bank snooping, abolishing juries, suing governments under trade treaties, the drift

A twin terrible moment for civil liberties, sending civil liberties voices' alarm setting sky high. The present move to massively reduce use of juries in Englandandwales, and now passed the present Britishwide introduction of snooping powers over welfare recipients' bank accounts. Both these at once. Both need the COURT CHANGE used by all parties resisting them.

On juries, this is both to cite the court change against the change happening, and if it still happens, to use the court change in actual cases. In Scotland, where the extent of right to juries is weaker, still 2 recent attempts to partly abolish them were successfully stopped, including by lawyers' opposition. The SNP government tried to suspend juries entirely at Covid's outset. Then straight after a jury defeated its attempt to frame Alex Salmond, it stood on a policy to abolish juries in sex cases where even the present English proposal keeps them, and where even without doing that, the Supreme Court case recently proved Scottish law to have practised unjustly in the witch-hunting of men.

So the political elite, including from the left, has been dangerously after juries for a long time already. All organisations who stand for civil liberties, who voice any resistance to this change, are evidenced only to mean what they say if they acknowledge the court change, cite it against the juryless process's demerits, and are not ignoring it. The court change is a serendipitous resource in this which they can't afford to leave aside.

The move against juries is part of shift from proper democracy to business controlled government, corporatism. A Guardian item on which by George Monbiot, Dec 1, has been welcomed by Helena Norberg-Hodge of the Local Futures mailing list. To which today she wrote in response, it -

《 details the ISDS clauses, written into free trade treaties, which give foreign corporations – and only foreign corporations – the right to sue governments, sometimes for many times their annual GDP. This is what I mean when I say, as I did in a recent video currently doing the rounds on social media, that this is a completely illegal global system.

Trade treaties have been the dark secret of the global economy for decades. Both the Left and Right have been handing over their wealth and power to global monopolies, making a complete mockery of democracy and giving rise to Corporate Rule. This lies not only behind the complete failure in the climate arena, but is also a primary reason why more and more people are forced to run faster and faster just to put food on the table and a roof over their head. As a consequence of these increasing pressures on people, we are witnessing a frightening political swing toward fascism.

And the good news is that this is not so much about "good guys" and "bad guys" as it is about blindness. It’s my experience that the majority of our political leaders have not had a clue about this, nor have most social and environmental activists at the grassroots – not even the majority of people inside these giant monopolistic corporations! 》

She asks for circulation of it - 《 That this corporate empire threatens all of us gives us reason to unite like nothing else.

Please help us spread the word. Share Monbiot’s article along with our video, Trade Gone Mad.

Big hugs,
Helena Norberg-Hodge  》

But with the court change too. This campaign too will unaffordably miss a resource if it neglects the court change. George Monbiot has not exposed the court change, and nor have campaigns against corporatism for a generation already. Uniting includes automatically taking up all resources contributed by anyone. It will visibly only be meant if it acknowledges and uses the court change.

#FreeTradeAgreement #freetradetreaties #tradetreaties #CorporateGovernance #CorporateGovernment #corporategov #oligarchpolitics #oligarchy #LocalFutures #helenanorberghodge

ex-PM and his party using the court change

A few days late with this, as I have had to carefully nudge my signs back in to Google, which it kept blocking on a main browser until updated, and even then, it had to be in a mobile site setting not desktop, and in a new window not retaining any code memories of the blocked sign-ins. Too much naff we get from Google's security. Hence, why had I ever signed out? knowing it has inconvenient results. Because, I had to reset all my identity indicators to do a survey from new again, that was programmed to pick up where you had got to and not allow you to start it from new again in the same browser! but one of the survey's option choices had been unclear and only after choosing, turned out to be a wrongly limiting choice, so that I needed to start it from new again.

Thus is an era snapshot of the fight to do your own simple things instead of confirm to what arrogant programs want you to do.

Okay. The real post. -

The Alba Party is loudly announcing and publishing an opinion by an international law lawyer, against the British Supreme Court decision that Scotland has no power to hold an independence vote unilaterally. It accuses the court of "significant errors" in the decision.

This is the new party set up in 2021 by former Prime Minister (okay officially they have the silly title "First Minister" to make them sound less like a national govt) Alex Salmond, after his falling out with the older SNP who he used to lead, but which conspired to get him jailed on word alone for accusations under the witch-hunting of men. The luck that an ethically conscientious jury did not go along with that, leads to the Alba Party's existence.

This opinion on the Supreme Court is a faulting of a court decision. Alike whether you agree with its content, or disagree with it and counter-fault it, it is an important democratic move to arrive at inability to accept as final what you perceive you can demontrate error in. Hence, is a use of the COURT CHANGE!

Nobody has ever offered any refutation of the reasons why the court change is real, but its ignorement by all the political elite includes by all the nat parties. There is the irony in now needing and exercising something whose existence they have ignored for a generation.

While Peru becomes court change, what says the Scottish govt about it for a Scot abroad?

Gordon Wilson had been saying the Yes campaign is soulless, again. It's the result of it not wanting to say anything new and outside the carefully filtered range of ideas that the political class comfortably tolerates for itself. That is what they care more strongly about than actual statehood. No new content, no acknowledging that the court change exists, no inspiration to reopen the homeland to all the diaspora, means no inspired public. That will be their place in history, they created this moment and just offered same-old.

At this moment, silence on the court change means silence towards a Scot in trouble abroad, and towards all the parents worried for their own young adults travelling to the same places. Ibiza belongs to Spain, and like us, Spain belongs to the Council of Europe, whose member countries are where the court change began. The first to be made court change by the item of corrupted practice by the European Court of Human Rights, in making a factually impossible decision and calling it final, that created the court change in 1999.Full write-up explaining the court change has long been on this blog, here It abolishes final decisions, which makes all court decisions open endedly faultable on their reasoning, including for being corrupted. So the court change applies to the present case of Melissa Reid from Scotland and Michaella McCollum.

They have a pressing humanitarian need for it to become publicly known, so that it can be used to actually scrutinise all worries over the handling of their case and be used to challenge any bad standards in it. But are our Scottish government and Yes campaign going to do this? Or our British government and No campaign, either? Many folks before them have had a pressing humanitarian need too, but have not had the court change publicised for them: including shockingly many asylum deportees from Britain, and including the folks deported to the US a year ago labelled as terror suspects after a deficient process at the ECHR.

Reid and McCollum's case extends the court change to another country, Peru. It may be our media's fault that I had never before found a case that extended it to Peru, which has been a very late reached country, and that in fact there is a much earlier case that does it: but until we discover that, at least their case does it and the people of Peru now have claim that the court change applies in their country. When a legal case overlaps between a country that has the court change and another country, the court change causes the case's content to be open endedly faultable and not final. This forces each country involved in the case to deal with open endedness. So for those countries that were not yet court change until the case happened, open ended non-final case content, hence case outcome too, is created in their legal system. THEY BECOME COURT CHANGE TOO. It is a brilliant opportunity that this lets folks all over the world help each other to get a massive advance of democracy in their countries. It just needs to be widely enough realised.

Because Reid and Connolly's case overlaps between Spain, which is court change, and Peru, it makes Peru court change too.

the court change reaches Central Africa

Another update on the court change.

The Central African Republic accuses Chad of an intervention a role in causing a coup there. Because that is a cross border legal dispute that overlaps between Chad and the CAR, and because the court change is already claimable by the people of Chad, this is all it takes to establish that the court change now applies to the CAR too. This is how easily folks all over the world can help each other to get the court change.

Yes this does have something abstractly to do with Scotland: the question why don't we fear independence leading to a political culture where coups can happen? if that is what happened when new states were created in Africa without a bedded in deterrent balance of estates of power to fix democracy in place. It has to do with interdependence, with all Europe's multi-country institutions and our interests tied in to them, that have worked for all the countries to keep each other democratic. Made democracy stick in Germany, where it had only ever had one terribly economically flopped 13 year period of democracy before its present state was set up in 1949, and that was all East Germany had ever had before 1990. Made it stick in Greece which had a coup as recently as 1967, in Spain which had a coup attempt as recently as 1981, with no more such events since they have been in the EU. Slovakia went in an authoritarian direction after its independence in 1993 and was pulled back again when it was pulled into having interests in joining the EU in 2004.

On neither side of our referendum is the picture comfortable or safe. We are being asked to be all light heartedly feelgood over our future at a time of the most heightened starkness since the European institutions have been around that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. We are being asked to vote Yes by a Scottish government capable of introducing a charge for criminal defence even when it confirms your innocence, we are being asked to vote No by a British government talking of withdrawal from the whole European Convention on Human Rights. It's the way the British level political culture has swung, into racism and manipulated anti-European feeling calculated to make society more authoritarian, that is by far the more dangerous and worth avoiding course at present. The more of a referendum issue can be made out of the contrast, and out of Scotland intending to stay anchored to structures of interdependence that make it difficult for countries to dump democracy, the more the Yes side can be grilled on the criminal defence costs policy's total contradiction of the best looking reason at present for voting Yes.

A court change regulated blogger

There is this question, the news commentators could never make up their minds on this week, whether blogs will be subject to the same penalties as the press if we choose not to join the new press regulation system then we harm anyone. The question applying separately to the separate system Scotland will have anyway.

Censored Scottish Referendum wants to sign up to the system if the body running the system acknowledges that the the court change is real and will apply to everything the system does.

Making this enquiry about joining the system is a good way to get the court change acknowledeged to exist. To stop public bodies evading saying anything about the court change and evading having to say the court change exists. Any press regulation system is about legal conflicts so the court change automatically is directly relevant to it, and to what any blog signing up to the system is joining. So the enquiry can't go unanswered, or else that is grounds to be loudly tumpeted not to sign up to the system. So they have to take a position ion the merits of them reasons why the court change exists.

Safe in whose hands?

We may be driven to independence no matter how badly the SNP treats us in the process and hushes up ordinary people's unrecognised needs from getting heard in the Yes campaign or in the published contributions to its consultations. As Sturgeon is now well saying, and she is onto something, we may need to escape from belonging to Britain and become a place of refuge for the fair minded English too, as English politics swings further to the right than has been possible in the human rights era.

Today the Mail On Sunday claims an anti-European campaign success as it reports an apparent Tory policy pledge by Theresa May to leave the European Convention on Human Rights.

An illegal obstruction of justice will be committed, and widely witnessed, BY HUMAN RIGHTS' SUPPORTERS AND DEFENDERS !!! - mark that !!! - if they let a leaving of the convention happen without exposing and publicising the court change.

Thanks to the court change, there is open ended non-final court case content in both Scottish and English law. As that open ended case content will always be there, it is irreversible. So the court change itself is an irreversible progressive advance in liberty. Britain was one of the Convention member countries brought under the court change when European Court of Human Rights case 41597/98 brought the court change into existence, in 1999. So originally it was because we belong to the Convention that we got the court change. But BECAUSE THE COURT CHANGE IS IRREVERSIBLE, BECAUSE OPEN ENDED NON-FINAL CASE CONTENT STAYS IN OUR LEGAL SYSTEMS NOW IT IS THERE, WE WILL NOT LOSE THE COURT CHANGE IF WE LEAVE ECHR.

The court change will still exist and it may be our only barrier to the social repressions and danger to democracy that would follow leaving the Convention and would ride on any political current capable of leaving the Convention.

All progressives now contemplate the blood you can anticipate will be on your hands unless you now get off the fence and directly committally acknowledge on open record that the court change is there and needs to be used.

Tajikistan

Not a Scottish item, but relevantly to it an update on the court change. A radio news report on police work in Tajikistan including pursuit of hundreds of actual court cases, against cross border drug trafficking from Afghanistan, is enough to establish that the court change applies to Tajikistan. All it took to establish this was the cases' country overlaps with Afghanistan and that the court change already applies there. This is how easily folks all over the world can help each other to get the court change.

SACC adds an African country to the reform SACC won't acknowledge

On Sep 27, when the deportations of Talha Ahsan and Babar Ahmad to America's supermax solitary confinement jail system were still preventable, I had to post on here how the campaign most prominently fighting their cause to Scottish supporters, Scotland Against Criminalising Communities, was wilfully ignoring an outstanding multi-country democratic reform that it has never denied is real and that could help fight their case.

The court change, which is also explained in my submission to the first independence consultation in 2010 whose non-publishing prompted this blog. So that if the same Scottish government as this week has been caught wasting many thousands of public money on a now abandoned court fight to hide legal advice that never existed, had been open that the court change exists and had ended its now 13 year long cover up by the media and the political class, it could have prevented the deportations too.

Incredibly, today SACC has circulated to its Facebook supporters a link to a Daily Mail story telling another really important story that the court change contributes to - and by it SACC has added another country to the list of those whose people can lay claim to the court change. Mahdi Hashi is a British citizen of Somali origin who has been stripped his citizenship arbitrarily whole abroad, by Theresa May by a dangerous power of decree that she does not need to take through the courts. In the past he had refused pressures to join MI5 to spy on his own community to monitor which way their geopolitical sympathies were going. It is feared he is being secretly held in a rendition camp in Jibouti.

By rebuffing enquiries into this, both (1)by the action of rebuffing them and (2)by it being part of Hashi's case consequently that there is unrefuted potential evidence he is there, Jibouti has taken part in Hashi's case. It is a legal case that overlaps into 4 countries that are already court change: Britain, the US, Somalia, Somaliland. By this, the open ended non-finality of case outcome that the court change carries is introduced into a matter of Jibouti's legal system dealing with. By this, Jibouti too becomes a court change country. The court change now applies to Jibouti.

It may be that Jibouti was already court change through an unpublicised earlier case. But that Jibouti is a court change country as from now, from Hashi's case, we know thanks to SACC. Yet SACC still won't refer to the court change in its own writings or say a word acknowledging it is real, will it?

Another bad day for SACC

If we were independent, if we already were now after not waiting until 2014, would the American-British extradition treaty of 2004 apply to Scotland? not unless we signed up to it in our own right. So can we get all the pro-independence parties' intentions on that?

This is the treaty signed as part of the War on terror, that allows America to demand extradition of British citizens to be put on trial in America for actions committed in Britain, while no equivalent power exists in the reverse direction. it lies behind the news, on Monday, of the European Court of Human Rights rejecting an appeal application to review in Grand Chamber the decision it had already taken, to allow 5 British citizens to be deported with the prospect of life sentences in the ADX Supermax jail at Florence, Colorado.

The media have concentrated on the one who has a racial hatred conviction and is easily linked with terrorism in public awareness, Abu Hamza, and by this they have made the whole decision sound good. But less publicised, you would only hear of them at all if you read the Independent, were Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan, who the CPS in England had earlier decided it lacked evidence to charge for anything, who have never been charged with anything in Britain, and what America wants them for concerns entirely the geopolitical views of a website in the late 1990s that has no longer existed for years.

Scotland Against Criminalising Communities, a local campaign in the Central Belt that originated to defend the asylum seekers sent there and to publicise some other personal injustice cases that seemed to have happened because of racism, has taken a strong interest in the Ahmad-Ahsan case and its implications for the safety of us all, it has led the awarenss campaigning on it in Scotland. It has written on its own blog on the bad agenda the media is purusing this week, this post called "Another bad day for the media". It shows really well, anyone who doubts should read it, how it is implausible to think there was any actual error by the BBC in exposing the queen's views, that exposing them suited the impression the media wanted to give, of turning the public mood against all 5 of the folks in the case.

BUT - get this, BUT.

SACC has been told all about the court change, many times. The court change originated in the ECHR. The court change is what Ahmad and Ahsan most critically need now. The court change, itself deliberately ignored by the media and political class for 13 years, measns no court decision is any longer final. Every decision is faultable, and nobody any longer needs to apply for permission to appeal anything, the entitlement to fault the content and basis of every court decision is an absolute. Including this one. That is what Ahmad and Ahsan's supporters need to keep doing - speaking out that the court change exists and how, and laying claim to use the faulting power it creates. Telling as many ears as possible that the ECHR acts knowingly illegally every time it ignores the court change's existence, including every time it rejects any Grand Chamber application at all.

SACC writes "Why do journalists leave their best stories for their children to write? We need the truth now, while there is still time to act upon it. Why then does SACC not share the truth about the court change? SACC has never offered any argument against the reasons why the court change is real. Nor has anyone else, and that is unsurprising, because to deny the court change is real you have to be willing to claim that a factually impossible finding, a finding that 2 dated events happened in reverse order than their dated order in time, stands as a final decision by a court. By saying that you would abolish all factuality for any court outcome ever, you would openly abolish justice entirely. But the only alternative to that is to admit that the court change is real. I have explained this on this blog many times before.
SACC know all this, and expresses strong views on betrayal - yet in the blog post linked to, it still described the ECHR decision as final!!!

Work that out. What does that say about SACC itself having an agenda?

Back in May, SACC told me the court change "just hasn't been raised as an issue in cases going through the courts that we've been concerned with. We're not lawyers and we don't get to to decide how cases are argued. It's a bit abstact for a group like ours unless/until it comes up in a case we are concerned with." It was already as obvious then as it is now, that the court change comes up right in the heart of this case. It is part of the facts submitted to the court, emailed to the court president Nicolas Bratza, so that whether the court responded to it is key to whether its decision has any legitimacy as a decision or ignored part of the facts put in front of it. It is a tool for laying claim to prevent the deportations - DOES SACC WANT EVERY TOOL TO PREVENT THE DEPORTATIONS, TO BE USED, OR BY ANY CHANCE NOT?

WHY DOES SACC DO THIS? ARE THEY CAREERIST ENOUGH TO BELIEVE SCRATCHING POWERFUL BACKS WILL GET THEIR BACKS SCRATCHED IN RETURN? WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND.

Oct 8: Amnesty International: USA must respect rights of individuals extradited from the UK

Secret session

In this quick new drama of the Information Commissioner taking the government to the Court of Session, over it legal advice on our future EU membership, both sides are at fault, for not disclosing that the court change exists.No matter which way the court decides, no matter which side's campaign it turns out to help, the winning side will miss a way to make Scotland better and the losing side will miss an opportunity to fight back against the damage to them.

As a result the issue will not be portrayed accurately to the public, who all have an interest in the court change becoming properly publicly known and functional as a result of this case. The court change is a massive advance in democracy that the media and political class have kept silent for 13 years, despite nobody ever having any argument to give against the clear reasons why it is real. Whatever is the position on Scotland's EU membership and whatever the court says about it, it includes that all its details are contestable under the court change.

What will you hear of this tomorrow, if you go and watch the Yes campaign's rally in Edinburgh?

will innocent lives be sacrificed to torture to censor the referendum?

The campaign for Talha Ahsan and Babar Ahmad, 2 British citizens held at Long Lartin prison in Englandwho are under threat of extradition to America under the treaty of 2003 where America does not have to give the British courts any evidence, is in a particularly urgent crunch phase coming up to a European Court of Human Rights ruling on a referral to the court's "Grand Chamber", on Jul 10.

In that campaign's meeting and film-showing in Glasgow yesterday, at the centre for Contemporary Arts in Sauchiehall street, we were told something that unsurprisingly has never been prominent in the media: that the European Court has had meetings with folks from the American courts, experience swap and education, that type of meeting - but when it was coming up to taking the decision it originally took in April to allow the extraditions, and in visible disregard of piles of evidence to find against American Supermax solitary confinement being torture. When the decision was taken there was also a decision coming up in Europe on reform of the court itself and there is a perception that the decision was made to please the British government in exchange for the court's role and jurisdiction not getting reduced. We may remember the Tories and tabloids had gone through a long period of ranting against the court for being too liberal. Which probably got many liberals lured into becoming fans of the court, only now to see it throw away the lives and futures of these folks who not even a prima facie criminal case has ever been made against.

This humanitarian emergency is the most perfect instance you could ever need of how the court change could prevent the court getting away with politically bent humanitarian wrongs, and why we need the court change for that purpose. For what are any of the campaigns for these political prisoners doing, unless they are FAULTING what the court has done to date? and what the American system will do. too? The court change creates a power of fault finding against all court rulings, it abolishes their finality.

Yet campaign flyers have still been printed talking about July 10 as a final decision. Public exposure of the proven fact that it is not a final decisison, because of the court change, is a humanitarian emergency. What is Scotland Against Criminalising Communities' stance on this? The whole emergency campaign from them only makes any sense if they have got a stand on this.

The situation's crunch humanitarian weight now weighs heavily upon the SNP government too. Not because they have any formal power, this is a British government issue and you would write to your MP about it not MSP. But because the Scottish government knows all about the court change, see the record so here, and by deciding to accept and welcome that the court change is real and make it big time public, before July 10, they can stop the European Court or anyone else from claiming that a decision to deport is final.

The humanitarian record of whether the SNP does it will weigh over the ethics and standards of their referendum campaign. The question asked here before, will they campaign acknowledging the court change or going along with the British political class in hushing it up? Knowing now that unless they choose the right course before July 10, it may mean EXPEDIENTLY SACRIFICING REAL PEOPLE TO TORTURE CONDITIONS avertably? Would you find their new Scotland healthy as a state, if a key legal fact about its courts was publicly unknown at the time of its creation and knowingly avertably by its creators innocent folks were sitting in perpetually lit white cells in supermax jails being psychologically destroyed? with communication only through screens and not face to face?

Unionist move's oppression of the young

The office of Scottish secretary was supposed to be abolished when devolution came in? All voices were quite certain it would be. So what happened? Ooh it feels quite useful to have a focal point in the Cabinet for putting up barriers to what the devolved government can do, as an layer of insurance for the union. That was the Labour government who first made that choice, so it's only thanks to them that Cameron has a Scottish secretary at all.

So today the said Michael Moore has been offering terms for a referendum, if held on a faster timescale than Salmond wants, to have a binding result. Is this necessary? Generally no referendum's result is binding unless the British parliament has passed a law saying it is, because default sovereignty is with parliament. But where national self-determination is involved, so is international law. At United Nations level going back to the decolonisation era and the UN's early principles against conquering countries, in votes on independence the country concerned has a sovereign decision: self determination. That stands over any British law on competent status to call the vote.

The present unionist position is going against that international law. But any problems with courts striking down the referendum, as today's papers are full of imaginings of, will also be the SNP's fault if the SNP continues to ignore the court change described twice in this blog. The court change, the development since 1999 that court decisions are always open-endedly faultable on their reasoning and are no longer ever final, is exactly what the SNP needs to stand up to any unionist court antics to declare void a Yes result to a vote called by the SNP.

A vote imposed from British level should also be held void, illegitimate, if its franchise excludes any population groups who would have a vote anywhere in the world. The Tories are following their demographic as the home of narky old bigots against youth, they are against votes at 16 and their proposed terms for an authorised referendum by 2013 specifically exclude votes at 16. Though Moore himself is a Lib Dem and going along with this. Folks with the vote's result ahead of them for a lifespan will live with the memory of contemptuous rejection from taking part in it, when they have the vote in the Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey, Austria, Nicaragua, and Brazil. To have self determination be a sovereign principle of international law, for votes on it that can happen anywhere in the world, means having all votes on it held on no lesser a franchise than exists anywhere. A No vote on an 18 voting age will absolutely not legitimise the union, nor a Yes vote legitimise its end. It will not be a conclusive outcome, it will not be visibly sovereign.

Electoral Reform Society

In the Electoral Reform Society's election for its own council, which in these post-referendum circumstances is a dramatic one with 53 candidates and a fight of reformers versus STV purists, there are 2 candidates who have a writing involvement in some political media and who have ignored the court change. Jonathan Bartley and James Gray.

This is not to say that the other candidates all support the court change. These 2 had significant media connections to prompt telling them about it, and asking them:

"So as an indication of your standards towards democracy, are you in favour of the following "court change" being made publicly known and the media silence on it stopped and overturned?"

and "Remember of direct ERS relevance, that your position on the court change is your position on any legal issue around an election's fair conduct too." Which means the potentially difficult position they put the ERS in if they get elected and continue not to take any position on the court change.

The ERS's own election is hardly a good experience of its favourite system STV either. There are 53 candidates for 15 places, so that in any fair system you would have 15 votes, and there is one organised slate of reformers standing consisting of 15 names, while another more radical slate of 2 also endorse the 15. In STV, slates or parties are not distinguished into separate lists on the ballot paper, you are just wading through all these 53 names. But the worst feature of STV is it only gives you one vote, that's what "single" means, in electing multiple winners. A big voter disempowerment, you don't get your whole say over the result. It's absurd that such a mean system is the trendy favourite for fashionable reform groupies who don't actually study systems' merits. It means allies, including the majority of the names in the 15 name slate, are fighting each other by each appealing for your first pref vote for themself instead of their colleagues. They know they can't say it will be okay so long they are in your top 15 votes. In fact, all the prefs you cast beyond the first 3 or so are unlikely ever to be counted, all the way down to 53. Only very high prefs, much higher than the number of winners, are any use to any candidate.

ERS is clangingly showing why the faction moving an amendment at its AGM to change away from its long standing fixity on supporting only STV, are right.

Salmond is using the court change

Salmond is in trouble with all the newspapers, and with Jim Sillars's wing of the SNP, for being critical of judges.

While I share their dislike of the actual content of Salmond's criticisms, which are taking a regressive side against human rights on a string of issues that featured in court cases - criticising judges is democratically a good thing. No unelected figure should be above criticism, able to act dictatorially. That often enough works against human rights, as in bent decisions against asylum seekers. This is exactly what the court change is about.

The irony now is that Salmond needs the court change. What he is doing, is actually a "fault finding", the new power created by the court change, against the finality of any court decision. He is making fault findings against several recent court decisions!!! Read again my post on the court change.

leave to appeal

Yesterday's Herald headline on raising the age of buying alcohol, is all I need to feel the most immense moral relief that I did not vote SNP. How many youth votes did its emotional landslide sweep up?

Older voters too already have grave cause for uneasiness, from the present row about the Supreme Court. The SNP blatantly does not want folks to have access to a means some have already used, to establish breaches of human rights. It wants to suppress access to something that even covers the safety of convictions. This is supposed to whip up national pride and a feeling of insult at British interference in us. This exactly parallels how many dictatorships in Asia and Africa used to call the outside world's human rights concerns interference and associate it with colonialism. Robert Mugabe and Lee Kwan Yew still do that.

They want you to have to go to the European Court of Human Rights instead, knowing that will take longer, so if your case is about being in jail it will mean you stay in jail for longer, and if it is civil law and you need a lawyer to do it there will be more chance that you can't afford it. On Radio Scotland last night the SNP speaker could not answer these objections from Labour and kept changing the subject when asked about them.

Noticeably exactly since the SNP has been in government it has grown a monstrous morally authoritarian streak. It does not bode well for handing them increases of power. This is quite as big a letdown for folks who used to support the SNP as a banner for democratic reform, in its underdog days, as Clegg tying the Lib Dems to stick for another 4 years to a deal to attack vulnerable groups and their safety nets. These are not happy days at all for the reformist parties as were.

On this court issue too, the SNP is ignoring the "court change", the abolition of final decisions, which the whole political elite have kept hushed up ever since 1999 and which I described in my feeback on the referendum bill, last year, which they refused to issue publicly. The cause of this blog's existence.

A massive benefit done by the court change, is that it abolishes the horrible concept of "leave to appeal." That blatantly absurd corrupt mediaeval device, where the same court as makes a wilfully dodgy or corrupt decision also chooses whether to allow you to pursue any objection to it. The court change establishes a perpetual right of faulty finding, by any party, against every legal decision ever. That is what democracy needs. It extinguishes the nonsense of anyone ever needing leave to appeal. In the Supreme Court row, The SNP's minister of justice, Kenny Macaskill, is focussing his argument on leave to appeal. He wants folks to be required to get it before they can bring cases. Openly publicly he wants he wants a device applied at the discretion of the same courts as would be challenged, which is blatantly an unjust corrupt trick, to serve as a barrier to doing anything about safety of convictions.

The court change would protect your liberties from that trick and from an agenda as sinister towards your safety as Macaskill's. The SNP kept the court change out of the public record.

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.

from Tripping Up Trump: this is the nice SNP for you

Dear Friend,

Many of you will have already heard that despite 86 year old Molly Forbes dropping her legal battle with Trump, judge Lord Kinclaven agreed with Trump's lawyer Roy Martin QC, ruling that Molly is liable to pay Trump's and Aberdeenshire Council's legal expenses, which could be more than £75,000, according to the Scottish Daily Record.

To be clear, an earlier court hearing ruled that Molly was not able to legally challenge Trump's planning applications. This time Molly was in court for a judicial review of the planning permissions granted to Trump by Aberdeenshire Council, including one threatening her own home.

Molly doesn't have the money to challenge billionaire Trump, so applied for legal aid, but was refused by the Scottish Legal Aid Board because they thought other people would be willing to pay for it!

Trump and Aberdeenshire Council are now using fine words to try and cover up the fact they could end up bankrupting Molly, so she could be evicted. Trump is accusing Molly's son Michael Forbes and Tripping Up Trump of putting Molly up to the legal challenge in the first place. Trump has even accused Molly's own lawyers of making 'baseless claims' and that they should pay the expenses for Molly.

Molly sets the record straight - "I decided to take legal action last year to defend my home from Mr Trump's attempts to force me out. It is wrong that I should have to leave my home for a golf course. I understand the Trump Organisation has suggested I was in some way put up to this action. I wish to make it clear that it was my decision alone to proceed with the court action."

The next step is for Molly to challenge her claim for legal aid before the legal case resumes in January in the hope that the expenses bill will will not have to be paid as she will have been granted legal aid by the Scottish Legal Aid Board and/or that Trump and Aberdeenshire Council will drop their claim for expenses.

ACTION - If you would like to send wishes of support to Molly at this incredibly difficult time, you can write to her at: Paradise, Mill of Menie, Balmedie AB23 8YE

Please read this article that clearly shows the collusion between Trump and the Scottish Government. Let's not forget that Trump's original planning application was thrown out by the local authority, but subsequently called-in by Alex Salmond's government. Incidentally, Trump's development is also in Alex Salmond's constituency.

Here's what Trump has to tell about Alex Salmond's government when his original planning application was rejected:

"I give the Scottish Executive a lot of credit. They called me and really wanted me to continue going forward. I said, 'Are you kidding? I just lost. I don't like to lose.' They said, 'No, you'll win.'

How personally involved was the First Minister? "I have a lot of respect for Alex Salmond. He's a strong man who loves Scotland above all else. I know he wanted the project to happen because it was good for Scotland."
Many thanks for all that you do.

More soon.

Tripping Up Trump

police station lawyer access

The SNP government has gone out of its way never to sound liberal or enlightened on any issue. To project a severe image of society appealing to the authoritarian vote, which is hardly a vote for healthy accountability of the state in a new independent state, is it? (Yes2AV)

For the folks of their country to feel safe, today's must be the worst item on this list. It has taken a human rights court case at British level to enforce access to a lawyer for everyone being held and questioned by the police. The SNP have never campaigned about this, and on the day it happens, do they come on TV beaming with pleasure for human rights here? Not zilch. Macaskill, and remember he is a lawyer, sounded totally displeased and bothered. His first reaction? To increase the hours the police can bang you up for without charge. To make it the same as England, 24 hours, so that we lose the good side of only being lockable up for less time in Scotland, 6 hours.

There are other times, outside formal questioning, when the police in an English police station can intimidate you without a lawyer seeing, and yes we have custody visitors in Scotland so whatever way the police tried to frighten you, if they held you for long enough for the custody visitor to see you then you could tell them about it. So it is not the case that before today the Scottish position was disastrously worse in human rights terms than the English. It was worse in that way, the detention without lawyer for 6 hours, but better in other ways, the lesser detention time and the procurator fiscal check on charging decisions. It was swings and roundabouts, by accidents of history. There was no need for nationalists to feel miffed or defensive. But above all there was no need for them to defend what was bad and to introduce something else bad in cancelling out of today's step forward.

In making it a lot worse and a lot less safe going through daily life for how long the police can bang you up for without charge, the SNP government is inflicting on itself a lot more cause for the court change to arise in court cases, and for folks to make use of it. This totally sits in conflict with their unworkable effort to continue to ignore the court change, and with suppressing the decription of the court change in my consultation response. The only course it fits with logically, is to openly announce the court change and take a position on it.

Gamu Nhengu too

What applies to the Mhango family applies to the Nhengu family too. The Scottish government says it wants to save them, the court change can save them, and I have told them about the court change. I have told it to Fiona Hyslop, the Scottish minister who speaks on migration, and to the Nhengus' MSP Keith Brown who is also SNP.

That is as well as, that my submission to the referendum consultation had described the court change, in full and at length. If Salmond had not suppressed my submission from the public record, he would not have obstructed his own efforts for Gamu Nhengu now. He says he supports her case.

Nobody has ever offered any refutation of the court change being real, in the 11 years it has existed. There is no possible reason for all the SNP folks' show of reluctance to say anything that acknowledges it, The safety of folks they represent can't afford the silence.

A piece of nonsense I don't need, and must have wasted an hour on, is this page by STV: entertainment.stv.tv/tv/202483-x-factor-gamu-nhengu-snubbed-by-cheryl-cole-and-simon-cowell/ . Supposed to have a commenting facility, which nobody has succeeded in using. No matter how many times you log in, and no matter how far below 2000 characters you keep your comment, and check the character count on other sites too, no comment can ever be posted on that page: it keeps telling you either that you are not logged in or that you are over 2000 characters. The topic of a real live person in fear of atrocities if sent by force to a place where they neither want to be nor have any sensible reason to be, is too serious for allowing technical nonsense like this to happen