I wish I could draw.
My crude attempt to show what the once admirable Labour party has become after it has been hijacked by the loony left who have no other home to doss down in.
Jeremy Corbyn was put in there by the rabble and they are still pulling all his strings.
Squatter’s rights I suppose.
Within 24 hours of President Duterte being sworn in, six suspected drug pushers were shot and killed by policemen in separate operations in Bulacan province. This was Duterte yesterday:
Following a measured speech after taking his oath before a small audience inside the presidential palace, the outspoken leader paid an evening visit to a Manila slum and unleashed profanity-laden threats against drug traffickers in front of a crowd of about 500 people
“These sons of whores are destroying our children. I warn you, don’t go into that, even if you’re a policeman, because I will really kill you,” the head of state told the audience. “If you know of any addicts, go ahead and kill them yourself as getting their parents to do it would be too painful.”
And now the police react:
One of the fatalities was identified as Lauro Reyes who was out on bail due to drug charges. Police said they were conducting a search warrant at his house in Barangay Iba-Ibayo in Hagonoy town when Reyes’ companion identified as Lamberto Morales fired at the police. Police said Reyes and Morales were also linked with robbery cases in Bulacan.
In San Ildefonso town, Oliver dela Cruz was killed in a buy-bust operation in Barangay Pala-pala at 1 a.m. Friday.
In Norzagaray town, police were serving a search warrant when a suspected drug pusher identified as Keith Gibson fired at the police at around 1:45 a.m.
In the City of Malolos, an armed suspected drug pusher was killed when he fired at the policemen in a buy-bust operation along the Diversion Road in Barangay Mojon at 1:45 a.m.
In Guiguinto town, Mayor Ambrocio Cruz said a suspected drug pusher fired at the police in a buy-bust operation, prompting the policemen to shoot and kill him.
The police now have a carte blanche against suspected drug pushers. It is not difficult to see where this might lead.
Bulacan is a province in the Philippines, located in the Central Luzon Region and part of the Metro Luzon Urban Beltway Super Region. Bulacan was established on August 15, 1578. In the 2015 census, Bulacan had a population of 3,292,071 people, the 2nd most populous in the Philippines. Bulacan’s most populated city is San Jose del Monte.
Rodrigo Duterte image AP
The UN introduced cholera to Haiti which caused the deaths of at least 9,000 (officially 9,000, unofficially about 30,000 and with a possibility of being up to 100,000 deaths). The UN culpability and incompetence is clear. The outbreak could have been prevented “if the UN had spent just $2,000 for advance health checks and preventive antibiotics for their troops from Nepal who carried the disease. The cost of the UN incompetence in addition to the 9,000 lives lost is now estimated to be over $2 billion”. But the UN denies responsibility. In March this year came reports that “the secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, has been chastised by five of the UN’s own human rights experts who accuse him of undermining the world body’s credibility and reputation by denying responsibility for the devastating outbreak of cholera in Haiti. In a withering letter to the UN chief, the five special rapporteurs say that his refusal to allow cholera victims any effective remedy for their suffering has stripped thousands of Haitians of their fundamental right to justice”.
The US has been supporting Ban Ki-moon both in his denial of responsibility and in his claim of immunity for all UN actions. “Naturally anybody on UN duty is immune from any prosecution – even for blatant incompetence or gross negligence”.
Now The Guardian reports that a bipartisan group of 158 members of Congress have criticised Obama for his stance:
A bipartisan group of 158 members of Congress has accused the Obama administration of a failure of leadership over the cholera scandal in Haiti in which at least 30,000 people have died as a result of an epidemic caused by the United Nations for which the world body refuses to accept responsibility.
A joint letter highly critical of US policy – and devastatingly critical of the UN – has been sent to the US secretary of state, John Kerry, signed by 12 Republican and 146 Democratic members of Congress. Led by John Conyers, a Democratic congressman from Michigan, and Mia Love, a Republican congresswoman from Utah, the letter’s signatories include many of the most senior voices on foreign affairs on Capitol Hill.
The missive takes the Obama administration to task for failing to admonish the UN for its refusal to accept responsibility for the cholera outbreak. “We are deeply concerned that the State Department’s failure to take more leadership in the diplomatic realm might be perceived by our constituents and the world as a limited commitment to an accountable and credible UN,” the letter says.
It continues: “We respectfully urge the Department of State to treat the issue of a just and accountable UN response to Haiti’s cholera with the urgency that 10,000-100,000 deaths and catastrophic damage to the UN’s credibility deserves.”
….. As part of the UN’s dogged denial of culpability, the organization has made a blanket rejection of calls for compensation contained in a class action lawsuit filed in New York by victims of the disaster. The world body is claiming immunity from damages in the case. The US government chose to represent the UN’s defense in the litigation in front of the federal second circuit appeals court. That prompted the three-member panel of judges to question US lawyers over the Obama administration’s apparent unwillingness to use its diplomatic muscle to force the UN to shift its contentious position. …..
With cholera still raging in parts of Haiti, and aid groups on the ground reporting ongoing suffering amid inadequate provision of medical help and sanitation, the Congress members called on the state department to “immediately and unreservedly exercise its leadership … Each day that passes without an appropriate UN response is a tragedy for Haitian cholera victims, and a stain on the UN’s reputation.”
Of course the US claims the same kind of immunity for its troops on active missions abroad (and the US has even tried to claim that kind of immunity for those accused of rape on Okinawa but had to give way eventually). So perhaps the Obama government’s defence of Ban Ki-moon is just a self-serving but unprincipled exercise to protect their own position regarding the responsibility of their troops when abroad.
But it is a shameful position.
The dwindling availability of helium and because it is so scarce in the earth’s atmosphere has led to conceptual plans – if not yet projects – for the extraction of Helium from the lunar topsoil.
Helium(4He) is the second most abundant element in the known Universe (after hydrogen) but only makes up 5.2 parts per million (ppm) of the Earth’s atmosphere. Helium-3 (3He) is an isotope of helium with two protons and one neutron. It is not radioactive and very rare on Earth (7 parts per trillion) but exists in recoverable concentrations in the lunar topsoil (in the top 2 -3 m of lunar regolith). It is even more abundant on the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
But a new exploration technique has been used to find old helium, trapped in ancient rocks underground, which after being released by volcanic activity, moves into shallower gas fields closer to the surface. Earth scientists from Oxford and Durham universities working together with Norwegian helium exploration company Helium One have found a vast reserve of Helium underground at the Rukwa Basin in the Tanzanian East African Rift Valley.
Helium One has applied for and secured 20 Prospecting Licences with a further two applications submitted. All licences are held 100% by the Company, have exclusive rights for helium and can be renewed for up to 9 years.
Within the portfolio are 3 distinct project areas, these are referred to as Rukwa, Eyasi and Balangida. All contain known helium occurrences with concentrations ranging between 2.5% – 10.5% helium and demonstrate the ideal geological conditions for large gas accumulations to be present.
Rukwa Basin – map Helium One
Helium One estimates a “Prospective Recoverable Helium Resource (P50) of 54.2 billion standard cubic feet. This resource occurs in 27 leads, defined by 2D seismic and is supported by data from two legacy exploration wells.”
The find – estimated to be nearly seven times the total amount of helium consumed globally every year – will help allay concerns over Earth’s dwindling known supplies of the natural resource, which is crucial for things like MRI scanners, nuclear energy, and detecting industrial leaks.
…. Earth scientists from Oxford and Durham universities worked together with Norwegian helium exploration company Helium One in the Tanzanian East African Rift Valley. …. “We show that volcanoes in the Rift play an important role in the formation of viable helium reserves,” said researcher Diveena Danabalan from Durham University. “Volcanic activity likely provides the heat necessary to release the helium accumulated in ancient crustal rocks.”
But while the volcanoes help to free the trapped helium, depending on their proximity to the gas reserves, they can also end up wasting the precious element. …
…. “[I]ndependent experts have calculated a probable resource of 54 Billion Cubic Feet (BCf) (1.5 billion cubic metres) in just one part of the Rift Valley,” said Oxford University’s Chris Ballentine. “This is enough to fill over 1.2 million medical MRI scanners.”
“To put this discovery into perspective,” he added, “global consumption of helium is about 8 BCf per year (226 million cubic metres) and the United States Federal Helium Reserve, which is the world’s largest supplier, has a current reserve of just 24.2 BCf (685 million cubic metres). Total known reserves in the USA are around 153 BCf (4.3 billion cubic metres).”
But despite the massive potential of the new gas field, even more exciting is that the way we found it. Before now, helium had always been discovered accidentally, but with what the scientists now understand about volcanoes and helium geochemistry, researchers can now go looking for the gas, meaning Rift Valley could soon be followed by other massive hauls.
The team’s research is being presented this week at the Goldschmidt 2016 geochemistry conference in Yokohama, Japan.
Ecstatic Icelandic commentary when their part-time amateurs defeated England’s team of the richest footballers in the world.
Voting for 5 places on the UN Security Council (15 members) takes place today.
The elections are for five non-permanent seats on the UN Security Council for two-year mandates commencing on 1 January 2017. In accordance with the Security Council’s rotation rules, whereby the ten non-permanent UNSC seats rotate among the various regional blocs into which UN member states traditionally divide themselves for voting and representation purposes, the five available seats are allocated as follows:
- One for Africa
- One for the Asia-Pacific Group
- One for Latin America and the Caribbean
- Two for the Western European and Others Group
The five members will serve on the Security Council for the 2017–18 period.
Sweden, Italy and the Netherlands are competing for the two places on the Security Council reserved for the “Western European and Others Group”. To win a seat on the Council a country has to receive more than 2/3rds of the votes cast. 193 countries can vote and in a secret ballot each votes for two countries. If all eligible countries participate, a winning country must receive at least 129 votes.
The Security Council met for the first time in London on January 17, 1946. Sweden has been on the Security Council three time; in 1957–58, 1975–76 and 1997–98. That is after gaps of 11, 18, and 22 years. It is now 19 years since Sweden was last a member and has a pretty good chance of winning a place. I judge it is somewhat better than the nominal 2/3rds chance all 3 countries start with. The Swedish press has “exposed” that the Foreign Ministry has spent some 22 million kronor (less than $3 million) in its “campaign” to be chosen.
I expect that Sweden and the Netherlands will probably win the two places available.
Italy
Netherlands
Sweden
Brexit is not going to happen any time soon.
If it happens at all.
It seems according to constitutional law experts that any government with any Prime Minister will need a vote in parliament to give authority to an Article 50 notification of intention to withdraw from the EU. Once triggered, withdrawal is inevitable and time-bound. But there is no majority in the current parliament for leaving. And it could be the best part of a year before such a vote in parliament can even be held. For any chance of such a vote being passed it will need a General Election fought on precisely such a question and that the party or parties in favour of an exit win such an election. But it is also possible that such a vote can not, in the reasonable future, be passed.
A new report from Nick Barber, a fellow at Trinity College, Oxford, Tom Hickman, a barrister at Blackstone Chambers and reader at University College, London, and Jeff King, a senior law lecturer at UC, write for the UK Constitutional Law Association:
In this post we argue that as a matter of domestic constitutional law, the Prime Minister is unable to issue a declaration under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty – triggering our withdrawal from the European Union – without having been first authorised to do so by an Act of the United Kingdom Parliament. Were he to attempt to do so before such a statute was passed, the declaration would be legally ineffective as a matter of domestic law and it would also fail to comply with the requirements of Article 50 itself.
There are a number of overlapping reasons for this. They range from the general to the specific. At the most general, our democracy is a parliamentary democracy, and it is Parliament, not the Government, that has the final say about the implications of the referendum, the timing of an Article 50 our membership of the Union, and the rights of British citizens that flow from that membership. More specifically, the terms and the object and purpose of the European Communities Act 1972 also support the correctness of the legal position set out above.
The authors argue that a Prime Minister and his government alone cannot trigger Article 50 without the explicit authority of a parliamentary vote. David Cameron’s resignation statement where he said “it is right that this new Prime Minister takes the decision about when to trigger Article 50 and start the formal and legal process of leaving the EU” does not specify the legal authority under which a Prime Minister alone could make the call:
The Prime Minster did not specify the legal authority under which he believed he or his successors might invoke Article 50, but the typical answer will be obvious to constitutional lawyers: it is the royal prerogative, a collection of executive powers held by the Crown since medieval times, that exist unsupported by statute. ……
One of the earliest limits on the prerogative was that it could not be used to undermine statutes; where the two are in tension, statute beats prerogative. In one of the seminal cases of the common law, The Case of Proclamations,(1610) 12 Co. Rep. 74 Sir Edward Coke declared:
“..the King by his proclamation… cannot change any part of the common law, or statute law, or the customs of the realm…”
A more recent statement of this principle can be found in the Fire Brigades Union Case[1995] 2 AC 513 in 1995, where Lord Browne-Wilkinson stated that:
“…it would be most surprising if, at the present day, prerogative powers could be validly exercised by the executive so as to frustrate the will of Parliament as expressed in a statute and, to an extent, to pre-empt the decision of Parliament whether or not to continue with the statutory scheme…”
…… The wider principle is that it is not open to Government to turn a statute into what is in substance a dead letter by exercise of the prerogative powers; and that it is not open to the Government to act in a way which cuts across the object and purpose of an existing statute. In our view the wider principle correctly states the law and is particularly apt here, as we are concerned with a constitutional statute upon which an extensive system of rights is founded.
They conclude
Our analysis leads to the possibility that the process of extraction from the EU could be a very long one indeed, potentially even taking many years to come about. Of course, the EU Member States have made clear that they will only negotiate once the Article 50 exit provisions have been triggered and are pressing the UK to pull the trigger “as soon as possible”. It is also clear that uncertainty is itself undesirable. But uncertainty needs to be weighed against other imperatives, such as the need to comply with the UK’s constitutional requirements and the need to ensure that Brexit is effected consistently with the national interest. A quick pull of the Article 50 trigger is unlikely to be feasible under the UK’s constitutional arrangements and may well not be desirable for any UK Government or Parliament, even one committed to eventual withdrawal from the EU.
Brexit is the most important decision that has faced the United Kingdom in a generation and it has massive constitutional and economic ramifications. In our constitution, Parliament gets to make this decision, not the Prime Minister.
Nick Barber, Fellow, Trinity College Oxford.
Tom Hickman, Reader, UCL and barrister at Blackstone Chambers
Jeff King, Senior Lecturer in Law, UCL
Citation: N. Barber, T. Hickman and J. King, ‘Pulling the Article 50 ‘Trigger’: Parliament’s Indispensable Role’, U.K. Const. L. Blog (27th Jun 2016) (available at https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/)
It seems to me that whether Brexit is initiated or not (and therefore happens or not) is entirely dependent upon a majority vote in parliament.
(It occurs to me that if Nicola Sturgeon wants to postpone, if not block, Brexit she should get the European Court of Justice to rule on whether or not a parliamentary vote is needed to give authority to a government to invoke Article 50. Even EU bureaucrats can not quibble with that).
David Cameron’s decision to resign before enacting Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty – which sets out how a country could leave the EU – may have some pretty shitty implications for whoever steps into his soiled size nines.
One person in the comments section of the Guardian put forward this very interesting hypothesis:
If Boris Johnson looked downbeat yesterday, that is because he realises that he has lost.
Perhaps many Brexiters do not realise it yet, but they have actually lost, and it is all down to one man: David Cameron.
With one fell swoop yesterday at 9:15 am, Cameron effectively annulled the referendum result, and simultaneously destroyed the political careers of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and leading Brexiters who cost him so much anguish, not to mention his premiership.
How?
Throughout the campaign, Cameron had repeatedly said that a vote for leave would lead to triggering Article 50 straight away. Whether implicitly or explicitly, the image was clear: he would be giving that notice under Article 50 the morning after a vote to leave. Whether that was scaremongering or not is a bit moot now but, in the midst of the sentimental nautical references of his speech yesterday, he quietly abandoned that position and handed the responsibility over to his successor.
And as the day wore on, the enormity of that step started to sink in: the markets, Sterling, Scotland, the Irish border, the Gibraltar border, the frontier at Calais, the need to continue compliance with all EU regulations for a free market, re-issuing passports, Brits abroad, EU citizens in Britain, the mountain of legislation to be torn up and rewritten … the list grew and grew.
The referendum result is not binding. It is advisory. Parliament is not bound to commit itself in that same direction.
The Conservative party election that Cameron triggered will now have one question looming over it: will you, if elected as party leader, trigger the notice under Article 50?
Who will want to have the responsibility of all those ramifications and consequences on his/her head and shoulders?
Boris Johnson knew this yesterday, when he emerged subdued from his home and was even more subdued at the press conference. He has been out-manoeuvred and check-mated.
If he runs for leadership of the party, and then fails to follow through on triggering Article 50, then he is finished. If he does not run and effectively abandons the field, then he is finished. If he runs, wins and pulls the UK out of the EU, then it will all be over – Scotland will break away, there will be upheaval in Ireland, a recession … broken trade agreements. Then he is also finished. Boris Johnson knows all of this. When he acts like the dumb blond it is just that: an act.
The Brexit leaders now have a result that they cannot use. For them, leadership of the Tory party has become a poison chalice.
When Boris Johnson said there was no need to trigger Article 50 straight away, what he really meant to say was “never”. When Michael Gove went on and on about “informal negotiations” … why? why not the formal ones straight away? … he also meant not triggering the formal departure. They both know what a formal demarche would mean: an irreversible step that neither of them is prepared to take.
All that remains is for someone to have the guts to stand up and say that Brexit is unachievable in reality without an enormous amount of pain and destruction, that cannot be borne. And David Cameron has put the onus of making that statement on the heads of the people who led the Brexit campaign.
Why hasn’t Jean-Claude Juncker resigned?
The European Commission, Council of Ministers and the European Parliament are answerable and accountable, theoretically to all the EU members but in practice to nobody.
MEPs are accountable in the sense that they are voted in every 5 years. But in many countries that use party list systems of voting, candidates are simply put on a list by their party and the voters have no or a limited say on who is going to be elected.
In most countries it is very difficult to present a new list alongside the lists of the traditional parties represented in the national parliaments. Voters have a formal choice but not necessarily a real possibility to have their own views being represented by an MP or MEP. ……..
MEPs receive €4,299 per month in a general expenses allowance. MEPs do not need to deliver any proof as to how their money has been spent.
Commissioners need to be accountable to the European Parliament. They are obliged to answer questions from MEPs both orally and in writing. Many MEPs do not feel that they receive satisfactory answers. Many believe that the Commissioners are hiding too much; ………. You should also have the right to know how the different Commissioners vote on the different topics put on their table, but at present one has no idea.
During 2004-14, under the mandate of Commission President Barroso, the Commissioners did not vote among themselves at all. Discussions took place behind closed doors on proposals for new EU laws. The Commission President often reads a text prepared by his official services. There is usually no real political debate. The President concludes. Most decisions are taken in the name of the Commission outside the Commission meeting room ……..
The Commission now publishes agendas and minutes of their decisions. However nowhere can it be seen how they actually came to those decisions. They do not provide access to documents relating to their discussions or preparations. EU Commissioners give information about the amounts spent on representation. Yet this does not happen for individual spending, unlike what journalists can receive or request in most countries from their national ministers. …… Commissioners may hire special advisors. These names are now published – but the information does not include the salaries paid for the special advice they may receive from political friends or others.
Commissioners are proposed by the prime ministers or presidents of the member states. Often a prime minister or president proposes a candidate who could no longer be elected as an MP or appointed as a minister in his or her own country. When former Prime Minister Tony Blair appointed Peter Mandelson as an EU Commissioner he had already been twice rejected as a minister by the British Parliament at Westminster.
Prime Ministers may sometimes propose the names of national politicians they want to get rid of. There is no election procedure safeguarding voters so that they may have the best candidate from their country.
There is some EU accountability in some of the national parliaments. In Denmark the European Affairs committee has met in public every Friday since October 2006 and it can give negotiating mandates to Danish ministers before the latter can approve something in the EU Council of Ministers.
There is no other EU country where ministers need to have a negotiating mandate for such votes at EU level. In most countries the national MPs are rather badly informed about EU law proposals and have no real influence. Even in Denmark it is normally the civil servants in the ministries who decide and implement the Danish position in the 275 Council working groups.
They are assisted by 35 special committees composed of representatives from business organisations and NGOs in an tightly woven corporative system.
The ordinary members of parliament, the media and citizens are sidelined in the important preparatory phase where most EU decisions are prepared and then adopted.
The President of the European Commission – a former PM of Luxembourg – is the living face of the privileged, protected, arrogant, unaccountable bureaucracy that is Brussels. The EC – more than anybody – else is the reason for the deep and widespread dissatisfaction in Europe with the way in which the EU operates and where it is headed.
It is time for Jean-Claude Juncker to resign. And that means that the leaders of the core countries need to tell him to go.
The Brexit referendum was advisory and non-binding. There is no absolute requirement for the government or parliament to follow the result. There may be a moral obligation but with the split 52/48 result it is not all that compelling. It could be argued that since David Cameron called the election, he is responsible for implementing whatever result it produced. He has said that he will not start the formal Brexit process (invoking Article 50) and it seems unlikely that he will cave in to pressure from the EU, either in verbal or written form, such that the EU can “deem” the process to have started. Certainly if he stays he has some obligation, but he has got out of that by announcing his coming resignation.
The same parliament but with just a new Prime Minister – and even one from the Brexit camp – will not have a parliamentary majority in favour of Brexit. (In fact I am not convinced now that a Brexiteer could even win a majority among the current Conservative MP’s). Without a parliamentary majority no necessary legislation will get passed. Moreover the Scottish parliament will withhold consent for any legislation which makes any change to how EU laws affect Scotland. Theoretically, the UK parliament could overrule a Scottish withholding of consent, but, without a parliamentary majority for Brexit, that probably could never happen. So the new Prime Minister has little option but to call a General Election asking for a mandate. But first he has to lead a party which takes on Brexit in its manifesto. And that today is not possible for either the Conservative or the Labour party. I cannot see a Conservative Conference in October accepting to put a Brexit in its manifesto. The Labour party is in shambles and it was labour voters defecting to a UKIP immigration agenda which tipped the balance in the referendum. The Liberal Democrats will not have any anti-EU manifesto and UKIP will. Even supposing that UKIP win a number of seats, they will never have enough to form a government. The bare majority in the referendum comes from across party lines. But any government, now or after a general election, will follow party lines.
So, even after a General Election, there can be no government committed to a Brexit and willing to set it in motion.
The EU is suffering from “interesting times”. Perhaps the EU will actually be reformed along the way. But I am beginning to wonder – just two days after an advisory, non-binding referendum – whether there can be a Brexit at all without a government and a parliament committed to implementing a Brexit. Is Brexit already dead?
My preference for a reformed EU without a Brexit is not – at least on this Sunday evening – not looking as impossible as it was yesterday.
The k2p blog 