - intended to evoke her 1980s New York roots - with Madonna appearing in red shorts, pop socks and a skipping rope, surrounded by the kids from Fame.
Into the Groove was the first of her '80s hits to be updated, backed by heavy bass and trance piano.
She then picked up a guitar for Borderline, backed by a more conventional rock band set-up.
The star donned heart-shaped sunglasses for She's Not Me, from her latest album, with her old videos flashing up behind her.
When four dancers appeared as Madonna at various stages of her career, the singer went on to abuse them before indulging in some very frenetic, angry dancing.
Gypsy theme
With her long, wavy blonde hair, fit physique and endless stamina, she doesn't look too dissimilar to the Madonna of a couple of decades ago.
She certainly doesn't look ready for a Saga subscription.
The Gypsy segment began with Madonna in a black cloak writhing on top of a black piano, before her dancers donned hooded robes for Spanish Lesson.
Madonna changes costume eight times
They then ripped off the cloaks to reveal shiny, gaudy shirts and indulge in some flamenco-style dancing.
Not everything quite made sense - but it looked quite good, and that, you suspect, is what matters to Madonna.
With her dazzling friends, she went on to play a Europop version of La Isla Bonita, complete with big, bearded violinist in a sequined shirt.
The final section was Rave, which started with a pair of sparkly American football shoulder pads for her recent hit 4 Minutes.
It then turned into a full-on rave as the queen of pop played thumping techno versions of Like A Prayer and Ray Of Light.
During Like A Prayer, screens behind her flashed the names of sacred figures from various religions and quotes from holy texts.
Heavy beats
Most of the crowd seemed to lap up the pumped-up dance remixes.
But as she strummed guitar in a skin-tight silver top, surrounded by futuristic creatures during Ray of Light, lasers firing over her head, it was tempting to think that maybe she should calm down just a bit.
The entire night had the feel of a giant nightclub - and that is something that some purists didn't like.
But heavy beats made the more mediocre new songs more passable, and the momentum was maintained by non-stop music even when she was off stage.
With wailing thrash metal guitars at end of Hung Up, Madonna posed, hand on hip, seemingly satisfied with her night's work.
Now she's hit 50, she seems even more determined to prove that she doesn't stand still, and she certainly doesn't slow down.
U.S.A. Space shuttle Atlantis is hoisted high into the Vehicle Assembly Building before being lowered into place on the external tank at KENNEDY SPACE CENTER in Florida. Atlantis is being readied to launch to the Hubble Space Telescope on a servicing mission. Photo credit: NASA/Dimitri Gerondidakis › High-res Image
August 25, 2008
Space shuttle Atlantis now is in the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Florida. It was moved from the orbiter processing facility Friday night and arrived in the VAB at 11:05 p.m. EDT.
Atlantis was attached to its external fuel tank and twin solid rocket boosters over the weekend and after additional preparations are made, the shuttle is scheduled to roll out to Launch Pad 39A at 12:01 a.m. EDT Saturday.
The seven astronauts who will fly Atlantis to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope during the STS-125 mission will resume training Monday at NASA's Johnson Space Center. The crew will be practicing spacewalking telescope repair procedures.
Atlantis is targeted to launch Oct. 8 at 1:34 a.m. EDT.
It's been 37 years since Apollo 15 astronauts Dave Scott and Jim Irwin fired their ascent engines and left the moon in their lunar module Falcon. But the signs of their visit -- like those of the other 5 lunar landings -- are still there, and today's generation of spacecraft are beginning to take a look. (Related: Hubble Shoots the Moon)
The Japanese space agency's lunar mission SELENE (Selenological and Engineering Explorer), also known as "Kaguya," has photographed a potential "halo" (above) left by the engines of the Apollo 15 lunar module at the Hadley Rille landing site near the Appennine Mountains
ASTRONAUTS PREPARE FOR NEXT SHUTTLE LAUNCH/ MARTIAN SOIL SAMPLES COMPLETED
August 20, 2008
NEXT SHUTTLE LAUNCH SCHEDULED FOR OCTOBER 8th
LAST MISSION TO HUBBLE?
Date: Oct. 8 + Mission:STS-125 Launch Vehicle:Space Shuttle Atlantis Launch Site:Kennedy Space Center - Launch Pad 39A Launch Time: 1:34 a.m. EDT Landing Site: Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility Landing Date and Time: Oct. 18 - 9:37 p.m. EDT + Description: Space Shuttle Atlantis will fly seven astronauts into space for the fifth and final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. During the 11-day flight, the crew will repair and improve the observatory's capabilities through 2013.
Latest Servicing Mission 4 News
SM4 Astronauts John Grunsfeld and Andrew Feustel Practice Spacewalking Procedures in NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. (08.15.08)
SM4 EVA astronaut Andrew Feustel practices installing new battery modules on the Hubble Space Telescope. In this photograph, taken underwater at the Neutral Buoyancy laboratory at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, Andrew is shown handing an old battery module to EVA astronaut John Grunsfeld while preparing to take a new battery module to the telescope. Astronauts spend many hours choreographing their procedures in order to be as efficient as possible while performing spacewalks to repair and upgrade the telescope. Credit:NASA > View Larger Image
SM4 EVA Astronauts John Grunsfeld and Andrew Feustel practice installing Hubble’s new panchromatic imaging instrument, the Wide Field Camera 3, during final underwater training at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas. During the past year, SM4 astronauts have trained in simulators at JSC as well as on the actual flight hardware at the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, Maryland. The astronauts, assisted by a team of engineers from JSC and GSFC, have practiced spacewalking procedures, techniques for servicing Hubble, and using the many specialty tools that will help them efficiently work in space.. Credit:NASA > View Larger Image
Mars Lander Samples All Layers of Surface By Andrea Thompson Senior Writer posted: 22 August 2008 10:15 am ET
NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has scooped up another sample of Martian dirt into one of its onboard laboratory ovens. The sample will complete a profile of all depths of the surface layer of Phoenix's arctic landing site.
The lander's robotic arm collected the sample, dubbed Burning Coals, from a trench informally named Burn Alive 3. The sample comes from an intermediate depth between the surface regolith and the rock-hard subsurface icy layer, which Phoenix confirmed was water ice on July 31.
The $420 million Phoenix mission is analyzing the surface material in the Martian arctic too look for signs of potential past habitability. The mission was originally slated to last for three months, ending at the close of August, but NASA has extended the mission through the end of September.
Early on Thursday, mission controllers received information from Phoenix that confirmed that some of the Burning Coals sample had been delivered through the doors of cell number 7 of the lander's Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA), almost completely filling the cell. TEGA heats up samples and then analyzes the vapors given off to determine the composition of the surface material.
TEGA won't begin heating a sample on its own unless it senses the oven is completely full, so the Phoenix science team will command the oven door to close and the cell will begin heating the sample. TEGA scientists have sent commands to manually close oven doors before.
The sample will first be heated to relatively low temperatures, around 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius) so that it can detect any water vapor given off by melting ice that might be in the sample. The oven will then heat up to 257 F (125 C) to ensure that the sample is dry. The last step of the heating process pushes the temperature up to 1,832 F (1,000 C) so that the instrument can detect any gases given off to help the science team determine the specific properties of the Martian dirt.
One particular signal the Phoenix team will be looking for is that of perchlorate, a highly oxidizing substance that is also soluble and was detected in samples delivered to the lander's wet chemistry lab. Seeing signs of perchlorate in TEGA would help confirm that wet lab finding.
"We are expecting the sample to look similar to previous samples," said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for TEGA. "One of the things we'll be looking for now is an oxygen release indicative of perchlorate."
This new sample completes a three-level profile of the Martian dirt that also includes surface material from a trench called Rosy Red and ice-layer material from a trench called Snow White.
"We want to know the structure and composition of the soil at the surface, at the ice and in-between, to help answer questions about the movement of water -- either as vapor or liquid -- between the icy layer and the surface," said Ray Arvidson of WashingtonUniversity in St. Louis, a leader of Phoenix science team activities.
Thousands gathered to file past Elvis Presley's body which lay in state at his mansion, Graceland, the day after his death.
Although it was officially stated that he died of heart failure there has always been speculation that an overdose of cocaine and barbiturates also played a part.
Since his divorce from Priscilla in 1973 he had relied heavily on prescription drugs and was known to be a junk-food addict, gaining a considerable amount of weight.
During his lifetime he sold over 300 million albums and made 33 films.
His death has been lucrative for the "Elvis industry".
In 2001 he came top in US magazine Forbes' poll of "Richest Deceased Celebrities".
It put Elvis estate's earnings in 2000 at $35m (£23m) - $15m (£10m) of it from Graceland admission fees.
SECRET TO SKULL AND BONES FOUND IN ROOM 322
1977: Rock and roll 'king' Presley dies
From BBC DAILY NEWS
Elvis Presley, whose singing and style revolutionized popular music in the 1950s, has
died.
Presley, 42, was discovered slumped in a bathroom at his mansion in Memphis
Tennessee on Tuesday.
He was rushed to the Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis but was
pronounced dead on arrival.
The Tennessee state pathologist, Dr. Jerry Francisco, said a post mortem
examination of the singer's body had revealed he died of
cardiac arrhythmia - a form of heart attack.
"The precise cause has not yet been determined for the cardiac arrhythmia,"
Dr Francisco said.
"It may take several days to several weeks to determine that specific cause
and in some cases it never is determined."
The three-hour examination uncovered no sign of any other diseases or any
drug abuse, Dr Francisco added.
Declining health
Presley was divorced from his wife Priscilla in 1973 but it was rumoured that
he had recently become engaged to Ginger Alden, 20.
She was reportedly spotted wearing a $50,000 (£20,315) diamond engagement ring
from Presley.
Ms Alden and other members of his entourage were at Graceland when he collapsed.
There had been indications of Elvis Presley's declining health for some time.
Earlier this year the singer had cancelled several performances in Louisiana
and returned to Memphis suffering what his doctors termed "exhaustion".
No arrangements have been announced yet for his funeral which is scheduled for......
MADONNA BORN IN 1958: TURNS 50 IN 2008: PLAYED LIVE AID/ LIVE 8/ AND LIVE EARTH
August 16, 2008
August 16
Madonna as Child
Madonna and Tony Ciccone welcome their first daughter, Madonna, nicknamed Nonni to avoid confusion with Mom. When Nonni is 5, her mother, 36, dies of breast cancer. Madonna's father later marries the family housekeeper, Joan Gustafson. "I didn't accept my stepmother when I was growing up," the singer later tells CNN. "In retrospect I think I was really hard on her."
1978
Bright Lights, Big City
Madonna, attending the University of Michigan on a dance scholarship, drops out after two years and moves to New York City, where she lives in a series of ramshackle apartments while studying and dancing with the Alvin Ailey and Pearl Lang companies. In 1979, she begins dabbling in New York's downtown music scene, eventually forming the punk-influenced Breakfast Club with boyfriend Dan Gilroy.
March 29, 1985
Wannabes Everywhere
Madonna makes her big-screen debut in Desperately Seeking Susan opposite Rosanna Arquette, reveling in the role of a wisecracking street urchin not unlike herself, but the singer's fanciful style eclipses her acting performance. Wannabes turn up all over the world, sporting leggings, lace gloves and bellybutton-baring shirts.
MADONNA APPEARED AT LIVE AID IN PHILADELPHIA IN 1985 to "FEED THE WORLD"
CLICK ON THE WEBSITE BELOW TO HEAR "MADONNA" SING "GET INTO THE GROOVE" ON STAGE AT JFK STADIUM AT LIVE-AID 1985 IN MY HOMETOWN OF PHILADELPHIA...
MADONNA AND HUSBAND GUY RICHIE GRANTED APPROVAL TO ADOPT MALAWIAN BOY FROM AFRICA......STILL HUNGRY AND AIDS STRICKEN EVEN AFTER LIVE-AID, LIVE 8 AND LIVE EARTH
In 2008, Madonna has now turned 50...given birth to 2 children, been married twice and will embark on another 'world tour' having been paid over 120 million dollars by LIVE NATION to promote her new CD "HARD CANDY".
WIll she donate this money to her MALAWI campaign or become another "Artist and Singer" who will make more multi-millions for themselves.
She has adopted the malawian child David (pictured above) and has become a mother of 3 children.
However the children of Africa are still in need of food and medical supplies and personnel to "FEED AFRICA"
The success of Live Aid led to a new interest in rock festivals. These new festivals, however, would have a different structure. The 1986 Amnesty International Conspiracy Of Hope Tour, besides having the longest name of any concert series, was a festival-type tour of America with several bands headlining. U2, Peter Gabriel, and Sting led the two week tour to its final stop, Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey on 16 June 1986. Eleven months after Live Aid, the socially conscious concert was the biggest event of the year. Like Live Aid, it was an all day concert with lots of bands joining the core touring group to raise interest in issues like apartheid, torture, false imprisonment, and human rights. The goal of the concert, as with the rest of the tour, was to make everyone more aware of the unethical practices of foreign governments and increase membership of Amnesty International. The concert was broadcasted live by MTV in a strong effort to reach an audience that might otherwise not know about the activities of Amnesty International.
The highly political nature of this event was repeated in the fall of 1988 with the Amnesty International Human Rights Now! Tour. This tour was a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights, which was signed by every government world-wide, even those that violate it today. This six week tour brought together the old Amnesty supporters like Sting and Peter Gabriel together with new Amnesty supporters like Tracy Chapman, Youssou N'dour, and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. They traveled around the world, starting in London and finishing in Buenos Aires, performing in first and third world countries. As well as playing cities like Philadelphia, Tokyo, and Paris, they played in Harare, Abidjan, and New Delhi. The last night of the tour was videotaped and broadcasted in a documentary plus concert form on the cable network Home Box Office two months later. Like the 1986 tour, this tour generated a lot of interest and revenue for Amnesty International. Musically for both tours, the performances were abbreviated versions of the groups' most recent tour, and were not nearly as significant as the tour itself. This touring festival idea spread to the ugly world of heavy metal music, with 1988's Monsters Of Rock tour. This tour, as well as a small and less significant 1989 tour, was just a profit seeking event with no political or social overtones whatsoever. The 1988 tour was a financial and critical failure.
The influence of Monterey can been seen almost twenty years later as Live Aid and the Amnesty tours celebrate the first festival. The charitable nature of the events make them important not only as helping worthy causes but also as a celebration of the music that is promoting these causes. Despite the fact that the money collected from Monterey was not used effectively, it showed that pop music could be used to generate donation. Although this notion was not completely examined until almost twenty years later, the point is that eventually the purpose of the rock music festival was for the greater good of all mankind. The festivals that were without a charitable impetus are just as influential today. If it were not for Woodstock, Altamont, and Watkins Glen, the large festivals like Live Aid would not be possible. All of the festivals have been experiments of music, crowd control, and other ideas. The formula for success, musically and financially as well as politically, has not yet been determined; this is why each new festival is nothing like the previous one. It would have been difficult to imagine an event like Live Aid without all of the festivals before it: the US Festivals for its media interaction, the ARMS benefits for its charitable nature, the MUSE concerts for its politics, Watkins Glen for its magnitude, Altamont for its mistakes, Woodstock for its sense of community, and Monterey for its success.
CLICK BELOW FOR "DO THEY KNOW IT"S CHRISTMAS"--1985 (FROM LONDON)
EXPOSED........YALE'S SECRET SOCIETY OF BONESMEN AND WOMEN
August 7, 2008
Skull & Bones Society
A rare look inside Skull and Bones, the Yale secret society and sometime haunt of the presumptive Republican nominee for President
by Alexandra Robbins
ON High Street, in the middle of the Yale University campus, stands a cold-looking, nearly windowless Greco-Egyptian building with padlocked iron doors. This is the home of Yale's most famous secret society, Skull and Bones, and it is also, in a sense, one of the many homes of the family of George W. Bush, Yale '68.
Bush men have been Yale men and Bonesmen for generations. Prescott Bush, George W.'s grandfather, Yale '17, was a legendary Bonesman; he was a member of the band that stole for the society what became one of its most treasured artifacts: a skull that was said to be that of the Apache chief Geronimo. Prescott Bush, one of a great many Bonesmen who went on to lives of power and renown, became a U.S. senator. George Herbert Walker Bush, George W.'s father, Yale '48, was also a Bonesman, and he, too, made a conspicuous success of himself. Inside the temple on High Street hang paintings of some of Skull and Bones's more illustrious members; the painting of George Bush, the most recently installed, is five feet high.
There were other Bush Bonesmen, a proud line of them stretching from great uncle George Herbert Walker Jr. to uncle Jonathan Bush to cousins George Herbert Walker IIIand Ray Walker. So when George W. was "tapped" for Skull and Bones, at the end of his junior year, he, too, naturally became a Bonesman -- but, it seems, a somewhat ambivalent one.
New members of Skull and Bones are assigned secret names, by which fellow Bonesmen will forever know them. Some Bonesmen receive traditional names, denoting function or existential status; others are the chosen beneficiaries of names that their Bones predecessors wish to pass on. The leftover initiates choose their own names. The name Long Devil is assigned to the tallest member; Boaz (short for Beelzebub) goes to any member who is a varsity football captain. Many of the chosen names are drawn from literature (Hamlet, Uncle Remus), from religion, and from myth. The banker Lewis Lapham passed on his name, Sancho Panza, to the political adviser Tex McCrary. Averell Harriman was Thor, Henry Luce was Baal, McGeorge Bundy was Odin. The name Magog is traditionally assigned to the incoming Bonesman deemed to have had the most sexual experience, and Gog goes to the new member with the least sexual experience. William Howard Taft and Robert Taft were Magogs. So, interestingly, was George Bush.
George W. was not assigned a name but invited to choose one. According to one report, nothing came to mind, so he was given the name Temporary, which, it is said, he never bothered to replace; Temporary is how Bush's fellow Bonesmen know him today. (In recent interviews I asked a number of Bush's Bonesmen classmates about the name and elicited no denials.)
The junior George's diffidence in the matter of his secret name seems to reflect a larger ambivalence toward Yale and its select, the most elite of whom are the members of Skull and Bones. The elder George holds his fellow Yalies -- particularly his Bones brethren -- in great esteem, and over the years has often gone to them for advice. George W., in contrast, has publicly made a point of his disdain for the elite northeastern connections that shaped his father's world and, to some extent, his own. Fay Vincent, the former commissioner of baseball, who is a Bush family friend and himself the son of a Bonesman, says, "Young George is as unlikely a Bonesperson as I've ever met." Young George has not attended a Yale reunion since he graduated.
Bush's dismissal of Yale and all it stands for may be a response to the repeated charges of political opponents that he is not much more than a papa's boy. Kent Hance, who trounced Bush in his 1978 congressional race, insinuated that Bush was not a true Texan and accused him of "riding his daddy's coattails."
If George W. truly wanted to detach himself from his father and from the traditions of a long line of ancestors, he chose a curious path -- in effect, retracing his father's footsteps.
SKULL and Bones is the oldest of Yale's secret societies and by far the most determinedly secretive. As such, it has long been an inspiration for speculation and imagination. It still is. The society is, of course, the inspiration for the new Universal Pictures thriller The Skulls, about a nefarious secret society at an Ivy League school in New Haven. In 1968, when George W. Bush was in Skull and Bones, there were eight "abovegrounds," or societies that met in their own "tombs," and as many as ten "undergrounds," which held meetings in rented rooms. In an article in the 1968 Yale yearbook Lanny Davis, a 1967 Yale graduate and a secret-society member who would go on to become a White House special counsel in the Clinton Administration, described how Bones, famous for its distinguished list of members, held more sway than the others.
Come "Tap Day" ... if you're a junior, despite the fact that you've banged your fist at the lunch table and said, "This is 1968," and have loudly denounced societies as anachronisms, when the captain of the football team is standing by your door and when the tower clock strikes eight he rushes in and claps your shoulder and shouts, "Skull and Bones, accept or reject?" you almost always scream out, "Accept!" and you never, never, pound your fist at the lunch table, not for that reason ever again.
Fewer than a tenth of Yale's 1,400 seniors are members of the university's secret societies, which many undergraduates view as self-serving vehicles for real and aspiring aristocrats. Certainly this view seems to have some validity when it comes to Bonesmen. Until 1992, when it became one of the last two secret societies to admit women, Skull and Bones had a history of picking the same kinds of people over and over. Davis's yearbook article explained,
If the society had a good year, this is what the "ideal" group will consist of: a football captain; a Chairman of the Yale Daily News; a conspicuous radical; a Whiffenpoof; a swimming captain; a notorious drunk with a 94 average; a film-maker; a political columnist; a religious group leader; a Chairman of the Lit; a foreigner; a ladies' man with two motorcycles; an ex-service man; a negro, if there are enough to go around; a guy nobody else in the group had heard of, ever.
Indeed, George W.'s 1968 brethren slip easily into the desired slots: among them were the Olympic swimmer and gold medalist Don Schollander; a future Harvard Medical School surgeon, Gregory Gallico; a future Rhodes scholar, Robert McCallum; the Whiffenpoofs' pitch, Robert Birge; Donald Etra, an Orthodox Jew; Muhammed Saleh, a Jordanian; a future deputy director of the National Institute of Mental Health, Rex Cowdry; and the black soccer captain Roy Austin. Only George W. himself fell into none of the aforementioned categories. He was generally regarded as a legacy tap.
Given the society's history as an incubator and meeting point for rising generational elites, it is not surprising that an especially susceptible kind of "barbarian" -- the Bones term for a nonmember -- has long seen the society as a locus of mystery, wealth, and conspiracy. One doesn't need to scratch deeply to uncover accusations of sinister ties with the CIA, the Trilateral Commission, the Illuminati, the Council on Foreign Relations, even the Nazis. It turns out that the Yale admissions committee that voted to admit George W., despite his poor record at Andover, included three members (out of seven) who were Bonesmen; those seeking evidence of malign influence will surely raise an eyebrow. (For the conspiracy-minded, the most useful omnium gatherum is the British writer Antony C. Sutton's feverish 1983 tract An Introduction to the Order.) World domination aside, the most pervasive rumors about Bones are that initiates must masturbate in a coffin while recounting their sexual exploits, and that their candor is ultimately rewarded with a no-strings-attached gift of $15,000. Bonesmen, who are sworn to secrecy at initiation, have not publicly denied or confirmed these rumors; they have usually made a point of refusing to speak to the press about the society at all. As The Skulls was about to be released, and as George W.'s quest for the Republican presidential nomination looked increasingly certain to succeed, the society sent all members a memo reminding them of their vow of silence. Still, as I recently discovered in the course of looking into Skull and Bones, not all Bonesmen see the necessity of remaining tight-lipped about a society whose biggest secret may be that its secrets are essentially trivial.
THE story of Skull and Bones begins in December of 1832. Upset (according to one account) by changes in the Phi Beta Kappa election process, a Yale senior named William Russell and a group of classmates decided to form the Eulogian Club as an American chapter of a German student organization. The club paid obeisance to Eulogia, the goddess of eloquence, who took her place in the pantheon upon the death of the orator Demosthenes, in 322 B.C., and who is said to have returned in a kind of Second Coming on the occasion of the society's inception. The Yale society fastened a picture of its symbol -- a skull and crossbones -- to the door of the chapel where it met. Today the number 322, recalling the date of Demosthenes' death, appears on society stationery. The number has such mystical overtones that in 1967 a graduate student with no ties to Skull and Bones donated $322,000 to the society.
(The number 322 has also been a particular favorite of conspiracy-minded hunters for evidence of Skull and Bones's global connections. It was the combination to Averell Harriman's briefcase when he carried classified dispatches between London and Moscow during World War II. Antony C. Sutton claims that 322 doubles as a reminder of the society's mother organization in Germany; the American group, founded in 1832, is the second chapter -- thus 32-2.)
In 1856 Daniel Coit Gilman, who went on to become the founding president of Johns Hopkins University, officially incorporated the society as the Russell Trust Association, and Skull and Bones moved into the space it still occupies. The Bones tomb is forbidding only on the outside. Marina Moscovici, a Connecticut conservator who recently spent six years restoring fifteen paintings from the Skull and Bones building, describes the atmosphere inside as "funny spooky." She says, "Sort of like the Addams Family, it's campy in an old British men's-smoking-club way. It's not glamorous by any means."
"Bones is like a college dorm room," a 1980s Bonesman told me. "Ours was a place that used to be really nice but felt kind of beat up, lived in. There were socks underneath the couch, old half-deflated soccer balls lying around." Dozens of skeletons and skulls, human and animal, dangle from the walls, on which German and Latin phrases have been chiseled ("Whether poor or rich, all are equal in death"), among moose heads, sconces, medieval armor, antlers, boating flags, manuscripts, statuettes of Demosthenes, and a pair of boots that one member wore throughout his active duty with American forces in France during World War II. The gravestone of Elihu Yale, the eponymous eighteenth-century merchant, was stolen years ago from its proper setting in Wrexham, Wales, and is displayed in a glass case, in a room with purple walls.
As noted, for many years the society has possessed a skull that members call Geronimo. In the 1980s, under pressure from Ned Anderson, a former Apache tribal chairman in Arizona, the society produced the skull in question. The skull didn't match Anderson's records, and it was returned to the society's tomb. Anderson wasn't finished. He reportedly took the issue up with his congressman, John McCain; McCain tried to arrange a meeting between Anderson and George Bush, who was then the Vice President. Bush wasn't interested, and the matter was dropped. "We still call it Geronimo anyway," a Bonesman says. The issue of Geronimo's skull never surfaced in the public record during the bitter contest between McCain and George W. for the Republican nomination.
The most private room in the building, known as the Inner Temple, or (this will be no surprise) Room 322, is approximately fourteen feet square and guarded by a locked iron door. Inside, a case contains a skeleton that Bonesmen refer to as Madame Pompadour. Compartments in the case guard the society's cherished manuscripts, including the secrecy oath and instructions for conducting an initiation.
The initiation ceremony, held in April, involves as many alumni, or "patriarchs," as possible, one of whom in each instance serves as the supervisor, known as Uncle Toby. The Inner Temple is cleared of furniture except for two chairs and a table, and Bonesmen past and present assemble: Uncle Toby in a robe; the shortest senior, or "Little Devil," in a satanic costume; a Bonesman with a deep voice in a Don Quixote costume; one in papal vestments; another dressed as Elihu Yale; four of the brawniest in the role of "shakers"; and a crew of extras wearing skeleton costumes and carrying noisemakers. According to the initiation script, Uncle Toby "sounds like the only sane person in the room."
As an initiate enters the room, patriarchs standing outside the Inner Temple shout, "Who is it?" The shakers bellow the initiate's name, which the patriarchs echo. The shakers push the initiate toward the table, where the secrecy oath has been placed, and he is enjoined to "Read! Read! Read!" The shakers then half-carry the initiate to a picture of Eulogia, and the Bonesmen shriek, "Eulogia! Eulogia! Eulogia!" After another trip to the oath, the shakers fire the initiate toward a picture of a woman that Bonesmen call Connubial Bliss.
Rituals along these lines go on for quite some time, recalling a cross between haunted-house antics and a human pinball game -- "like something from a Harry Potter novel," in the words of one Bonesman, now an engineer. It is perhaps worth noting, in light of George W.'s controversial episode at Bob Jones University and the specter of anti-Catholicism, that at one point in the proceedings every initiate kisses the slippered toe of the "Pope." At last the initiate is formally dubbed a Knight of Eulogia. Amid more raucous ritual he is cast from the room into the waiting arms of the patriarchs.
WITHIN the tomb students run on Skull and Bones time, which is five minutes ahead of the time in the rest of the world. "It was to encourage you to think that being in the building was so different from the outside world that you'd let your guard down," a Bonesman ('72) explains. At 6:30 on Thursdays and Sundays the Bonesmen gather in the Firefly Room for supper. The room is dim and intimate; light shines through the gaping eyeholes of fixtures shaped like skulls. Bonesmen drink various refreshments from skull-shaped cups, but never alcohol. The dry-society rule, fervently enforced, was designed to keep members level-headed for discussions -- a change of pace for George W., who drank heavily during his college years.
At 7:55 barbarian time Uncle Toby rings a bell to summon the members to the session. When the knights are seated, they sing two sacred anthems before the Hearing of Excuses, during which members are assessed fines for errors, such as arriving late or using a society name outside the tomb. Uncle Toby then draws debate topics and an order of speakers from the Yorick, a skull divided into compartments. The ninety-minute period of debate can be frivolous or grave.
One of the standard pieces of lore about Skull and Bones is that each member must at some point give an account of his sexual history, known as the CB (for "Connubial Bliss"). "After the first one or two times it's like guys listing their conquests, and that gets old," one young Bonesman told me recently. "There's just not that much to talk about" -- and so CBs have evolved into relationship discussions. "It's the kind of stuff a lot of guys do with their teammates," says another Bonesman ('83). "There was nothing perverse or surreal or prurient -- just an open exchange. It's like TV's Ricki Lake -- there's now a national mania for purging thoughts at large. This is a way of doing it in a very private, non-sensationalist way that benefits the people who are listening and the people who are telling."
By mid-autumn, after each member has presented a CB, the time slot shifts to Life Histories, when Bonesmen spend one or more nights giving their autobiographies. George Bush's autobiography focused on his military service but also looked ahead, a 1948 member told me. "He was talking about the future, first about his family and then about being able to have an impact in public service." George W., in contrast, spoke often about his father. George W.'s fellow Bonesmen have been unwilling to elaborate.
WHEN U.S. News & World Report asked President Bush in 1989 why he had chosen to attend Yale, he replied, "My family had a major Yale tradition." Today George W. Bush distances himself from Yale (although supporters cite his alma mater to combat charges that he is a lightweight). He has criticized its "intellectual snobbery" and has maintained that the school epitomizes "a certain East Coast attitude" and an "intellectual arrogance." George W.'s attitude toward Yale extends to its most elite society. Whereas George Bush returned to the tomb in 1998 to be the dinner speaker at the annual Skull and Bones commencement party, George W. has stayed away. In his 1999 campaign autobiography, A Charge to Keep, George W. Bush mentions his membership in Skull and Bones only in passing: "My senior year I joined Skull and Bones, a secret society, so secret I can't say anything more."
Yet Skull and Bones was not relegated entirely to George W.'s past after he graduated. In 1971, having been rejected by the University of Texas Law School and needing a job, Bush called a Bonesman, Robert H. Gow. Gow, who later told The Washington Post that his Houston-based agricultural company had not been looking for anyone at the time, hired Bush as a management trainee. In 1977, when Bush formed Arbusto Energy, his first company, he once again applied to Skull and Bones for financial aid. With assistance from his uncle Jonathan Bush (Bones '53), he lined up $565,000 from twenty-eight investors. One of them contributed $93,000 -- the California venture capitalist William H. Draper III (Bones '50). Twelve Bonesmen (including family members)and the son of a patriarch gave a total of $35,500 to Bush's 1998 gubernatorial campaign. At least forty-six Bonesmen or sons of patriarchs have given approximately $1,000 apiece to his presidential campaign -- the maximum allowed by law.
Not surprisingly, loyalty often flows in the other direction. In 1984 Bush flew to Tennessee to accompany the Republican Senate nominee and Bonesman ('67) Victor Ashe on a seven-city tour. Ashe lost to Al Gore.
That George W. keeps his Skull and Bones connections in repair is hardly a sign of anything insidious; it's just business as usual in America. Compared with his family connections and his family's Yale connections, the Skull and Bones network is just a sideshow. But in the eyes of the conspiracy-minded, interconnections of any kind, especially when cloaked in mystery and ritual, constitute virtual proof of dark doings. Skull and Bones will probably never rid itself of innuendo -- innuendo that has not helped the Bonesmen Bushes in the pursuit of politics.
Conspiracy theories, which George W. has called "the kind of connect-the-random-dots charges that are virtually impossible to refute," contributed to Bush's defeat in his 1978 congressional campaign. Bill Minutaglio, in his biography of Bush, First Son, recalls an afternoon debate moderated by the radio talk-show host Mel Turner:
Turner ... wanted to know if the young Bush was a tool of some shadow government; it was the same thing people had confronted his father with when they had called him a "tool of the eastern kingmakers."
"Are you involved in, or do you know anybody involved in, one-world government or the Trilateral Commission?"
Bush, who had been telling people he was tired of being hammered for having "connections" through his father to the eastern establishment, was fuming. "I won't be persuaded by anyone, including my father," he said, with a biting tone in his voice.
On the way out of the restaurant, Bush was still livid. He refused to shake hands with Turner. "You asshole," Turner heard him hiss as he walked by.
George W.'s father has certainly felt that membership in Skull and Bones damaged him politically. When Fay Vincent made a consolation call to Bush after his 1980 loss of the Republican presidential nomination to Ronald Reagan, the weary candidate said, "Fay, let me tell you something. If you ever decide to run for office, don't forget that coming from Andover, Yale, Skull and Bones, and the Trilateral Commission is a big handicap. People don't know what they are, so they don't know where you're coming from. It's really a big, big problem."
In The Skulls, members of the secret society murder a student journalist who is attempting to probe its mysteries. Real-life journalists have not met the same fate, so far as we know, although Ron Rosenbaum, the author of a 1977 Esquire article on Skull and Bones, wrote that a Bonesman warned him not to get too close: "The alumni still care," the source warned.
"Don't laugh. They don't like people tampering and prying. The power of Bones is incredible. They've got their hands on every lever of power in the country. You'll see -- it's like trying to look into the Mafia."
When I read this excerpt to one young Bonesman, he laughed and said, "I really don't think I'd be working nights as a paralegal while trying to be an actor if I had access to some golden key."
SKULL and Bones doesn't own an opulent island hideaway like the one depicted in The Skulls. It does own an island on the St. Lawrence River -- Deer Island, in Alexandria Bay. The forty-acre retreat is intended to give Bonesmen an opportunity to "get together and rekindle old friendships." A century ago the island sported tennis courts and its softball fields were surrounded by rhubarb plants and gooseberry bushes. Catboats waited on the lake. Stewards catered elegant meals. But although each new Skull and Bones member still visits Deer Island, the place leaves something to be desired. "Now it is just a bunch of burned-out stone buildings," a patriarch sighs. "It's basically ruins." Another Bonesman says that to call the island "rustic" would be to glorify it. "It's a dump, but it's beautiful."
The fading of Deer Island exemplifies the dwindling finances of Skull and Bones, which can no longer claim the largest society endowment at Yale. Unlike members of other societies, Bonesmen pay no dues, though patriarchs receive an annual letter requesting a "voluntary contribution to the Russell Trust Association." In truth, Skull and Bones has never been wealthy.
The society's accounts are much fatter in the ineffables department. A Skull and Bones document states,
The experience we have come to value in our society depends on privacy, and we are unwilling to jeopardize that life in order to solicit new members. The life which we invite you to share in our society is based on such intangible factors that we cannot meaningfully convey to you either its nature or quality.
Hardly a tool of Hades, but rather a staid wayside for students, its heyday past, its glory faded, Skull and Bones may have little more than this to conceal.
As for the $15,000 graduation gift, George W.'s contemporary Rex Cowdry says, "I'm still waiting for mine."
Alexandra Robbins, a 1998 graduate of Yale University, is on the staff of The New Yorker's Washington bureau
PROBLEMS WITH THE ALLEGED JFK AUTOPSY X-RAYS AND PHOTOS:
HAVE THE JFK AUTOPSY MATERIALS BEEN FAKED OR ALTERED?
Michael T. Griffith
2001
@All Rights Reserved
Second Edition
Revised and Expanded on 5/7/2001
Lone-gunman theorists maintain that the alleged JFK autopsy photos and x-rays are genuine, pointing to the fact that they were authenticated by two expert panels retained by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in the late 1970s. However, those panels based their "authentications" on a few narrow criteria, and they did not explain the indications of fakery in the autopsy materials.
Indications that the autopsy x-rays and photographs are invalid are as follows:
* The HSCA admitted the following about the photographs:
- They are generally of rather poor photographic quality.
- Some of them were taken in such a manner that it is nearly impossible to anatomically orient the direction of view.
- In many of them, scaler references are entirely lacking, or, when present, are positioned in such a manner that it is difficult or impossible to obtain accurate measurements of critical features from anatomical landmarks.
- Not one of them contains information identifying the victim, such as his name, the autopsy case number, and the date and place of the examination.
- Due to their lack of documentation and poor quality, the defense could have challenged the use of these photos as evidence in a trial, and even the prosecution might have had "second thoughts about using certain of these photographs since they are more confusing than informative."
- The onus of establishing their authenticity would have rested with the prosecution. Harrison Livingstone correctly notes that this point and the previous one can rightly be seen as an admission that the photos would have been prima facie inadmissable as evidence in a court of law, and that the prosecution could have used them only after establishing their validity (Livingstone, HIGH TREASON 2, 315).
* Earl McDonald of the National Archives, who trained in autopsy photography under autopsy photographer James Stringer, has noted other oddities about the autopsy photos. McDonald has compiled a list of things that should appear in the autopsy photos but that are not found in them:
- There are no autopsy tags visible in any of the photographs.
- There are no whole body photographs in the collection.
- There is no photograph of the brain (at autopsy) immediately following removal from the cranium.
- There is no photograph of the inside of the skull following brain removal showing its condition.
- There is no photograph of the reassembled skull.
- There is no photograph of the chest cavity.
- There is no extreme close-up of the back wound.
- There is no wide-angle and/or medium field view of the cranium viewed from the outside. (I've taken this list from chapter four of Ed Dorsch's fine online book on the assassination. The book is available at http://pages.prodigy.net/whiskey99/.)
* The HSCA medical panel authenticated the x-rays partly on the basis of a right frontal sinus, but if the x-rays are composites, or if they are in fact the originals but have been altered, an authentication based on sinuses would not automatically prove authenticity.
* In the color versions of the right-profile and top-of-the-head pictures, there are three large bloody red stripes hanging down on top of Kennedy's hair, giving the appearance of a severe wound at the top of the head. However, in the black and white reprints of these photos the stripes are WHITE OR LIGHT GRAY. This is a photographic impossibility, if orthochromatic film was used. With such film, red turns to black, not to white or light gray. Professional photographer Steve Mills has said the following about this problem:
Orthochromatic film, unfiltered, records blue very lightly and red very darkly. This makes perfect sense in [autopsy photos] F1 through F5. Yet, here's a supposedly bloodied scalp in F6 and F7 recorded as light gray. This can be done with a red filter on ortho film, but the blood drops on the towel show me this is not the case. The scalp can't be gray and three bloody spots still be dark if a filter was used. It is common to use ortho film in forensic photography to show differences and details in red and blue areas. But this is no proof. The record declares one type of film, and the photos declare either another or fraud. (Livingstone, HIGH TREASON 2, 584)
Mills goes on to discuss indications of fraud in the Groden color autopsy photos in relation to the stripes and the scalp:
They [the autopsy photos] also show Groden's color shots to be frauds. Let me explain.
1) Let's say it was pan b/w. F6 and F7 would have to be shot with a blue filter to lighten the stripe. That would darken the supposedly bloody scalp. You can't have it both ways, i.e., light red AND light blue, so there's no red filter either. This would not work. So, if it's truly pan film, then the scalp is not bloody skin but brain matter.
2) Let's say it's ortho film. The blue stripe will always be light and the red will always be dark. No filter is required if the scalp is really brain tissue, but a red one is still needed to lighten blood. But here the bloody spots prove this is not the case once again. So do the bloody marks on his shoulder.
So, here's the result: They probably used ortho film and no filtering of any kind. THAT IS BRAIN and NOT SCALP. We can see that NO COMBINATION OF FILM AND FILTRATION CAN GIVE YOU B/W PHOTOS THAT WILL JIBE WITH GRODEN'S COLORS. THEY HAVE TO BE FAKE. (Livingstone, HIGH TREASON 2, 584-585, original emphasis)
Furthermore, nearly all of the medical witnesses who have commented on the condition of the top of the head have said it was virtually undamaged (Livingstone, HIGH TREASON 2, 156, 182; Livingstone, KILLING KENNEDY, 254, 255, 256-257; Livingstone, KILLING THE TRUTH, 139; see also the discussion herein on the location of the large head wound). Numerous witnesses reported that the large head defect was not visible when the back of the head was lying flat on the table.
* The autopsy photos were supposedly taken at the morgue of the Bethesda Naval Hospital, but some of the medical technicians who worked there--and who also assisted with the autopsy--have stated that the background in those pictures is not that of the Bethesda morgue. Among other things, these technicians argue that the instrument tray shown in the F7 top-of-the-head photo is not the kind of tray that was used at the Bethesda morgue.
Additionally, the left-profile picture shows a black phone on the wall beside the table, but these autopsy technicians say there was no phone at that position at the morgue.
* The x-rays of the skull show two-thirds of the right side of the brain to be gone. All that remains is a torn and flattened base. Yet, the x-rays also show a trail of tiny metal fragments across the top of the head on the right side, from the alleged entrance point in the rear to the forward margin of the supposed exit wound in the right front. How can this be? What is supporting the metal if there is no brain in that part of the head?
The fragments in the right frontal lobe are particularly problematic. Dr. Richard Lindenberg, an expert consultant for the Rockefeller Commission, noted that in the skull x-rays the entire right frontal lobe is MISSING. But the x-rays show bullet fragments in that lobe. What is supporting those fragments if the lobe is not there? One cannot have the right frontal lobe missing and still have fragments seen in it on an x-ray.
* Floyd Riebe, one of the two autopsy photographers, stated in a filmed interview for KRON-TV in 1988 that the autopsy x-rays and photos had been doctored in some way, and that the photos did not show the wounds that he saw on the night of the autopsy. Riebe said he recalled seeing "a big gaping hole in the back of the head." The other photographer, James Stringer, stated in a taped interview that he did NOT take the photos of the back of the head, which show that area intact, contrary to the testimony of literally dozens of credible witnesses. Who, then, took the back-of-the-head pictures?
* In the skull x-rays, according to government-hired experts who have examined them, there does not appear to be a large defect in the right rear part of the head. Similarly, in the autopsy photographs of the back of the head, this area of the head is intact. However, numerous medical professionals and federal agents who saw Kennedy's body have stated there was a large hole in that part of the skull. Some of these witnesses include the following:
- Audrey Bell, a nursing supervisor at Parkland Hospital.
- Diana Bowron, Parkland Hospital nurse. Nurse Bowron actually cleaned the large defect and packed it with gauze squares in preparing the body for the casket. She vividly remembers that the large head wound was in the right rear part of the skull.
- Dr. Kemp Clark, Parkland Hospital.
- Dr. Charles Crenshaw, Parkland Hospital.
- Dr. Richard Dulaney, Parkland Hospital.
- Dr. John Ebersole, Bethesda Hospital radiologist. In an extensive interview with his hometown newspaper in 1978, Dr. Ebersole said, "When the body was removed from the casket there was a very obvious horrible gaping wound in the back of the head" (Lifton 543).
- William Greer, Secret Service agent, who drove the presidential limousine.
- Clint Hill, a Secret Service agent who was taken to the morgue for the express purpose of viewing the President's wounds and who was also in the Parkland trauma room when the President was being treated. It was Agent Hill who climbed onto the back of the limousine to get Jackie Kennedy to return to her seat. Hill testified that as he was lying over the top of the back seat "I noticed A PORTION OF THE PRESIDENT'S HEAD ON THE RIGHT REAR SIDE WAS MISSING and he was bleeding profusely." Hours later, when Hill was taken to the morgue for the express purpose of viewing the President's wounds, he again reported seeing a large defect in the right rear area of the skull.
- Patricia Hutton (now Patricia Gustaffson), a nurse at Parkland Hospital, who placed a bandage against the wound in the back of the head.
- James Curtis Jenkins, a Navy lab technician at Bethesda Hospital who was present at the autopsy.
- Dr. Robert Karnei, Bethesda Hospital, who was present at the autopsy.
- Roy Kellerman, a Secret Service agent who was present at the autopsy.
- Dr. Robert McClelland, Parkland Hospital.
- Doris Nelson, a chief nurse at Parkland Hospital. Nurse Nelson, who got a very good look at Kennedy's head in the trauma room at Parkland Hospital, balked when shown the alleged autopsy photos of the back of the head:
Doris Nelson, the supervising Emergency Room nurse, carefully inspected the body. Ben Bradlee, Jr., asked her, "Did you get a good look at his head injuries?" "A very good look," she replied. "Oh, I did see it. When we wrapped him up and put him in the coffin. I saw his whole head." She was then asked if the alleged autopsy photos were accurate. "No. It's not true. Because there was no hair back there. There wasn't even hair back there. It was blown away. Some of his head was blown away and his brains were fallen down on the stretcher." (Groden and Livingstone 454)
- Aubrey Rike, an ambulance driver and funeral home worker in Dallas. Rike was called to Parkland Hospital soon after the shooting and assisted in placing the President's body in the casket. Rike could actually feel the edges of the large wound in the back of the head.
- Tom Robinson, the mortician who had the job of putting the President back together after the autopsy in case the family wanted to take one last look at him. Robinson, of course, had to spend a good part of his time handling the President's head. He saw and felt the large wound in the right rear.
- Jan Gail Rudnicki, a lab assistant at Bethesda Hospital who was present at the autopsy.
- Roy Stamps, a Fort Worth newsman who saw Kennedy lying in the limousine before he was moved into Parkland Hospital. Said Stamps, "I rushed up and saw Kennedy lying in the car. . . . The back of his head was gone" (Marrs 362).
- Dr. David Stewart, Parkland Hospital.
It should be noted that according to some private experts, the anterior-posterior (AP) x-ray does indicate some missing bone in the occipital region.
* The skull x-rays show a large 6.5 mm fragment in the outer table of the skull below what government-hired experts have described as an entrance hole in the top part of the back of the head, in the cowlick area. However, neither the autopsy doctors nor the radiologist reported seeing this fragment in the skull x-rays that were taken on the night of the autopsy (Livingstone, KILLING THE TRUTH, 131-133, 622, 630). When the chief autopsist, Dr. James Humes, testified before the Warren Commission, he discussed at length the fragments he observed in the skull and in the skull x-rays, and he mentioned that he and the other doctors were looking for fragments to retrieve, yet he said nothing about seeing a 6.5 mm fragment anywhere in the rear part of the skull (see, for example, 2 H 351-355, 358-360).
Additionally, ballistics expert Howard Donahue has pointed out that it is highly unlikely that the 6.5 mm fragment could have come from a bullet fired from the alleged sniper's nest. Defenders of the x-rays speculate that the fragment "sheared off" from the bullet as the missile entered the skull. But Donahue observes that a bullet fired from the TSBD, and thus entering the skull at a downward angle, should have deposited a sheared-off fragment ABOVE the entrance point, not below it. He further notes that he has never heard off a fully metal-jacketed bullet shearing on impact (Menninger 68, 160). Detective Shaun Roach, an Australian forensics expert, agrees, saying, ". . . due to the inherent strength of the 6.5 mm Carcano jacket, I also believe that it would NOT shear off a fragment upon entering the head, then deposit that fragment on the outer table of the skull, either above or below the wound" (Livingstone, KILLING THE TRUTH, 57). In fact, forensic science knows of no case where a fully metal-jacketed bullet deposited a sheared-off fragment in the outer table of the skull after striking the skull.
Moreover, the alleged entrance hole in the x-rays, near which the 6.5 mm fragment appears, is a staggering four inches HIGHER than the entry point described in the autopsy report. It is extremely hard to believe that the autopsy pathologists mislocated this wound by a whopping four inches, especially since one of them, Dr. J. Thornton Boswell, in effect triangulated the wound to the external occipital protuberance (Livingstone, KILLING THE TRUTH, 129-130).
* Dr. Mantik has concluded the x-rays are abnormal. Dr. Mantik reached this conclusion after studying the radiographs at the National Archives with sensitive light-measuring equipment. Dr. Mantik has noted that the measured light in the large white area on the right lateral x-rays is "a thousand times the maximum seen in any other x-rays" (in DATELINE: DALLAS, April 12, 1994, p. 13; see also Livingstone, KILLING KENNEDY, 79-87). (For the record, Dr. Mantik, B.S., M.S., Ph.D., M.D., is a board-certified radiation oncologist and the Director of Radiation Oncology at Eisenhower Memorial Hospital. He was formerly an Assistant Professor of Radiation Science at Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, California, and is the author or co-author of several scholarly publications in these fields. Dr. Mantik's Ph.D. is in physics.)
* The Select Committee's medical panel claimed that in the lateral skull x-ray fracture lines radiate outward from the proposed cowlick entry site and correspondingly from the 6.5 mm fragment that now appears in the skull radiographs. But Dr. Mantik points out that these lines do not actually radiate from this location:
On the AP [anterior-posterior] view, however, these lines do not actually extend to the proposed entry site; they stop short of it. Dr. David O. Davis [an HSCA consultant] was careful to choose his words: ". . . the linear fractures seem to MORE OR LESS emanate from the embedded metallic fragment." Unless they unequivocally extend to this 6.5 mm object they cannot represent fracture lines caused by a posterior skull bullet. On the contrary, based on the radiographs and on Boswell's diagram, several of these obvious fracture lines may lie in the inferior orbital rim and not on the posterior skull at all. The inferior orbital rim fractures were confirmed by radiologist Seaman [another HSCA consultant]: "Fractures were evident through the upper part of the right eye, including the top and bottom of the right orbit." If these fractures lie on the anterior skull surface they cannot, of course, represent fracture lines emanating from the proposed cowlick entry site, and therefore, they cannot be used as evidence of a cowlick entry. (Livingstone, KILLING THE TRUTH, 613)
* Dr. Humes, the chief autopsist, removed a large bullet fragment behind the right eye's supraorbital ridge. Humes told the Commission that this fragment was "visible by x-ray just above the right eye." In other words, Humes removed this fragment AFTER it had been x-rayed in the skull. Yet, apparently this fragment was NOT present in the autopsy x-rays that were examined by the Clark Panel in 1968, since the panel didn't even mention it. Given the fact that panel's purpose was to provide a comprehensive review of the autopsy x-rays and photos, it is hard to believe the panel would have failed to mention the fragment had it appeared in the x-rays that the panel studied. Moreover, to further complicate matters, Dr. Wecht and Dr. John Lattimer have stated that the large right-eye fragment DID appear in the skull x-rays that they examined a few years later at the National Archives (i.e., after the Clark Panel completed its work).
* So far the 6.5 mm object seen in the skull x-rays has been referred to herein as a "fragment." However, Dr. Mantik discovered that this "fragment" is really not a bullet fragment! After direct study of the x-rays, coupled with optical density measurements, Dr. Mantik found that this object is composed of an artificial image that was superimposed over the image of a smaller, genuine bullet fragment. Dr. Mantik has even duplicated the process by which the image of the 6.5 mm object could have been created. This image could only have been added to the x-rays after the autopsy. Dr. Mantik discusses these important findings in the recent book ASSASSINATION SCIENCE: EXPERTS SPEAK OUT ON THE DEATH OF JFK (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 1998), edited by Professor James Fetzer of the University of Minnesota.
* Bethesda x-ray technician Jerrol Custer has stated that on November 23, the day after the autopsy, he was instructed by his superiors to tape bullet fragments to pieces of skull and then to x-ray them. At the time, Custer was told these x-rays were for a "bust" of JFK's head, but no such "bust" has ever surfaced. Custer suspects the radiographs he was ordered to take on November 23 were used to make the autopsy x-rays (Livingstone, HIGH TREASON 2, 219, 554).
* According to Dr. Lattimer, the photographs of the President's brain show the cerebellum "to be intact." However, several Dallas doctors reported that the cerebellum was badly damaged.
One Dallas doctor after another testified that the cerebellum--a structure at the bottom of the back of the brain--was damaged. It was "macerated," said Dr. Carrico; "blasted out," said Dr. McClelland; "present . . . on the cart," said Dr. Baxter; "herniated from the wound," said Dr. Jenkins; and "damaged and exposed," said Dr. Kemp Clark, the neurosurgeon. (Lifton 504)
In all, seven of the Dallas doctors, all of whom got a good look at the large defect, reported seeing considerable damage to the cerebellum (Livingstone, KILLING THE TRUTH, 631-632). It should be noted that cerebellar tissue is easy to distinguish from other brain tissue. Even Dr. Humes noted damage to the cerebellum. Dr. Humes examined microscopic sections taken from seven areas of the brain, including the cerebellum. He said that ALL of the sections were "essentially similar" and that they showed "EXTENSIVE DISRUPTION OF BRAIN TISSUE WITH ASSOCIATED HEMORRHAGE" (WCR 545, emphasis added).
* In the autopsy photos of the back of the head, the occipital region is undamaged. But there is considerable evidence that these pictures have been doctored, or that they are entirely fake. For example:
- As discussed above, there is massive eyewitness testimony that there was a large defect in the right occipital-parietal area.
- The AP x-ray of the skull indicates, or suggests, missing bone in the occipital area (Livingstone, KILLING THE TRUTH, 630, citing a letter from Dr. Gary Aguilar, Dr. Wayne Smith, Dr. Anthony White, Dr. Patricia James, and Dr. Mantik).
- Two of the autopsy pathologists, Dr. Humes and Dr. Pierre Finck, reported that the large defect extended into the occipital region.
- The autopsy report itself says the large wound extended "somewhat into the temporal and occipital regions" (WCR 540).
- We now know from recently released files that Dr. Ebersole, who was the radiologist at the autopsy, told HSCA investigators that a sizable OCCIPITAL BONE FRAGMENT arrived late that night from Dallas (Livingstone, KILLING KENNEDY, 259). Understandably, Dr. Ebersole said the photos of the back of the head did NOT show the large defect as he recalled it (Livingstone, KILLING KENNEDY, 41-42). When shown one of the back-of-the-head photographs, Dr. Ebersole told HSCA investigators that his recollection was that the large defect was in the occipital region, and that he "certainly" could NOT state that the image seen in the photo was "the way it [the back of the head] looked" (Livingstone, KILLING KENNEDY, 41).
- Similarly, Dr. Boswell made it clear to the HSCA that part of the rear entry wound, which he and the other pathologists said was located in the middle of the occiput, was contained in a piece of missing bone that didn't arrive until late that night. Thus, according to Dr. Boswell's detailed description to HSCA investigators, that late-arriving bone fragment would have had to be mostly or entirely from the occipital area.
Perhaps the above evidence explains why Saundra Kay Spencer, who processed the autopsy photos that Secret Service Agent James Fox brought from the autopsy, told the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) that she did NOT process any of the autopsy photos now in evidence, i.e., that the autopsy photos that she processed were different from the autopsy pictures now in evidence. She also told the ARRB she did not process any black and white photos, only negatives and color positives. This suggests the black and white autopsy photos were processed elsewhere, and that there were TWO sets of autopsy photos
Joe O'Donnell, who worked with White House photographer Robert Knudsen, told the ARRB that Knudsen showed him autopsy photos that showed a grapefruit-sized hole IN THE BACK OF THE HEAD. This is yet another witness who saw a sizable wound in the rear of the skull.
In light of this evidence, how can any credence be placed in the alleged autopsy photos of the back of head, which show no damage to the occipital region, especially since these photos were allegedly taken prior to the start of the autopsy?
Some experts assert that the x-rays are authentic but that they have been misinterpreted by the government-hired consultants and pro-WC doctors who have examined them. For instance, Dr. Randy Robertson, a radiologist who has examined the x-rays at the National Archives, says they show that two bullets struck President Kennedy in the head, and that one of them entered from the front. Dr. Joseph Riley has likewise concluded the skull x-rays show that two bullets struck Kennedy's head. And, Dr. Mantik and others maintain that the AP x-ray at the National Archives gives indications of a sizable right-rear defect.
Much of the controversy surrounding the skull x-rays could be cleared up if the originals were to be released for detailed, prolonged examination by independent experts. In the meantime, the conflicts between the x-rays and the photographs remain, and the photos that show the back of the head intact are strongly contradicted, not only by the AP x-ray, but by the huge amount of eyewitness testimony that there was a large, gaping wound in that area.
Bibliography
Dorsch, Ed, THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION FOR THE NOVICE, online book at http://pages.prodigy.net/whiskey99/.
Fetzer, James, editor, ASSASSINATION SCIENCE: EXPERTS SPEAK OUT ON THE DEATH OF JFK, Chicago: Catfeet Press, 1998.
Groden, Robert and Harrison Edward Livingstone, HIGH TREASON: THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY AND THE NEW EVIDENCE OF CONSPIRACY, Berkley Edition, New York: Berkley Books, 1990.
Lifton, David, BEST EVIDENCE, New York: Carroll & Graf, 1988.
Livingstone, Harrison Edward, HIGH TREASON 2, New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1992.
-----, KILLING KENNEDY AND THE HOAX OF THE CENTURY, New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1995. Must reading.
-----, KILLING THE TRUTH: DECEIT AND DECEPTION IN THE JFK CASE, New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1993.
-----, STUNNING NEW EVIDENCE IN THE JFK CASE, New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1999.
Marrs, Jim, CROSSFIRE: THE PLOT THAT KILLED KENNEDY, New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1989.
Menninger, Bonar, MORTAL ERROR: THE SHOT THAT KILLED JFK, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992.
Posner, Gerald, CASE CLOSED: LEE HARVEY OSWALD AND THE ASSASSINATION OF JFK, New York: Random House, 1993.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Michael T. Griffith holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Excelsior College in Albany, New York, and two Associate in Applied Science degrees from the Community College of the Air Force. He is also a two-time graduate of the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, and of the U.S. Air Force Technical Training School in San Angelo, Texas. He has earned instructor certification from both the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force. He is the author of the book Compelling Evidence: A New Look at the Assassination of President Kennedy (Grand Prairie, TX: JFK-Lancer Productions and Publications, 1996). His articles on the assassination have appeared in several journals that deal with the subject. In addition, he is the author of four books on Mormonism and ancient texts.
BUSH FAMILY---. MEMBERS OF YALES SKULL AND BONES SECRET SOCIETY
August 2, 2008
AS YOU ENTER THIS POST....I CHALLENGE YOU TO BELIEVE OF DISBELIEVE THE CONTENT OF WHAT YOU READ OR SEE.....BUT EITHER WAY I WELCOME THOSE WHO STILL BELIEVE IN LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL!
(CBS) As opposite as George Bush and John Kerry may seem to be, they do share a common secret - one they've shared for decades, and one they will not share with the electorate.
The secret: details of their membership in Skull and Bones, the elite YaleUniversity society whose members include some of the most powerful men of the 20th century.
Bonesmen, as they're called, are forbidden to reveal what goes on in their inner sanctum, the windowless building on the Yale campus that is called the Tomb.
When 60 Minutes first reported on Skull & Bones last October, conspiracy theorists, who see Skull and Bones behind just about everything that goes wrong, and even right, in the world, were relishing the unthinkable - the possibility of two Bonesman fighting it out for the presidency.
Over the years, Bones has included presidents, cabinet officers, spies, Supreme Court justices, captains of industry, and often their sons and lately their daughters, a social and political network like no other.
And to a man and women, they'd responded to questions with utter silence until an enterprising Yale graduate, Alexandra Robbins, managed to penetrate the wall of silence in her book, “Secrets of the Tomb,” reports CBS News Correspondent Morley Safer.
I am presently researching a biography on David Rockefeller. An overview of the book will soon be sent to a New York City agent for circulation among all the major publishing houses. Among the topics that will be covered is the role of British USA Round Table member Rep. Wayne Hays (Demo-Ohio) in "killing" the Reece Committee investigation of tax-exempt foundations, the disappearance of the research on the Rockefeller-funded Kinsey studies and the "disposal" threats made to Reece Investigator Norman Dodd by a lobbyist for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). In 1986, Hoover scholar Antony C. Sutton published his "magnum opus" - AMERICA'S SECRET ESTABLISHMENT: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE ORDER OF SKULL AND BONES. In his preface Sutton said he had been given an eight-inch batch of documents which was "nothing less than the membership lists of an American secret society. Glancing through the sheets it was more than obvious -- this was no ordinary group. The names spelled Power with a capital P."
SURNAME GIVEN NAME S&B YEAR
ELECTION 2000
This election was as close as can be
Was it Gore or Bush?... we waited for the answer so patiently
But the chads were still floating in Florida you see
The votes were not counted as election night dragged on…
They called in a judge to decide what the people had said
Were you a blue? or were you a red?
Is this any way to vote from your head?
In the end, the people did choose
But in Mr. Bush, did America win or lose?
It’s up to time to judge his fate
That began when Mr. Gore conceded on that date
Yes, it was a date in history and a place in time…
When the state of Florida turned a presidential election into a state of the sublime.
November 2000
*
ELECTION REACTION-2004
I’ll call him President Bush even though the push to start anew has died I keep asking myself how and why The heartland of America had his meaning in their minds Again I keep asking myself how and why
Will we ever get our men and women back home? Or will George continue the fight from his pleasure dome? Without a clue we have voted for four more years of insecurity and doubt Is this what a presidential election is all about?
We have made enemies of our friends which doesn’t seem to end When we say we are proud to be an American.... From which side do we mean? We have become a country split down the seams
So now our chance for change has come and gone And we must walk a lonely path all alone For arrogance and deceit may lead us into more trying times ahead So we must band together or more of our boys and girls will be dead Enough said My head is aching and I must go to bed
November 3, 2004
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POLITICALLY SAID
Just a poem to say what is politically said
In hopes that a vote for the people is not politically dead
Red or Blue....which one are you?
A President named Bush has won the popular vote they say But his popularity with the people may not come his way Bush may have won the election but he didn't win the fight There still are those who believe that the Democrat’s ideas are just and right
Now the Reds rule and the Blues must concede But did he really win the popular vote or just plant the seed? We must never give in to arrogance or corruption And never let the free world fall into consumption If something isn't right, we still need to take a stand It doesn’t matter if it's said by a politician or by a common man So stand up for your rights and never give in We can still change the world no matter what state we are in Ohio or Florida, Pennsylvania or Maine We must continue to hear the people's voice So don't let it die in vain......
Al Fayed points finger 
My belief (they) were murdered was confirmed when I learned Lord Condon and Lord Stevens did not show the coroner the note 
del.icio.us
Kennedy was at the center of the most important issues facing the nation for decades, and he did much to help shape them. A defender of the poor and politically disadvantaged, he set the standard for his party on health care, education, civil rights, campaign-finance reform and labor law 
