Monday 10 January 2011

the court change

To post here my simple standard summary of the court change and what it is. For the benefit of any supporters of the Tommy Sheridan juror who is now in trouble, or of Julian Assange, Shaker Aamer and Ahmed Belbacha still in Guantanamo, the Long Lartin detainees, or any of the targets of threatened asylum deportations, e.g. Gamu Nhengu, Precious and Florence Mhango, Ahmer Rana. [Jan 28: and Brenda Namigadde. ]

This massive advance in
democracy (Yes2AV) starts in Europe, but applies to most of the world if folks want to lay claim to it. Since 7 July 1999 all court or other legal decisions are open-endedly faultable on their logic, instead of final. "Open to open-ended fault finding by any party".

Its shifting of power in favour of ordinary people ensures this court change has been kept under a media silence. Still, it is on publicly traceable record through petitions 730/99 in the European, PE6 and PE360 in the Scottish, parliaments.

This follows from my European Court of Human Rights case 41597/98 on a scandal of insurance policies requiring evictions of unemployed people from hotels. This case referred to violation of civil status from 13 May 1997, yet the admissibility decision claimed the last stage of decision taken within Britain was on 4 Aug 1995. ECHR has made itself illegal, by issuing a syntactically contradictory nonsense decision that reverses the physics of time, and calling it final. This violates every precedent that ECHR member countries' laws recognise the chronology of cause and effect, in court evidence.

Hence, the original ECHR is now, and since then, an illegal entity, because it broke all preexisting precedent that courts recognise the correct order of time, and it claimed a power of finality to issue decisions whose content is a factual impossibility. But for the original ECHR to lapse in this way, also breaches the European Convention's section on requiring an ECHR to exist. Hence, this section requires the member countries to create a new ECHR that removes the original's illegality. The source of the illegality being left standing was in the claimed power of final decision. Hence, the only way the new court can remove the illegality is by being constituted such that its decisions are not final. If decisions are not final, the only other thing they can be is open-endedly faultable.
This requires the courts in the member countries to be compatible with open-ended decisions and with doing in-country work connected to them. Hence, legal decisions within the member countries' courts also cease to be final and become open-ended, in all the Council of Europe countries.

The concept of "leave to appeal" is abolished and judges no longer have to be crawled to as authority figures. Every party in a case is automatically entitled to lodge a fault finding against any decision, stating reasons. These are further faultable in return, including by the original fault finder, stating reasons. A case reaches its outcome when all fault findings have been answered or accepted.

The first fault finding to make, is that all unaffordable legal costs are abolished by how they conflict with the world human rights principle of access to justice. Folks have waited centuries for a chance to say this. See how far reaching is the reform the court change can do once it starts?

World trade irreversibly means jurisdictions are not cocooned but have overlapping cases. When a case overlaps an affected and unaffected country, the unaffected country becomes affected, through having to deal with open ended case content open-endedly, that can affect any number of other cases open-endedly. Open-endedness is created in its system.

So the court change is of far-reaching international interest. Anyone can add to the list of countries outside the Council of Europe whose people can lay claim to the court change if interested. Show autocracies, pending their freer futures, as well as democracies.

United States through many transatlantic cases, pick any, e.g. Natwest 3, Enron, Gary Mackinnon. Or, to get the United States and Canada into the court change right from the start date, I can offer my still stalled ethical dispute about brain research with Arizona university in that period, that was obstructed by a US government office.
Australia through the long running case about medical harm by British nuclear tests. This gets Australia the same 1999 start date for the court change as Europe, because land groups there and not only British military are parties in the case.
Also, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand all through their CJD ban on British blood donations in 2000.

Israel and Lebanon through the case in Belgium on the Sabra-Chatila massacres.
North Cyprus through Turkey's UN legal challenge against South Cyprus joining the EU.
Belarus through its election dispute with OSCE election monitoring.
Kosovo through war crimes cases overlapping Serbia.
Vatican City through Sinead O'Connor's ordination as a Catholic priest.
Cuba through Elian Gonzalez.
Haiti through objecting to receiving petty crime deportations from America.
Antigua through its constitutional crisis on capital punishment.
Trinidad through its Privy Council case on capital punishment.
Jamaica through claims on both sides of American linked arms trade background to its violence.
Mexico through the Benjamin Felix drug mafia extradition to America.
Belize through Michael Ashcroft.
Guatemala through the child stealing and adoption scandal overlapping America.
El Salvador through the trade union related factory closure there by Nestle that made Transfair, the Fair Trade organisation in Italy, reject the Fair Trade mark for Nestle coffee.
Honduras through the sex slave trafficking cases from Nicaragua.
Colombia through America's supposed human rights policy intervention in training Colombian police and military.
Venezuela through Luis Posada Carriles.
Guyana through the £12m debt claim dropped by Iceland (the shop).
Brazil through EU immigration unfairnesses to its football players, necessitating a mafia trade in false passports.
Argentina through its ECHR case on the General Belgrano.
Chile through General Pinochet.
Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay through Judge Garzon's citation of Henry Kissinger for the South American military conspiracy Operation Condor.
Chad and Senegal through a French action in Senegal obtaining Chad's former dictator Habre for trial under Pinochet's precedent.
Algeria through the Harkis' case from the Algerian war.
Tunisia through the Lord Shaftesbury murder trial.
Liberia, Sierra Leone, Mali, Morocco through the Insight News case.
Ivory Coast through the chocolate slavery scandal.
Ghana through the World Bank's Dora slave scandal.
Togo through the Lome peace accords for Sierra Leone, and their breaking as an issue in factional arms supply to there.
Burkina Faso through an arms trade case of smuggling through it from Ukraine to civil war factions in Sierra Leone and Angola.
Niger and Rwanda through Oxfam's case of buying an arms trade "end user certificate" for Rwanda in Niger.
Burundi through the war crimes trial of Rwanda's 1994 head of state.
Tanzania and Japan through the 2000 G8 summit, because Tanzania Social and Economic Trust broadcast a contradiction in implementing both its wishes for economic advance and its debt relief terms.
Mozambique through its cashew nuts dispute with the World Bank.
South Africa and Lesotho through a WHO case against American pharmaceutical ethics there.
Nigeria through reported Nigerian drug mafia crime in South Africa.
Cameroon through the Bakassi Peninsula issue with Nigeria.
Dahomey and Gabon through their slave trafficking scandals overlapping Nigeria and Togo.
Zimbabwe through its land finances dispute with Britain in 2000.
Equatorial Guinea through the charges in Zimbabwe of a coup conspiracy.
Malawi through its arrests of Zimbabwean refugees callously deported from Britain.
Zambia through Cafod's collection of objections to food supply and health violations in its IMF structural adjustment program.
Namibia through the Herero genocide case against Germany
Angola, Congo Kinshasa, Ecuador through arms trade smuggling to them from Bulgaria and Slovakia.
Congo Brazzaville through the Jean-Francois Ndenge case in France.
Sudan through Al Shafi pharmaceutical factory suing America for bombing it.
Madagascar, Mauritania, Nicaragua through the complaint by Jubilee USA and Africa Action that the IMF is breaking the agreed debt relief terms for them.
Ethiopia through the same, as well as earlier aid sector comment on its conditional debt relief.
Eritrea through its border dispute with Ethiopia.
Somaliland through its problem with Russian and South Korean coastal fishing.
Kenya through the Archer's Post munitions explosion case overlapping Britain.
Somalia through the UNHCR coordinator in Kenya protesting and exposing refugee deportations back to Somalia during the 2006-7 crisis there.
Uganda through the Acholiland child slave crisis and Sudan's agreement to return children.
Mauritius through the Ilois rights judgment on the Chagos clearances.
Yemen through its problem with Spain over the missile shipment.
United Arab Emirates through Mohammed Lodi.
Saudi Arabia through the lawsuit by families of 911 victims.
Qatar through its SS Dignity aid boat turned away from Gaza by Israeli authorities for having peace activists aboard.
Bahrain through the call for American witnesses in Richard Meakin's case.
Kuwait through the terrorism arrests in Saudi Arabia.
Iraq through the weapons inspection dispute before the invasion. NB this does not mean the dispute or invasion were right!
Jordan through its threat of "unspecified measures" in its relations with Israel.
Egypt through its disputes with Tanzania and Kenya over use of Nile water.
Libya, Syria, Iran through the Lockerbie bomb trial. This is by reason of case content, nothing to do with who was guilty. But for Iran it is now more diplomatic to cite the case of the arrest of Bob Levinson.
Turkmenistan through Ukraine's gas pipeline dispute with Russia.
Kazakhstan through the American court action on oil contract corruption at government level there.
Uzbekistan through the ambassadorial exposee on evidence obtained by torture there and used in Western courts.
Kyrgyzia through its anti-terrorist border operations with Uzbekistan.
Afghanistan through the pursuit of Bin Laden after 911.
Pakistan through a dispute, reported by BBC in 2000, between supporters of enslaved women and the British embassy for not helping them escape.
India, Bangladesh, China, Indonesia through the World Wildlife Fund's campaign for tiger conservation, conflicting western romanticism with local populations affected by the homicidal absurdity of conserving a human predator.
Nepal through the Gurkhas' lawsuit for equal pay and pensions.
Vietnam through a church publicised refugee dispute overlapping China.
Cambodia through its enactment for a trial of the Khmer Rouge Holocaust.
Laos through Peter Tatchell's application to arrest Henry Kissinger.
Thailand through Sandra Gregory.
Burma through the Los Angeles judgment on the Unocal oil pipeline.
Sri Lanka through its call for the Tamil Tigers' banning in Britain.
East Timor through public reaction to the judgment against trying Suharto.
Papua New Guinea through WWF's Kikori mangrove logging affair.
Vanuatu through the Raymond Coia investment scam case.
Nauru through the Australian civil liberty challenge on the Tampa refugees.
Fiji through its land crisis's nonracial solubility by a Commonwealth constitutional question on rent and mortgages.
Tuvalu through environmentalist challenges to America's rejection of international agreements on global warming and sea level.
Marshall Islands through the Nuclear Claims Tribunal cases.
Philippines and Malaysia through the international police investigation in the Jaybe Ofrasio trial in Northern Ireland.
South Korea through its jurisdiction dispute with the American army.
North Korea through its apology to Japan for abductions.
Mongolia through the diplomatic clash over Bat Khurts.

All members of the Alliance of Small Island States are court change, as from AOSIS's notice of dissatisfaction with the outcome of the Copenhagen Climate change conference in 2009. This adds the Bahamas, Barbados, Dominican Republic, Dominica, St Kitts-Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent, Grenada, Guyana, Surinam, Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde Islands, Sao Tome e Principe, Seychelles, Comoro Islands, Maldive Islands, Singapore, Palau, Micronesia, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Kiribati, West Samoa, Tonga.

AOSIS members with court change cases already listed were: Antigua, Cuba, Haiti, Trinidad, Belize, Mauritius, East Timor, Papua New Guinea, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Vanuatu, Fiji.

Council of Europe members already listed before they joined were:
Bosnia through a sex slave scandal involving Russian and American military.
Serbia and Montenegro through war crimes cases in the Yugoslav period overlapping Bosnia.
Monaco through International Amateur Athletics Federation drug hearings there.

How is it a crime for a juror to say they disagreed with the verdict?

The left wing parties who back independence and might take part in any referendum campaign, SSP and its offshoot Solidarity, have ignored the court change just as much as the SNP has. Yet if anyone could do with it now, it is Tommy Sheridan. The one thing that without stating any view at all on his guilt or innocence, it can still be said is self-inflicted in his present situation: is that he is now suffering from the court change not being in operation and from his own ignorement of it.

So the court change was too bourgeois and reforming of the legal system as it already exists, was it, to fit into his agitational dreams for the march of the workers to win evrything only by demos and strikes? How come then was it not too bourgeois to go to court in its present form to sue a newspaper? It seems to be coming out that some of his friends reckoned it was. It always sounded dangerously reckless to me, when after winning his first case, he was full of rhetoric on accepting a jury's verdict! He chose that personal overconfidence in being a winner, which has failed him now, instead of choosing the court change which gives folks more sensible protection against things going wrong in court cases.

Even if he is so doctrinally closed minded even in adversity as to continue not to want the court change for himself, there is someone else on his side who now needs it entirely because his case happened, and whose need he will let down if he says nothing on the court change.

Sunday Herald front page splash, on Jan 9, on the Tommy Sheridan juror who is threatened with prosecution herself for saying on Facebook she thinks he is innocent and hates the other jurors. Where is the crime? The Herald's story is totally factually on the side of stating that she has done something illegal, yet the same story's content nowhere subtantiates so.

It asserts: "it is a criminal offence to reveal a jury's deliberations" and "Under section 8 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981, it is an offence to breach the confidentiality of a jury's discussions."

"In particular it is an offence to disclose or solicit any particulars of statements made, opinions expressed, arguments advanced or votes cast by members of the jury in the course of their deliberations in any legal proceedings."

So how exactly has she done any of those things just by stating her own verdict? It is already a publicly known fact that there was a majority verdict of 8 to 6, which is far too thin a majority to give the confidence in a shared agreed verdict that is supposed to be the whole purpose of juries. It sounds to me like the jury failing to agree, it is not the sort of majority to base a conviction on. It is great cause for any juror on the losing side to feel upset about. Such a juror has an obvious personal need to make known her own innocence of blame for the verdict. Otherwise she could feel tainted by feeling perceived by others as being behind the verdict, when she is not.

By stating that personal position for herself, she has not said anything at all previously unknown about what happened in the jury room or about what any identified other juror did. So what the hell is the Sunday Herald's justification for siding with making a fuss? How the hell has she breached "the sanctity of the jury room", as they quoted a lawyer on, in any way?

If there is any question of prosecuting her, she needs the court change. As she won't get it from the Sheridans or Anwar, I earnestly hope she googles on her own case and finds this page and reads about the court change here. The details are all in the second post in this blog, "this is the submission that was not accepted." But for clarity I will now put up another post that is only about the court change. Someone else in the news who needs it right now is Julian Assange.