by antiaristo » Fri Jul 15, 2005 5:59 pm
The machinery of democracy is falling apart. I want to understand the reason why.<br>I have linked to the Treason Felony Act before, it is true. It is obscure, and difficult but absolutely fundamental to this question of WHY?<br><br>That statute makes it illegal for anyone to do anything that opposes the Queen. “Any person” includes, crucially, all the judges in the United Kingdom. I can prove this in my own case, for I can demonstrate that a forged court order was issued by the High Court. And then buried.<br><br>Now come to the Human Rights Act. All these “rights” are subject to enforcement by the courts, which means the judges. But the judge swears an oath to Queen Elizabeth, and is constrained by the Treason Felony Act. Where a human right might conflict with the interests of the Queen, the judge will not enforce that right. In other words the conflict is resolved within the mind of the judge when he lays down his ruling, and the rest of us know nothing of what has taken place. So the “rights” of the British are not rights at all.<br><br>But that doesn’t work with Article 13. The right to an effective remedy. For example, where you get demonstrably screwed by the court (such as a forged court order), there MUST be a remedy available – that is something more powerful than the Queen. So they left it out.<br><br>The point about Jack Straw is this. Until Kofi Annan came to London and made his statement the British Government was denying that the war was illegal. Many activists had sought to obtain a judicial review of the legality of the war – either to defend themselves (remember Katharine Gun?) or to attack the conditions and the conduct of the occupiers (Phil Shiner and Camp Breadbasket). But whenever the matter came before an English judge that judge would be sent a note from or on behalf of a Minister of the Crown. We were never told what was in the note, but the judge ALWAYS ruled the issue of legality as beyond his or her competence.<br><br>These notes, I am certain, referred to the Treason Felony Act. So it was this statute that prevented any definitive JUDICIAL view on the legality of the war. We were in limbo, with common sense saying “illegal”, but the State machine screaming “Not so!”. Until Kofi Annan did his thing (and look at the price he has been paying).<br>The position is rather peculiar. For although the whole world can see that the war was illegal, Westminster and Whitehall are subsumed in Bush style bubble, created personally by the Queen, in which the war was legal because she says so. Which is where the ICC comes into the equation.<br><br>As I wrote to the Secretary General<br><br>“As I understand the situation, the International CRIMINAL court at The Hague plays the role of tribunal of last resort. That is, the Court is designed to be invoked only when the signatory states themselves have failed to investigate and try prima facie war crimes. Several such war crimes are at this very moment working their way up the British legal system, propelled by the Human Rights Act.”<br><br>So let’s try a few legal tests.<br><br>A) Were “War Crimes” committed?<br><br> If the war was contrary to the Charter then by definition the answer is yes. We don’t even need to get into the specifics of “Camp Breadbasket” and elsewhere.<br><br>B) Have the British made good faith efforts to investigate and try prima facie war crimes?<br><br>i) The courts have been actively prevented from exploring the underlying legality of Blair’s decision to attack Iraq. The agency of prevention is the Queen and her Treason Felony Act.<br>ii) The Human Rights Act specifically excludes Article 13 of the European convention. The conclusion is that British subjects have no right to an effective remedy even against War Crimes. The agency of prevention is Blair himself, prime minister when this faulty legislation was passed by parliament. This also applies to Iraqi citizens living in Iraq.<br>iii) The Attorney General was consistent in his view that the war was not legal. That is until his formal “Opinion” was rejected by Charlie Falconer and Sally Morgan, who then substituted their own opinion. The agency for this change is the Queen and her Treason Felony Act.<br><br>So what we have here is a carefully constructed closed system in which all law is decided by a single person. Although there have been a few show trials, they have been conducted on the basis that the war itself was entirely legitimate. The British were clearly just “going through the motions” with their Potemkin justice system.<br><br>So just a single consideration remains. Are the British subject to the International Criminal Court? For although the British have signed up, it is not clear whether or not the signatory was acting ultra-vires, or beyond his powers. It is known that Major was acting fraudulently throughout his tenure, and that the same was true of Blair from 1997 to June/July 2000.<br><br>(As a final aside, is it not ironic that two of the three original judges of Milosevic were functionaries who swore allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. Talk about having it both ways.)<br><br><br>Addendum. Latest intervention by Queen Elizabeth<br><br>Attorney general spared trial by bar <br><br>Clare Dyer, legal editor<br>Thursday July 14, 2005<br>The Guardian <br><br>The Bar Council has thrown out several complaints of professional misconduct against the attorney general over his Iraq war advice, saying it has no power to investigate the provision of legal opinions to ministers by the government's law officers. <br>The complaints came from the former overseas development secretary Clare Short, a separate group of MPs, more than a dozen barristers (including four QCs), Reg Keys, the father of a soldier killed in the war who stood against Tony Blair at Sedgefield in the general election, and a journalist, Richard Heller. <br> They accused Lord Goldsmith of breaching a section of the bar's code of conduct which says a barrister must not "permit his absolute independence, integrity and freedom from external pressures to be compromised", or "compromise his professional standards in order to please his client, the court or a third party". <br>The complaints were highly embarrassing to the Bar Council because Lord Goldsmith is not only a former chairman of the bar but, as holder of the office of attorney general, also the titular head of the bar. If found guilty, he could have been disbarred. <br>Had a professional conduct hearing gone ahead, Lord Goldsmith would have had to explain how his advice changed from the 13-page minute to the prime minister full of uncertainties about the legal justification for war to the terse, unequivocal statement he produced 10 days later that no fresh UN resolution was needed. <br>A spokesman for Lord Goldsmith said he was "very pleased" with the Bar Council's decision. "He thinks it's come to the right conclusion."<br><br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>