The vast majority of Greek people want the Parthenon Marbles to be returned. The demand for ‘restitution’ transcends traditional party lines and the Right-Left divide. For Greek politicians, it’s a safe claim to make before a disillusioned, sometimes outright hostile electorate, while bearing zero costs on the international front, as Britain would dare not lash out, unlike our neighbouring foreign governments towards which the Greek state holds rather more devastatingly broad claims of ‘restitution’.
“It is not a question of returning artefacts whose ownership is in question. These sculptures belong to Greece and they have effectively been stolen,” said the Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, in his most recent launching of the familiar claim, talking to the BBC on his last visit to London. And alas, for the first time, a rather promising (for him) sounding response has been elicited. The new Director of the British Museum, Nicholas Cullinan, went on record this summer to say that a lending scheme was in the works and that, although he couldn’t “get into the particulars”, a new era of “sharing” between the United Kingdom and Greece was set to begin.
This response on the part of Britain – or perhaps just on the part of Cullinan – has the peculiar advantage of bringing out the incoherence of the Greek claim: what, exactly, is meant by a “return” of the marbles? Would an indefinite “loan” of the ancient artefacts to the newly-established, hyper-modern Acropolis Museum suffice? Then again, isn’t the whole point of ‘historical justice’ supposed to be taking back something that was stolen, some 200 years ago, by the Earl of Elgin? Are Greeks really going to tolerate being leant something that was plundered from them, and thus be obliged to share it with the thieves?
If the lending scheme was to be tolerated as a ‘lesser of two evils’ – or even, perhaps, a first step towards permanent restitution – then the moral basis of the claim is subverted and we are left with nothing but a shabby compromise. The Greek PM admitted as much in his BBC appearance – the marbles would “look better” in the Acropolis Museum, he said. But if it’s simply a question of which museum would display the marbles to better effect, the British Museum far surpasses the Acropolis Museum.
It is here that the astonishing shortsightedness of the British response is brought to light. For while it may be true that there was something questionable about the original acquisition of the marbles, their current ownership by the British Museum is perfectly above board. And while there, they can be studied, analysed and obsessed over by leading experts in the field. The Parthenon marbles are kept there as exemplars of the highest achievements of human civilisation, for which the British Museum serves as steward and trustee. If it’s going to start returning artefacts to the places they’re originally from in some misguided attempt to ‘decolonise’ its collection, won’t the British Museum eventually become an empty building? What then? A nice residential development in Bloomsbury?
Maria Kornarou is a Greek journalist and lawyer. She is currently a Probationary Research Student at the University of Oxford.
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Spot on Chris. Legal warfare against those who deny Climate fascism and live in weather-reality. The anti-plant foodists, funded by these billionaire fascists, have zero science. So they use the state, courts and lawfare. And in this case, old, stupid, ignorant women. You know the legal system is of no value when it wastes time on a case that is so insipid it makes the Rona plandemic look plausible by comparison (there was no virus). There is no weather emergency. We don’t have a functioning legal system.
The stupidity of the ECHR verdict need not detail us for too long since it has been widely discussed elsewhere. But it is surely relevant that most bad weather events have shown little discernible rise in frequency over the last 100 years, while mortality from these events has dropped by 99%.
The fact that there is no increase in the frequency or intensity of any type of weather event poses no problem for the phony planet savers. They simply stand at podiums in front of the applauding media and simply declare everything is getting worse and we only have a “small window of opportunity” to save the planet. The lie is so enormous that ordinary hard working people busy with work and family life would ever suspect they could be deceived on such an industrial scale, so they accept it.
Saving the planet and supporting West Ham FC at the same time!
Seems like it is Bayer Leverkusen that are saving the planet. ——If not the planet well at least the Bundesliga
Follow the money…..
Client Earth:
‘Our top funders in 2022 were the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), Bloomberg Philanthropies, Postcode Earth Trust, Sequoia Climate Foundation, The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) – Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI), AKO Foundation, The Tilia Fund, European Climate Foundation (ECF), Arcadia, Grantham Foundation & Trust and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) – Forest Governance, Markets and Climate Programme (FGMC).’
So, at least two major investors in ‘green’ (should be ‘greenback’) technology, Christopher Hohn at CIFF and Jeremy Grantham at the Grantham Foundation. Then there is Julia Verville of the Tilia Fund who ‘advised private donors’ in a previous role and, no doubt, is still doing the same thing……and so on and so forth…….
This is simply a giant lobbying effort by the very rich in order to make themselves even richer.
Nothing to do with the ever changing climate or environment.
Time for governments, politicians to wake up……Oh! They already did and are trousering the ‘greenbacks’ themselves, big time…..Gore…..Kerry…..Bunter……..
Chris Hohn. One the greediest most immoral human ever born. Imagine having a hedge fund and seeking to destroy your own country’s economy.
All tyrants and make no mistake these billionaires are tyrants all come to find themselves turned upon by the majority, I think of Mussolini, Ceaucescu, Gadaffi, Hussein, all came to sticky ends. The Green billionaires true desire is not to save the planet but to own and run the planet to suit there own demagogue ends. These people are misanthropes, and the idiotis disciples who do their bidding in the belief that these billionaires are saviours are just like any other groups in History who have followed and supported people spinning a huge lie.
What the ivory towered billionaires underestimate is that people may be relatively poor in relation to the wealth of those that seek to rule us, but they are not stupid, and when people have everything taken away from them, they have nothing to lose in taking action against there opressors. People will not stand idly by suffering the cold, being unable to travel, being denied and rationed basic utilities such as clean water, heat and light, and the ability to move and work and grow food, which is the end game of all of this billionaire sponsored crap.
So in the end they will fall as all tyrants fall, they just haven’t realised it yet.
Off-T.
https://nexusnewsfeed.com/article/geopolitics/msm-deathly-silent-as-pcr-test-legally-ruled-useless-to-test-for-covid
The Portuguese judiciary proving their decency yet again.
PCR tests are utterly useless for diagnostic purposes. I think Kary Mullis warned of this before he was killed.
I see that it is now being suggested that “Climate Change” be taught to primary and secondary pupils. One of the reasons given for this teaching is so that pupils can then “educate” their parents into changing their behaviours. Is it not always been the case that totalitarians want to mould society by getting to the children first? But what will this “teaching” involve and who will do the teaching? Are these people really suggesting that Primary School Teachers will have the knowledge to educate pupils on this very controversial issue. One that is full of uncertainty, speculation, assumption and politicised science. Or will it as I suspect be the case that children will not be “educated” at all, they will simply be indoctrinated with officialdoms version of reality —-Or “Official Science” in support of government policy like Net Zero and Sustainable Development?
I recall Mao did a similar thing, that turned out really well too.
Just take a look at the faces on these self styled posturing snob ladies from Switzerland. Thoroughly brainwashed by government and bought and paid for media propaganda about a manufactured climate crisis, they fall right into the trap. —–They clamour to be led to safety and “protected”.——Little do they realise that they are handing total control over every aspect of their lives to GOVERNMENT. ——Climate Change is the gift that keeps giving to Liberal Progressive pretend to save the planet people who now have carte blanche to run our lives for us. What we can eat, what we can drive, (if anything), whether we can fly etc. They will take away affordable energy and let us have unaffordable unreliable energy. But remember that energy is the most important commodity of all, and prosperity is directly correlated with price and availability of energy. So these well to do ladies with their sophisticated hair styles, make up and clothes are prepared to hand over control of their standard of living to communists masquerading as Planet Savers because they have not the foggiest idea what they are talking about, and know nothing about energy or climate. Except they are leaving the rest of us to suffer the same fate, and also the one billion people in the world that are trying to get through life that don’t even have electricity, who have never heard of global bloody warming. —–Well done ladies.
Superb article by Chris Morrison, also exposing the astonishing views of judges like King’s Counsel Jessica Simor. The King ought to give her the boot.
What a tyrannical quote from her!
“In Switzerland it’s particularly problematic because they have referendums… the people decided they didn’t want it. This is something that comes up all the time… the conflict between this idea of democracy as entailing… rights which matter irrespective of what the majority decides.”
Here’s another few of her quotes, captured by Guido Fawkes:
Guido Fawkes on X: “@JMPSimor @tomhfh Which one of these was the only time you have ever sworn on Twitter? https://t.co/AvKbcU3kkX” / X
I loved David Goodhart’s response to her there, back when she was QC instead of KC:
“Dear QC, you initiated the aggression. I never start things. But pleased to have caused a small ripple in the ocean of your smugness.”
Hi Chris
The recent ECHR judgement regarding the Old ladies of Switzerland and climate change raising an important question over the legitimate extent of human rights law. (but maybe there was previously a settled principle which has now been reneged upon)
I take Human rights law to be a human legal construct which can only be applied too human behaviours. So for example the right to life does not mean over and against the natural process of dying, it means over and against any human contrivance which will damage your life. If climate change is a direct result of contrived human behaviour and action, then it is I suppose potentially in view of such legal consideration assuming such change has a negative impact (and which view clearly the ECHR judgement has decided is appropriate.)
However it is not as simple as that, surely there must be a number of tests which must be passed first.
1. There must be some at least theoretical person of standing, who is immediately and directly affected by said action or lack of action. Without this immediate effect test then you are led into nonsense territory where you could consistently argue that all human activity increases entropy which will hasten the universes heat death and so is against our human right to life. And so therefore all human activity/life should be banned because it is against our right to life.
But isn’t that where these Swiss old ladies come in, they are the theoretical persons of standing, immediately affected? – see below
2. A second test would of course need to be that the effect would have to be clearly distinguishable from some natural process or propensity (i.e. see the right to life comment above) such that at the minimum it was over 50% attributable to human activity.
Given that scientific consensus on climate change is purely a human political construct, which has little consensus with the natural facts on the ground about the possible range of natural climate variations, means that this test would/should have failed.
Having experts under oath in court being closely questioned about the extent and nature of the evidence would be important here. For example on behalf of ICAN lawyer Aaron Siri was able to establish in American courts, from experts under oath, that there have been no properly double blind placebo tests (anywhere in the world) of any of the 1st ten of the American childhood vaccines in relation to autism. i.e. the statement that MMR does not cause autism is little more than wishful thinking, a statement not established either way.
3. Finally a third test would be, is it in the power of any government supposedly supporting these human rights to remedy the situation, without undermining human rights in another context. i.e. the we must do something cure is worse or just as bad as the problem. This remedy test would of course again show up if the distinction between the natural and the human again.
Maybe some Swiss old men should get together to create a counter suit. i.e. their right to life (create entropy according to their adopted identity) is immediately undermined by net zero restrictions etc. And experts under oath will not be able to point to any proper studies which prove a direct immediate over 50% connection between human action and resultant climate change over and against the grand natural cycles.
One of the problems is that this has become another critical theory distinction, plucky big green self-righteous underdog money over and against ‘oppressive’ old fashioned oil money. Either way its big money and elites and both are missing the real issue.
The solution is the old fashioned conservationist position of organic farming, and we need to go on a slow controlled non cliff edge journey to get back there. Yes the cows do have to be able to fart and shit so we can hand on fertile land to our children, and enable the missing insects and flies to come back. But Organic farming puts a natural strategic limit on populations in any one area, and is also about fitting in with the speed of natural cycles to avoid pollutions. Something which should be applied to all human activity, in the context that human (all) life is inevitably about consumption and entropy increase, but not at any rate which causes shit to back up!
OK, so the planet is on fire and we’ve got to stop everyone everywhere from ever feeling warm indoors again because reasons. Have any of these toxic numpties ever come up with cast iron, provably legitimate temperatures for all latitudes and longitudes which WILL save the planet? I ask this because I caught a weather report covering Europe on Al Jazeera last night, by one of the Met’s stooges. Anyone would think that a delightfully warm spring day over the continent is the End of Times, because it was ‘above average’ – MetMan made sure to ram that point home several times. Since when has a statistical average been the only temperature allowed, any deviation considered unacceptable? It was a truly disgusting piece of fearmongering psyop nudgework.
Officialdom actually claim that “global temperature” (a rather dubious concept) has risen about 1.2 C since 1860. What this indicates is actually a rather stable temperature, and one thousand years ago temperatures for 400 years or so were pretty much the same as now. (Medieval Warming) . With previous Roman Na Minoan warming periods similar as well. So in reality there is nothing unusual about current temperatures.—————————– Depending on your starting point you can claim any kind of rise or fall in temperature, as your politics requires.
Due to the nature of averages, about 50% of everything is above average. Which quite obviously implies that about 50% of everything is also below average. MetMan seems to have missed quite some stuff in secondary school.
Important point in short: Referendum in Switzerland went against Net Zero. ECHR to the rescue!
As I already wrote a couple of times: The supposedly climate-concerned, superficially female-looking and probably lab-grown transhumans pictured above are involved in pseudo-legalistc coup to overturn the constitution of Switzerland, no less.
Everybody should know that fishy Rishy was a partner in Hohn’s Children’s Investment Fund before he became PM.
“Quite why the British Conservative Government is helping to fund an operation that is likely to sue it in the courts is, of course, another mystery”…..There are a lot of those with the fake Conservatives like ULEZ. It only matters if an election is coming, but they introduced ULEZ and then we have the UK FIRES. Whether they are involved in C40 cities I’m not sure, but one thing is certain, just like Labour the party it is full of Globalists and we need to rid ourselves of them if we want a free future.