Showing posts with label palestine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label palestine. Show all posts

Arab League presents the case against the 'legality' of the State of Israel.

Presentation of the legal facts around the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/league-of-arab-states-presentation-to-the-icj-by-ralph-wilde/

In essence the argument is that the establishment of the State fo Israel had no legal basis, and was conducted in contravention of existing International Law at the time, and ever since.

 Short Excerpt:


My comment in addition to that is that Partition and Colonial Settlement has always been a weapon of the British Empire, from Northern Ireland to Israel, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the arbitrary borders drawn by the British over lands they had colonised, lines designed to ensure centuries long tension between communities, along religious identitarian lines, where one group was favoured and mother oppressed, to drive tensions amongst the populations in order to prevent those regions from developing healthy economies of their own independent nature. 

They knew exactly what they were doing and why. Israel exists not to protect the Jewish people from European Christian anti-Semitism and centuries of pogroms - Israel was inserted to prevent the Arab polities from going about their own independent development, because the British were and remain White Supremacists.

Dog in the manger, Churchill.

Text of Mr Ralph Wilde's presentation:

The PRESIDENT:  …I now give the floor to Mr Ralph Wilde. You have the floor, Sir.

Mr WILDE:

  1. Mr President, distinguished Members of the Court, it is a great honour and privilege to appear before you, and to represent the League of Arab States7

1. MORE THAN CENTURY-LONG DENIAL OF SELF-DETERMINATION OF, AND WAR AGAINST, THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE, ON THE BASIS OF RACISM

  1. The Palestinian people have been denied the exercise of their legal right to self-determination through the more than century-long violent, colonial, racist effort to establish a nation State exclusively for the Jewish people in the land of Mandatory Palestine.
  2. When this began after the First World War, the Jewish population of that land was 11 per cent8. Forcibly implementing Zionism in this demographic context has necessarily involved the extermination, or forced displacement of, some of the non-Jewish Palestinian population; the exercise of domination over, and subjugation, dispossession and immiseration of, remaining non-Jewish Palestinians; the emigration to that land of Jewish people, regardless of any direct personal link; and the denial of Palestinian refugees the right to return. All operating through a racist distinction privileging Jewish people over non-Jewish Palestinian people.
  3. This has necessitated serious violations of all the fundamental, jus cogens and erga omnes norms of international law — the right of self-determination, the prohibitions on aggression, genocide, crimes against humanity, racial discrimination, apartheid and torture ⎯ and the core protections of international humanitarian law9.
  4. Today I will address, first, violations of international law arising out of the régime of racial domination — apartheid — perpetrated against the Palestinian people across the entire land of historic Palestine, and then, second, the existential illegality of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 1967.
  5. As a necessary prerequisite, I must begin with the special right granted to the Palestinian people in the League Covenant.

2. PALESTINIAN SELF-DETERMINATION UNDER ARTICLE 22 OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS COVENTION

  1. The legal right of self-determination of the Palestinian people originates in the “sacred trust” obligations of Article 22 of the League Covenant, part of the Versailles Treaty. Palestine ⎯ an “A” class Mandate under British colonial rule ⎯ was, after the First World War, supposed to have its existence as an independent State “provisionally recognized”: a sui generis right of self-determination11. The United Kingdom and other members of the League Council attempted to bypass this, incorporating the 1917 Balfour Declaration commitment to establishing a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine into the instrument stipulating how the Mandate would operate12. However, the Council had no legal power to bypass the Covenant in this way. It acted ultra vires, and the relevant provisions were, legally, void13. There was and is no legal basis in that Mandate instrument for either a specifically Jewish State in Palestine, or the United Kingdom’s failure to discharge the “sacred trust” obligation to implement Palestinian self-determination.

3. SELF-DETERMINATION IN INTERNATIONAL LAW AFTER THE SECONDWORLDWAR —AN ADDITIONAL RIGHT

  1. After the Second World War, a self-determination right applicable to colonial peoples generally crystallized in international law.
  2. For the Palestinian people, this essentially corresponded to, and supplemented, the pre-existing Covenant right, regarding the same, single territory. The 1947 proposal to partition Palestine was contrary to this; the Arab rejection an affirmation of the legal status quo.
  3. In 1948, then, Palestine was, legally, a single territory with a single population enjoying a right of self-determination on a unitary basis.

4. NAKBA IN 1948 — VIOLATION OF SELF-DETERMINATION AND CREATION OF A RÉGIME INVOLVING AN ONGOING VIOLATION OF THIS RIGHT, AS WELL AS RACIAL DISCRIMINATION AND APARTHEID AND A DENIAL OF THE RIGHT TO RETURN

  1. Despite this, a State of Israel, specifically for Jewish people, was proclaimed in 1948 by those controlling 78 per cent — more than three quarters — of Palestine, accompanied by the forced displacement of a significant number of the non-Jewish Palestinian population — the Nakba, catastrophe14. This illegal secession was an egregious violation of Palestinian self-determination. Israel’s statehood was recognized, and Israel admitted as a United Nations Member, despite this illegality. Israel is not the legal continuation or successor of the Mandate.
  2. This violation of Palestinian self-determination is ongoing, and unresolved. Two key elements are:
  3. First, Palestinian people not displaced from the land proclaimed to be of Israel in 1948, and their descendants, have been forced to live as citizens— presently they constitute 17.2 per cent — of a State conceived to be of and for another racial group, under the domination of that group, necessarily treated as second class, because of their race15.
  4. Second, Palestinian people displaced from that land, and their descendants, cannot return.
  5. These are serious breaches of the right of self-determination, the prohibitions of racial discrimination and apartheid, and the right of return. They must end, immediately.

5. 1967 ISRAELI CAPTURE OF THE PALESTINIAN GAZA STRIP AND WEST BANK (INCLUDING EAST JERUSALEM)

  1. As if this ongoing Nakba was not catastrophic enough, in 1967 Israel captured the remaining 22 per cent of historic Palestine — the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem — the Naksa16. It has maintained that use of force to remain in control for the 57-year period since.

6. ILLEGAL RACIAL DOMINATION — APARTHEID — FROM THE JORDAN RIVER TO THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA

  1. For more than half a century, then, a State defined to be of and for Jewish people exclusively has governed the entire land of historic Palestine and the Palestinian people there. And the régime of racial domination — apartheid — and denying return, has been extended throughout. In the case of Palestinians living in the occupied territory, this has involved the same serious violations of international law, supplemented by serious violations of norms applicable in occupied territory17.
  2. Indeed, these people are subject to an even more extreme form of racist domination, as they are not even citizens of the State exercising authority over them. Even in East Jerusalem, which Israel has purported to annex, the majority non-Jewish Palestinian residents do not have citizenship, whereas Jewish residents, including illegal settlers, are citizens.
  3. Just as in territorial Israel, in occupied territory, these serious violations concerning how Israel exercises authority over the Palestinian people must end immediately.
  4. However, here, a more fundamental matter must also be addressed. The illegality of the exercise of authority itself. 

7. THE GAZA STRIP AND WEST BANK AS PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, WITH THE CONSEQUENCE THAT ISRAEL’S PURPORTED ANNEXATION, AND ATTEMPTED COLONIZATION, ARE ILLEGAL

  1. The enduring Palestinian right of self-determination means that the Palestinian people, and the State of Palestine, not Israel, are sovereign over the territory Israel captured in 196718. For Israel, the land is extraterritorial, and, given what I said about the Mandate, territory over which it has no legal sovereign entitlement19.
  2. Despite this, Israel has purported to annex East Jerusalem and taken various actions there and in the rest of the West Bank constituting de jure and de facto purported annexation, including implanting settlements. It is Israeli policy that Israel should be not only the exclusive authority over the entire land between the river and the sea, but also the exclusive sovereign authority there.
  3. This constitutes a complete repudiation of Palestinian self-determination as a legal right, since it empties the right entirely of any territorial content20.
  4. Actualizing this through de facto and de jure purported annexation is, first, a serious violation of Palestinian self-determination and, second, because it is enabled through the use of force, a violation of the prohibition on the purported acquisition of territory through the use of force in the law on the use of force, and so an aggression21. Serious violations of further areas of law regulating the conduct of the occupation are also being perpetrated, notably the prohibitions on implanting settlements and altering, unless absolutely prevented, the legal, political, social and religious status quo22.
  5. The occupation is, therefore, existentially illegal because of its use to actualize purported annexation. To end this serious illegality, it must be terminated: Israel must renounce all sovereignty claims and all settlements must be removed. Immediately.
  6. However, this is not the only basis on which the occupation’s existential legality must be addressed.
  7. We need to delve deeper into both the law of self-determination and the law on the use of force.

8. SELF-DETERMINATION AS A RIGHT TO BE SELF-GOVERNING, REQUIRING THE OCCUPATION TO END IMMEDIATELY23

  1. Beginning with self-determination: this right, when applied to the Palestinian people in the territory Israel captured in 1967, is a right to be entirely self-governing, free from Israeli domination. 29. Consequently, the Palestinian people have a legal right to the immediate end of the occupation. And Israel has a co-relative legal duty to immediately terminate the occupation.
  2. This right exists and operates simply and exclusively because the Palestinian people are entitled to it. It does not depend on others agreeing to its realization. It is a right.
  3. It is a repudiation of “trusteeship”, whereby colonial peoples were ostensibly to be granted freedom only if and when they were deemed “ready” because of their stage of “development” determined by the racist standard of civilization24. The anti-colonial self-determination rule replaced this with a right based on the automatic, immediate entitlement of all people to freedom, without preconditions. In the words of General Assembly resolution 1514, “inadequacy of . . . preparedness should never serve as a pretext for delaying independence”25.
  4. Some suggest that the Palestinian people were offered, and rejected, deals that could have ended the occupation. And, therefore, Israel can maintain it pending a settlement. Even assuming, arguendo, the veracity of this account, the “deals” involved a further loss of the sovereign territory of the Palestinian people.
  5. Israel cannot lawfully demand concessions on Palestinian rights as the price for ending its impediment to Palestinian freedom. This would mean Israel using force to coerce the Palestinian people to give up some of their peremptory legal rights: illegal in the law on the use of force and, necessarily, voiding the relevant terms of any agreement reached. The Palestinian people are legally entitled to reject a further loss of land over which they have an exclusive, legal, peremptory right. Any such rejection makes no difference to Israel’s immediate legal obligation to end the occupation.

9. THE OCCUPATION AS AN ILLEGAL USE OF FORCE IN THE JUS AD BELLUM AS A GENERAL MATTER (BEYOND THE LINK TO PURPORTED ANNEXATION

  1. Turning to the law on the use of force: Israel’s control over the Palestinian territory since 1967, as a military occupation, is an ongoing use of force. As such, its existential legality is determined by the law on the use of force, as a general matter, beyond the specific issue of annexation.
  2. Israel captured the Gaza Strip and West Bank from Egypt and Jordan in the war it launched against them and Syria. It claimed to be acting in self-defence, anticipating a non-immediately imminent attack. The war was over after six days. Peace treaties between Israel and Egypt and Jordan were subsequently adopted27.
  3. Despite this, Israel maintained control of the territory — continuing the use of force enabling its capture.
  4. Israel’s 1967 war was illegal in the jus ad bellum — even assuming, arguendo, its claim of a feared attack, States cannot lawfully use force in non-immediately imminent anticipatory self-defence.
  5. Alternatively, assuming ⎯ again arguendo ⎯ that the war was lawful, the justification ended after six days. However, the jus ad bellum requirements continued to apply to the occupation as itself a continuing use of force. In 1967, with self-determination well established in international law, States could not lawfully use force to retain control over a self-determination unit captured in war, unless the legal test justifying the initial use of force also justified, on the same basis, the use of force in retaining control. Moreover, this justification would need to continue, not only in the immediate aftermath, but for more than half a century. Manifestly, this legal test has not been met28.
  6. Israel’s exercise of control over the Gaza Strip and West Bank through the use of force has been illegal in the jus ad bellum since the capture of the territory, or, at least, very soon afterwards.
  7. The occupation is, therefore, again existentially illegal in the law on the use of force — an aggression — this time, as a general matter, beyond illegality specific to annexation. To terminate this serious violation, the occupation must, likewise, end immediately.

10. ILLEGAL FORCE DOES NOT BECOME LAWFUL IN RESPONSE TO RESISTANCE TO IT29

  1. What of Israel’s current military action in Gaza? This is not a war that began in October 2023. It is a drastic scaling-up of the force exercised there, and in the West Bank, on a continual basis, since 1967. A justification for a new phase in an ongoing illegal use of force cannot be constructed solely out of the consequences of violent resistance to that illegal use of force. Otherwise, an illegal use of force would be rendered lawful because those subject to it violently resisted — circular logic, with a perverse outcome.

11. ISRAEL CANNOT LAWFULLY USE FORCE TO CONTROL THE PALESTINIAN TERRITORY FOR SECURITY PURPOSES/PENDING A PEACE AGREEMENT30

  1. More generally, Israel cannot lawfully use force to control the Palestinian territory for security purposes pending an agreement providing security guarantees. States can only lawfully use force outside their borders in extremely narrow circumstances. Beyond that, they must address security concerns non-forcibly.
  2. The United States of America, the United Kingdom and Zambia suggested here that there is a sui generis applicable legal framework, an Israeli-Palestinian lex specialis. This somehow supersedes the rules of international law determining whether the occupation is existentially lawful. Instead, we have a new rule, justifying the occupation until there is a peace agreement meeting Israeli security needs. This is the law as these States would like it to be, not the law as it is. It has no basis in resolution 242, Oslo or any other resolutions or agreements31. Actually, you are being invited to do away with the very operation of some of the fundamental, peremptory rules of international law itself. As a result, the matters these rules conceive as rights vested in the Palestinian people would be realized only if agreement is reached, and only on the basis of such agreement. At best, if there is an agreement, this means one that need not be compatible with Palestinian peremptory legal rights, determined only by the acute power imbalance in Israel’s favour32. At worst, if there is no agreement, this means that the indefinite continuation of Israeli rule over the Palestinian people in the occupied Palestinian territories, on the basis of racist supremacy and a claim to sovereignty, would be lawful33. This is an affront to the international rule of law, to the United Nations Charter imperative to settle disputes in conformity with international law, and to your judicial function as guardians of the international legal system34.
  3. A final potential basis sometimes invoked to justify continuing the occupation should be addressed. Occupation and human rights law — applicable to illegal and lawful occupations alike — oblige Israel to address security threats in occupied territory. However, they only regulate the conduct of an occupation when it exists. They do not also provide a legal basis for that existence itself. Existential legality is determined by the law of self-determination and the jus ad bellum only. There is no “back door” legal basis for Israel to maintain the occupation through the imperatives of occupation and human rights law35.

12. EXISTENTIAL ILLEGALITY OF ISRAEL’S OCCUPATION OF THE PALESTINIAN GAZA STRIP AND WEST BANK, INCLUDING EAST JERUSALEM

  1. In sum: the occupation of the Palestinian Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is existentially illegal on two mutually reinforcing bases.
  2. First, the law on the use of force. Here, the occupation is illegal both as a use of force without valid justification, and because it is enabling an illegal purported annexation. As such, it is an aggression.
  3. Second, the law of self-determination. Here, it is illegal again because of the association with illegal purported annexation, and also, more generally, because it is, quite simply, an exercise of authority over the Palestinian people that, by its very nature, violates their right to freedom.
  4. This multifaceted existential illegality — involving serious violations of peremptory norms — has two key consequences.
  5. First: the occupation must end: Israel must renounce its claim to sovereignty over the Palestinian territory; all settlers must be removed. Immediately. This is required to end the illegality, to discharge the positive obligation to enable immediate Palestinian self-administration, and because Israel lacks any legal entitlement to exercise authority.
  6. Second, in the absence of the occupation ending, necessarily, everything Israel does in the Palestinian territory lacks a valid international legal basis and is, therefore (subject to the Namibia exception), invalid, not only those things violating the law regulating the conduct of the occupation36. Those norms entitle and require Israel to do certain things. But this does not alter the more fundamental position, from the law on the use of force and self-determination, that Israel lacks any valid authority to do anything, and whatever it does is illegal, even if compliant with or pursuant to the conduct-regulatory rules.

13. THE WORDS OF REFAAT ALAREER

  1. I will close by quoting Palestinian academic and poet Refaat Alareer, from his final poem posted 36 days before he was killed by Israel in Gaza on 6 December 2023:

If I must die, you must live to tell my story […]

If I must die
let it bring hope, let it be a story.37

Thank you for your attention.

The PRESIDENT: I thank the delegation of the League of Arab States for its presentation.


Footnotes

7 This statement draws on the following two documents submitted in the present case: Written Statement by the League of Arab States, 20 July 2023, and Written Comments on the written statements made by States and organizations by the League of Arab States, 25 Oct. 2023, both obtainable from https://www.icj-cij.org/case/186/written-proceedings.

8 11.06 per cent to be exact. Government of the United Kingdom, Report of J. B. Barron, Superintendent of Census, Palestine: Report and General Abstracts of the Census of 1922, 10 Feb. 1923, p. 5, table I, available at https://content.ecf.org.il/files/M00785_1922PalestineCensusEnglish.pdf.

9 See Written Statement of the League of Arab States, Sec. 8, pp. 16-19, Part 3 generally, pp. 19-38, especially Sec. 16 therein, pp. 37-38.

10 See generally Written Statement of the League of Arab States, p. 8, para. 13 (1); Written Comments of the League of Arab States, Sec. 6c, pp. 27-32; and Ralph Wilde, “Tears of the Olive Trees: Mandatory Palestine, the UK, and accountability for colonialism in international law”, Journal of the History of International Law (2022), available at https://brill.com/view/journals/jhil/aop/article-10.1163-15718050-12340216/article-10.1163-15718050-12340216.xml? language=en (hereinafter “Wilde, Tears of Olive Trees”).

11 Treaty of Peace Between the Allied and Associated Powers and Germany, signed in Versailles, 28 June 1919, entry into force 10 January 1920, (1919) UKTS 4 (Cmd. 153), Part I, League Covenant 1919: Covenant of the League of Nations, 28 Apr. 1919, available at: https://www.ungeneva.org/en/about/league-of-nations/covenant.

12 Mandate for Palestine, text approved by the League of Nations Council 19th Session, 13th Meeting, 24 July 1922, UN Library reference C.529. M.314. 1922. VI., available at: https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert- 201057/, entry into force on 29 Sept. 1923, Minutes of the Meeting of the League of Nations Council held at Geneva on 29 September 1923, UN Library reference C.L.101.1923.VI., available at https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto- insert-204395/.

13 Wilde, Tears of Olive Trees, pp. 402-403.

14 State of Palestine, Palestinian Liberation Organization Negotiation Affairs Department, Borders, https://www.nad.ps/en/our-position/borders#:~:text=During%20the%20June%201967%20war,Palestinian%20half% 20of%20the%20city, and United Nations, The Question of Palestine, History, https://www.un.org/unispal/history/.

15 Nasreen Haddad Haj-Yahya, Muhammed Khalaily, Arik Rudnitzky and Ben Fargeon, Statistical Report on Arab Society in Israel 2021, The Israel Democracy Institute, 17 Mar. 2022, available at https://en.idi.org.il/articles/38540.

16State of Palestine, Palestinian Liberation Organization Negotiation Affairs Department, Borders, https://www.nad.ps/en/our-position/borders#:~:text=During%20the%20June%201967%20war,Palestinian%20half%20 of%20the%20city. See also Statement of HE Mr Mahmoud Abbas, President of the State of Palestine, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization and President of the Palestinian National Authority before the United Nations General Assembly’s Sixty-Sixth Session, New York, 23 Sept. 2011, https://gadebate.un.org/sites/ default/files/gastatements/66/ps_en_25.pdf.

17 Written Statement of the League of Arab States, Sec. 13, pp. 26-33.

18 Ralph Wilde, “Using the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house: international law and Palestinian liberation”, Palestine Yearbook of International Law, Vol. 22 3 (2021) (hereinafter “Wilde, Master’s Tools”), pp. 35-39.

19 Written Comments of the League of Arab States, Sec. 6, pp. 23-32; Wilde, Master’s Tools, pp. 40-41.

20 Written Comments of the League of Arab States, Sec. 6, pp. 23-32, esp. Secs. 6a and 6b, pp. 23-26.

21 Ibid., Sec. 11 (p. 21-3); Wilde, Master’s Tools, p. 40.

22 Written Statement of the League of Arab States, Sec. 13, pp. 26-33.

23 See generally Written Statement of the League of Arab States, Sec. 4.c., pp. 9-10, Sec. 10, pp. 20-21, Sec. 11.d., pp. 22-23; Wilde, Master’s Tools, Secs. IV-VIII, pp. 35-73).

24 See Ralph Wilde, International Territorial Administration: How Trusteeship and the Civilizing Mission Never Went Away (OUP 2008), Chap. 8.

25 UNGA res. 1514 (XV), 14 Dec. 1960, UN doc. A/RES/1514 (XV), para. 3.

26 See Written Statement of the League of Arab States, Sec. 12, pp. 23-26; Written Comments of the League of Arab States, Sec. 7, pp. 32-33; and Wilde, Master’s Tools, Section III, pp. 21-35.

27 Treaty of Peace between Egypt and Israel, 26 March 1979, UNTS, Vol. 1136, p. 100; Treaty of Peace between the State of Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, 26 October 1994, UNTS, Vol. 2042, p. 351.

28 Written Statement of the League of Arab States, p. 25, paras. 70-71; Wilde, Master’s Tools, pp. 25-26.

29 Ralph Wilde, “Israel’s War in Gaza is Not a Valid Act of Self-defence in International Law”, Opinio Juris, 9 Nov. 2023, https://opiniojuris.org/2023/11/09/israels-war-in-gaza-is-not-a-valid-act-of-self-defence-in-international- law/.

30 See Written Statement of the League of Arab States, p. 24, paras. 63-66, p. 25, paras. 72-73; Written Comments of the League of Arab States, Sec. 3, pp. 5-17; Wilde, Master’s Tools, pp. 27-31.

31 See Written Statement of the League of Arab States, Sec. 12.b, p. 24; and also Written Comments of the League of Arab States, Sec. 3, pp. 5-17.

32 See also Written Comments of the League of Arab States, p. 16, para. 54. 33 Ibid.

34 Ibid., Sec. 3.b, pp. 6-8, paras. 54-55, p. 17 and pp. 19-20, paras. 62-63.

35 Written Statement of the League of Arab States, Sec. 15.b, pp. 34-36. 36 Ibid., Sec. 15, pp. 34-37, and Sec. 17, pp. 38-41.



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Late Elizabethan Holocausts


How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political power to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century.” ~ Aneurin Bevan
One way of understanding history is to seek out the stories of those most harmed by the attitudes, behaviour and actions of those who hold and exercise the most social material power. The lives of the most vulnerable are historically more meaningful in that they reveal so much about the attitudes of the powerful. It is often the case that those who exercise power in abusive ways seek to obscure, bury or otherwise silence the stories of those most harmed by that exercise. Judith Herman faced that in her work as a Trauma specialist, meeting men and women exposed to extreme violence in the 1960s onwards, ranging from domestic abuse to political terrorism. "
I argued then that the study of psychological trauma is an inherently political enterprise because it calls attention to the experience of oppressed people. 

I predicted that our field would continue to be beset by controversy, no matter how solid its empirical foundation, because the same historical forces that in the past have consigned major discoveries to oblivion continue to operate in the world. 

 I argued, finally, that only an ongoing connection with a global political movement for human rights could ultimately sustain our ability to speak about unspeakable things." ~ Judith Herman in Trauma and Recovery
The narrative of historical celebrity is by definition and intent a serial hagiography.

Undue reverence to those who officiate the violent hierarchies rides roughshod over compassion, empathy and genuine concern for the lived experience - the lives of those who endure the worst outcomes of the decisions of the powerful who benefit most from the hierarchy systems are more footnote than headline.


Late Victorian Holocausts (follow the link)


Late Elizabethan Holocausts. (see below)


I want to make it very, very clear that I do not hold either of these Queens personally liable, culpable or responsible for any of the harms caused by the English Establishment during their tenures as Queen -as the Crown in person - they are persons trapped by birth and circumstance more than anything else. The accident of birth is as it is. This is in part about the Monarchy as a device exploited by the Establishment which dates back to The Restoration. 

Who are the culpable parties?

The Establishment are the Oligarchy. The descendants and inheritors of the Barons, The Merchants, the Colonists and the Industrialists. The Holders of the Assets of the Empire.

Since 1948, and the end of WWII, and the emergence of the Social Welfare State, the English Government has participated in a range of actions that have caused immense harm to entire populations, actions that were entirely avoidable and yet deliberately chosen. 

The Queen ascended to the Throne in the midst of all of this, on February 6th 1952.

Aden was abandoned in 1967. One could go back earlier in the historical record and include the Colonial abuses across Africa, India and elsewhere in the 19th Century. Apartheid in South Africa  from 1948 onwards was wholly supported by the English Establishment.  The brutal suppression of Mau Mau political activism in Kenya in the 1950s.

"Historian Mark Curtis, who estimates that the number of deaths in the post-war world for which Britain bears ‘significant responsibility’ is at around ten million (erring on the side of caution, as he stresses).

Taking into account such atrocities as the wars in Malaya (1948-1960) and Kenya (1952-1960),Indonesian atrocities (both during the 1965 coup and in East Timor from 1975), the Shah in Iran (1953-1979), the Falklands War (1982), support for US aggression in Central America (1980s),Apartheid in South Africa, other proxy wars in Africa, Military action in Sierra Leone, the bombing of Yugoslavia (1999) and Afghanistan (2001), and the invasion of Iraq (2003) not to mention the support for the Israeli conquest and occupation of Palestinian lands.

Of these ten million deaths, Britain has ‘direct responsibility’ for between four and six million:‘ Often, the policies responsible are unknown to the public and remain unresearched by journalists and academics’ (the friendly historian Dominic Sandbrook can still claim with a straight  face in 2010 that ‘Britain’s empire stands out as a beacon of tolerance, decency and the rule of law … Nor did Britain countenance anything like the dreadful tortures committed in French Algeria’).

Curtis adds in Unpeople that ‘humanitarian concerns do not figure at all in the rationale behind British foreign policy,’ and are occasionally evoked purely for ‘public-relations purposes.’"


source: https://www.academia.edu/11416901/Mau_Mau_The_Epic_Calm_of_State_Violence_in_Occupied_Kenya

Mark Curtis - Unpeople at the Authors website.

The Elizabethan Era - for whom the bells tolled.

Northern Ireland, 1968, where the oppression of civil rights marches degenerated into a faux Civil War in which the English State colluded with violent militia, that lasted for 30 years.

The destruction of the Trade Union movement, during the 1970s, and the offshoring of the bulk of English manufacturing jobs to gouge greater profits through production with cheap labour, which devastated communities in Wales, the midlands and the North, deliberately impoverishing millions of British citizens. Deprivation visited upon millions of English citizens by the English Establishment. 

The Thatcher Government provided ample support to Iraq in the Iraq-Iran War, 1980 - 1988. That support certainly prolonged that war. That support is implicated in the death toll of that war.

The Gulf War, in 1991 to repel the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait (itself a miscalculation by the US Ally, Hussein) and the decade of bombing with Depleted Uranium munitions, in order to maintain a 'no fly zone', which when combined with the destruction of civil infrastructure and the embargo of foods and medicines imposed by the US and UK let to the early deaths of 500,000 children.

The Invasion of Afghanistan,  in 2002 and all that ensued - 157,000 violent deaths, more maimings, displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, more trauma and poverty.

The Invasion of Iraq, 2003 and all that followed as a consequence - 600,000 deaths, more maimings, displacement of millions of people, more trauma and poverty. This also increased terrorism across the Middle East, North Africa,  the EU and USA.

2006 was the year that the Labour Government introduced the Work Capability Assessment, presented as a way to 'help disabled people into work'. The assessment regime was imported from USA, where it had been designed by a Health Insurance Corporation to downgrade claims for Disability, in order to make more profits.  Disabled claimants subjected to that Corporation's regime had been awarded hundreds of millions of dollars by courts. Nonetheless, Labour proceeded to implement this atrocious system. 

"
The former DWP Chief Medical Officer, Mansel Aylward, moved from the DWP in 2005 to the then named UnumProvident Centre for Psychosocial and Disability Research at Cardiff University, with funding by the American corporate giant who sponsored the new research centre with £1.6 million. 

Together with Gordon Waddell, Aylward produced discredited ‘policy based’ research4 in the 2005 DWP commissioned report: The Scientific and Conceptual Basis of Incapacity Benefits5 which supported the DWP’s planned course of action to demolish the welfare state.

DWP Ministers insisted that they were helping chronically sick and disabled people to take responsibility for their own financial future by searching for employment. In reality, various reforms to social welfare policies allowed preventable harm by the State to creep into disabled people’s lives. 

The flawed Waddell and Aylward biopsychosocial (BPS) model of assessment1 was used by the DWP to justify the use of the WCA, and the excessive use of sanctions against ESA claimants are known to cause identified preventable harm, including starvation, for those least able to protest."

This shift has caused untold harms ever since it was introduced. The UN made a series of reports that used UK data on how disabled people were being treated by UK Government, and called it a 'crime against humanity'.

Estimated excess deaths in the population of disabled people during 2010 - 2020 run to 150,000. During 2020/21 60% of all COVID related deaths were deaths of disabled people. The continuing harm of this policy is a stain upon the English democratic system of Government and is a holocaust of death, distress, fear and exploitation. still under way. The English Government shows no sign of changing course. The English population appear unwilling or unable to push against this, even as disability campaigners work over time. This is tragic.

Is it that the Queen, who we are told worked every day, right up to to her passing, is the example the Establishment sets out to mask this?

Support for illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine, where we know that 263,000 Palestinian people have been displaced has been a constant, in that support for the Israeli Government by the UK Government in social material terms and in the UN remains firm, and opposes almost every politician who draws attention to these criminal actions.

Support for Israeli War actions against Gaza, causing at least 6,000 deaths of civilians, men, women and children, where due to embargos and bombing of civil infrastructure, 1 million are forced to live abject poverty, a situation that the UN deems an act of collective punishment.

Austerity, 2010  which followed on from bailing out fraudulent mortgage selling and insurance practices which caused crashes in investment banking, for which no bankers were indicted. Austerity built on lies, which led to increased poverty across England, and the excess deaths of 150,000 disabled, vulnerable and low income people. The rich were given socialism, the poor were punished.

The destruction of Libya, 2011 - 2014, a functioning Civil state, reduced to rubble, which led to it being split and controlled by competing violent militia, where the rule of Law vanished and the rule of the wat lord still thrives.

The funding of violent militia in a proxy war against the Syrian State, 2011 - 2021 which has displaced millions, destroyed cities, towns and villages, caused immense trauma and poverty, where now food shortages exacerbated by trade sanctions are creating the possibility of famine, in the midst of a global pandemic.

The military and political support for the Saudi war against Yemen, 2015 - 2021, where 5 million people are facing famine, on top of all the associated harms of war. UK sells warplanes and munitions, and the ancillary staff to operate a fleet of aircraft to bomb peasants.

And in the last year: COVID19

The deliberate mismanagement of the covid19 epidemic locally,  200,000 deaths, 1,300,000 long covid cases, massive economic damage to working folks livelihoods, massive damage to small and medium businesses, tourism, live entertainment industries.

The policy that has exacerbated the pandemic globally, via the spread of variants that emerged within the UK and were spread due to keeping borders open, airports active, for non-essential travel and the rejection of early action by a prime minister, Boris Johnson, who styled himself as the Superman, the champion on Free Trade, in a speech given in Greenwich on February 3rd 2020.

These are all actions of the English Government that have caused millions of deaths, millions of people have been forced to flee, to be 'displaced', millions of people have been traumatised and these actions by the English Government have increased poverty and inequity across all nations afflicted.

At the same time, the English Establishment has increased it's global wealth and increased it's own power.

Late Elizabethan Holocausts.

I didn't mention Brexit, because, as of this moment it is not clear that it will cause death and mayhem at anything like the scale all these other actions have caused. But there is no doubt that it will. Brexit is, among other things, a move against collective effort and evidence based climate disruption policy to protect populations, build in resilience, shift from fossil fuel usage

People cry that the Conservatives are most foul. 

That is only partially true..  It's not just the Conservative and Unionist Party, the rot is much, much wider than that. Even within Labour there is a faction that opposes taking any meaningful action on the issues laid out above. Because they are culpable. Their war against Jeremy Corbyn laid bare the realities, and even still there are a sizable group of Labour voters who bought the lies, and are still, even as the Forde Report was released, holding firm to opposition to corrective action.

The English speaking global Oligarchy Establishment is dominant in all political parties in England, America, Australia and Canada - and they are a venal, brutish clan short on humanity, long on greed and focused always on fulfilling their desire for more power, and more wealth extraction and accumulation. 

Brexit was their operation to 'take back control' from a humanist Europe that is starting to regulate extractive industries, off shore banking, tax evasion, air and water pollution, environmental degradation and other abusive industrial practices that are the source of the wealth of the Global English speaking Establishment.

That is a large part of why Scotland is seeking independence.

Boris Johnson's veil slipped when he claimed yesterday that “The reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed my friends.”

He is of course, totally wrong. The Vaccine success is entirely down to public funding, open and transparent sharing of information by research and academia, across borders, supported internationally as a medical necessity.

This resonates with his speech in Greenwich, February 3rd 2020 which I detail in a recent blog posting.

He posed himself as 'Superman' - he who will not flinch or panic, who will not undertake 'action that goes beyond what is medically rational' like others do, who will preserve open borders to facilitate trade. Except that was a deceit. Goods do not carry the virus, passenger travel carries the virus. He deliberately kept open borders without quarantine and therefore guaranteed spread of variants to and from the UK, even though experts warned of the dangers in this. He lied.

Crony Capitalism

The gaming of the epidemic as an exercise in profit gouging - £37 billion budget for a process to suppress transmission of the virus that is designed to fail at every turn, whilst pretending to help.  £57 billion wasted on contracts for PPE and other healthcare equipment, which ignored existing suppliers within the UK and handed contracts to small companies with no prior experience - creating hundreds of newly minted millionaires who raked off commissions at average 10%.   The filler accounting of the abuses of power are greater than the scope of this article.

This is Capitalism as a bullying dynamic, where the powerful exploit emerging vulnerabilities across a population and cause harm to that population whilst gaslighting that population through public briefing, news media co-ordination and online political conspiracy theory grooming dominance.

Taking Back Control

The English people need to seek independence from this Establishment, to save further lives and prevent further harms - indeed, the English people needed to do that back in 2003, when it was obvious that a War of Aggression was being initiated and prosecuted using tax payers funds. When the English grass roots failed to indict Tony Blair, a proven liar and War criminal,  they opened the flood gates to where we are today.

Queen Elizabeth is on the Throne, binding the nation. She is a person trapped by birth circumstances.  None of this is her fault. Her position is exploited by the English Establishment. Flags are waved, and people die.

Late Elizabethan Holocausts.

Now you know why.

God Save the Queen from this odious Establishment of NeoLiberal Robber Barons!

Arrest them all for malfeasance and corporate manslaughter.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

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Birth, Love and Gaza - A SONG FOR THE CHILDREN OF PALESTINE AND ISRAEL




A SONG FOR THE CHILDREN OF PALESTINE AND ISRAEL

The push, the release
the squeeze, the belief
in letting go - we both
surrender to the next life
as in the new world
I arrive to the softness of
the strange dry air,
something unknown to me,
the pulse of my mothers heart
the thumping with which I have
for nine months lived
- all of my life thus far -
oh the relief of hearing that sound again
having been briefly, yet intensely
separated from that
fundamental pulse.

I gaze with all my body,
all my soul
and we catch each other,
before I reach to feed.
and oxytocin mediates the adrenaline
I am born, and we are clean, together...

My fathers deep voice rumbling in peace and joy,
amazement and bliss.

Being born is the art of the eternal welcome.
 Mind and body
one ingenuous zone of love,
head to toe I know
that my love of life,
this desire to nurture,
the qualities
we see
and feel in each other,
and we are recognised,
for these are the echoes,
these are the dreams
that are essential
above all else.

Nurture love,
tend the garden

Blessings are
these tears of love,
these peals of laughter
like a silken glove
held and yet unrestricted.

And then the flags, the tanks, and the shelling?

This tragedy is pathology,
the loving is all gone,
the culture says no breast-feeding in public,
it's more important
that you learn your Nations song!

Gaza, Trauma and Threat… obeying the law.....

;-)



click this link to launch my streaming radio :

http://www.corneilius.net/acousticmusic/playpage.htm

It will open a page with a player and song list. Press play....


The Israeli Election is done. Now the formation of a majority block Government begins. Two weeks they say. And who has been talking of peace or justice? What have they said? And who amongst them will talk of peace, And who has been talking of more war? And who amongst these elected Israelis, now with the responsibility of Governance as an occupying military power in their hands, will speak of seeking peace and abandoning violence, physical or economic. As a first step. Unclench the fist, and remove the glove. Who?

And absent from anything i have read, is comment upon the reality that after a trauma, any threats the assailant makes publicly is by Law, and offence, classified as an assault. It also hurts....

Imagine what it’s like for a child who has seen his family die in the most bloody way, to hear the persons responsible for that horror making threats to launch another war, or to speak of unending war?

What is that like?

That child could be Israeli or Palestinian or American or Congolese, take a pick at any ‘conflict’, there are many.

Seen from this perspective, birth into this way of life, on Earth, is a grotesque lottery, devised by the hands of power, uncaring of the harm. Sure there are risk inherent in nature. But this?

THIS!?

So many children!

How is THIS in any way acceptable?

These are the questions we must ask as people and demand that answers, both our own conclusions and those of established ‘experts’ be openly sought, facts faced and appropriate decisions made.

With the disgusting and ignoble rhetoric of war ringing around the world, with foreseeable disasters looming as possibility's, ones we could better turn our energies so as to prepare, and mitigate the foreseeable, as derived from climate variation, mass poverty as capitalism falters, as war continues and other factors I won't go into here,(the reader will collate their own list) it behoves us all to stop the war as a priority.

One way or another, the subject must become THE SUBJECT that politicians, makers of weapons and war supplies, soldiers, citizens and children focus on.

protest. strike. blockade. write. inform. talk to the children. no-one has to become part of the system. it cannot be imposed. alternatives will emerge.

i write about this because of what I know to be true. It is deeper than any belief.

Because of the children.

All real children have prior rights in that they did not ask to join this culture, and cannot be subject to it's imposed ideologies without undermining their human rights, this in both a legal and a more general sense.

Those rights are the responsibility of the adult world in it’s entirety.

That responsibility is not so heavy that mankind has been struggling with it eternally. That would not be a great survival strategy in the long run, as we are beginning to understand. Ahem! (cough, cough!)

Until quite recently, about 16,000 years ago as far as we can tell. Not long in the long line of ancestry really. And always, always organised war directed by hierarchical societies has been at the heart of it all. The motive : Profit by brute force.

‘Progress’ was and remains a metaphor for more land, and more land implied controlling other lands, others bodies, be they whatever species……as resources to exploit.

Happiness in a consumer culture?

Truthfully, the ‘happiness’ quotient of those closest to the land, where pressures from the consumer based industrial world are non-existent, minimal or ignored, is the highest and broadest of all living human societies. That matters! That really, really matters. Think about this. Pause.

This way of living as a natural humane being has real meaning, value, content and depth. It is neither a fashion statement nor is it a currency. It’s no utopia. Shit happens.

Nonetheless.

Two streams of behaviour. Different consequences.

One cares for children. The other ‘rears’ children.

One turns anger into ritual.

The other drops missiles on them from seven thousand miles away. Or thirty. Or shells the child from one hundred yards away. Bulldozes house with dead people inside, your dead brothers, your dead parents and grandparents.

One would never make that threat.

The other repeats both threat and trauma.

A cyclic pattern.

This happens.
This is war, carried out by ‘states’, stimulated by ‘empires’.

Does it really have to be this way?

Of course not! Feel that pulse of nature, and the child at play, the family laughing. That’s real.

Doubt not that for once thousandth of a second.

Imagine again, sense this, feel what it would be like for that child at the harsh end of a missile.

Wherever that child is.

Imagine now, slowly, taking time to sense again how you felt gazing upon the most beautiful natural sight you have ever seen. The most moving. Then imagine playing as a child in nature, in that vision, or as it comes, as you might have as a child. Learning by exploring. By experience. By joy!

BANG!

A missile, the components of which may well have been made in 25 different countries, assembled in one country, shipped to the battle front, used once, lands in a child’s bedroom.

So when the politician said read my lips, no more taxes and did the opposite, when they say they want peace and make war and work to increase the possibility of more ‘efficient’ war, when they say they care for our health and refuse to regulate tens of thousands of synthetic toxic chemicals that are currently in common use, which are absolutely a leading cause of much distress, common and evolving, in or civilisation and outside it, as the toxicity takes hold, when this and more, with so many lies, there comes a point. There has to. Enough!

“It’s the children stupid!”

It’s (certainly not) the (military consumer products services industry) economy (interests and natural market) stupid!

What do you think? What are your thoughts on this?

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe



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