RUSSIA: How Spies deceive other Spies and You!

The UK is about to change the main focus of its intelligence surveillance operations.
Russia.

Was Russia involved in the Brexit referendum? Did it influence the Scottish independence referendum?

How can governments know where the main threat is? Intelligence is about deception. The agencies are not only in the business of collecting information on others, foes and friends, but of deceiving enemies.

Sometimes they are so good at deception that they fool themselves. And the Public is at the end of the whole business. It gets deception information from all sides.

So should we be surprised if governments feel the main threat comes from a smaller State while ignoring a powerful foe with a population of 1.3 billion and an economy second only to America’s? And significantly Communist countries set a premium on propaganda to subvert and undermine those they consider their strongest enemies.

So shouldn’t we be a little leery of pat answers based on old prejudices?

Science not Prejudice

Who is in charge of the Intelligence agencies? It is the public in the shape of bureaucrats and politicians. If politicians cannot always be trusted, can the top spies they place in position to run the intelligence services always be trusted? Are they always honest? Politicians come and go. bureaucrats remain. If they are not honest, what can be done?

Thus Democracies often end up being run by deceived politicians trying to control the deceiving machines of the spy community.

Take the case of the recent report on Russia by the UK Parliament Intelligence and Security Committee. This has hit the headlines because Prime Minister Boris Johnson delayed the publication till after the election that brought him a large majority of seats in Parliament (although a minority of popular votes.)

The politicians enquiry was conducted in the years of Prime Minister May and draws on interviews of the time and published material dating even further back.

Much information has come out since then that throws the evidence into a critical light.

The Concluding Decision.

The report has led politicians to the conclusion that the intelligence services underestimated the role of Russia in the two referendums. They say that the services did not take the danger seriously. They did not investigate thoroughly or properly.

So what must be done? In the future Russia must be analysed with more care and more money.

Is this the correct conclusion? Let us turn to the key paragraphs that leads the parliamentary rapporteurs to come to this decision.

The main sources of Russian propaganda are:

• Broadcaster RT and Sputnik,
• Trolls and bots on the internet,
• Hack and Leak of important documents, as exampled in the US elections,
• Real life interference such as giving bank loans to the French National Front party.

If this is the evidence then it is pretty thin except for one point.

• In a footnote the Report admits that only 1300 people on average watch the Russian broadcaster, RT. Hardly enough to swing a referendum of 46 million voters.
• Trolls and bots might increase FaceBook traffic etc but what influence do these have?
• Did the Russians actually turn the US elections to their favour by getting the American public to vote for Donald Trump? His opponent, Hillary Clinton and her husband, seemed to have intimate relations with the Russian government.
• As for one Russian bank making a loan to a French nationalist party, it was refused loans from all Western banks. What was it to do? What loans do other parties get from foreign-owned banks or foreign millionaires such as the oil-States?

One could contrast this with China’s success in its Unrestricted Warfare policy:

• taking over British Steel Ltd (after massive Chinese steel dumping destroyed the viability of EU’s steel sector).
• taking over a major sector of the UK nuclear power industry as constructors.
• implementing of Chinese Huawei connectors into the UK communications networks. This has made the new 5G upgrade seem inevitable. But this could lay the whole network susceptible to infiltration. What better potential for spying?

Thus the Chinese have a grip on UK construction and defence materials, the energy sector and communications. How can a State build battleships and canons if the steel is controlled by foreigners? How can you compete if the lights go out? Who needs spies on the ground when you can tap into their communications?

Russian hack is ‘evidence-free’

This UK conclusion also contrast with a group of US intelligence veterans who say that when certain politicians claim a Russian hack changed the US election results, it is 'evidence-free'.

So what is the key triumph of the Russians that shows their guilt and proves they are the main foe of the West? Surely having swung the US elections in favour Donald Trump. But did they? What is the evidence?

The UK report says:

42. It was only when Russia completed a ‘hack and leak’ operation against the Democratic National Committee in the US – with the stolen emails being made public a month after the EU referendum – that it appears that the Government belatedly realised the level of threat which Russia could pose in this area, given that the risk thresholds in the Kremlin had clearly shifted, describing the US ‘hack and leak’ as a “game changer”, and admitting that “prior to what we saw in the States, [Russian interference] wasn’t generally understood as a big threat to [electoral] processes”.
43. It appears that the Intelligence Community did learn lessons from the US experience, and HMG recognised the Russian threat to the UK’s democratic processes and political discourse.

Let’s examine the ‘Game Changer‘ as it is the main ground for the report’s conclusion. The report admits here that this was an allegation in a far different league than bank loans, trolls or propaganda TV with no audiences.

FBI hierarchy fired under Trump

It was clear from the US election campaign and later events of 2017 involving the US intelligence service that corruption ran deep in the State system. Three and a half years on, we find that almost the entire intelligence superstructure has been fired.

Spying on the President

A notable exception was Admiral Rogers head of the NSA, the National Surveillance Agency. On 17 November 2016, he revealed to President-elect Trump that his staff’s communications were under illegal surveillance by both the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) and the FBI (the Federal Bureau of Investigation). This is not only highly illegal but treasonous as it undermined the newly elected president.

So who is in the right, the top FBI agents or the president? The FBI mandate is to investigate US-based criminal personalities. The CIA is the external agency for intelligence. But the CIA works with friendly intelligence agencies such as the British and Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand services in the Five Eyes collaboration. These other agencies can, if the CIA requests it, tap into US citizens in the USA. Hence the CIA has track on whomsoever it wishes.

Corruption and Big Money

Where does the corruption come in? Money and power. The US spends as much on Defence and intelligence as most of the rest of the world combined. A candidate who promises to clean up the Swamp is suspect and to be eliminated.

An early manifestation of the efforts of the intelligence community to oust President Trump was the ‘Dirty Dossier‘. This, according to FBI chief Comey, alleged that Trump had been caught with prostitutes and framed by the Russians when in Moscow.

This utterly untenable tale was soon proved false. Who had fabricated this fraudulent file? Who paid for it and spread it abroad?

It was a former British spy now open for hire as an independent adviser. His name: Christopher Steele. He was found to be paid by the lawyers who worked for the Democrat National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton.

Steele’s rewriting of unsubstantiated material in the dossier were so outrageous that even the supposed subsource of the information is suing him for deformation. Steele’s defence: The material should not have been divulged as it was secret.

What else do we know about Steele? He was known as virulently anti-Trump. And he is one of the contributors to the UK Parliament’s report on Russia! Mr Christopher Steele, director of Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd, is listed as one of the five ‘external expert witnesses.’

In the US his Dirty Dossier was mischievously introduced as grounds, countersigned by FBI chiefs, to further surveille president Trump and his colleagues. Hundreds of documents have now been released showing how this fake document was used time after time in the FISA court to sustain a criminal and treasonous activity against the president. (FISA is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that requires a court to agree to any surveillance.)

The intelligence chiefs knew the key dossier was fraudulent!

It was also used to initiate the Mueller enquiry. Over several years of investigation and multiple millions of dollars, it could not find any case for Trump being involved in illegal activity with the Russians. Some 2800 subpoenas were issued by Mueller, 500 witnesses called and 500 search warrants were executed.

The Democrats then turned to an attempted impeachment based on supposed mishandling of anti-corruption matters in Ukraine. That too failed. Why the Ukraine? A cover-up is the most obvious motive as Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden has now been declared to be a criminal suspect in what the Ukrainian president Zelensky declared may involve treason there.

So what about the key factor in the UK parliamentary report that is the real ‘game changer‘ for intelligence work to refocus on Russia? The allegation is that Russian hackers were able to penetrate the computers at the DNC and download files of Democrat leaders. These Russian hackers then allegedly passed them on to WikiLeaks who published them.

WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange denied the information came from a State actor, that is, Russia. He hinted broadly that he received the data from a disillusioned Bernie Sanders supporter and DNC employee. He was later assassinated in unusual circumstances.

UK report’s main evidence

This ‘cyber hacking‘ is the key to how UK may spend its intelligence budget, so what have later investigations shown?

William Binney

One man should know. That is Wlliam Binney the former technical director at the NSA, the top surveillance agency in the world. He broke with NSA as a whistleblower, because it was taking and storing all data of Americans contrary to its statute. This is the spy-on-everyone, Stasi version of intelligence. Besides his career, his integrity cost him dear.

He examined the metadata of the supposed downloaded files. It was not hacked, he concluded. It was downloaded locally. The internet would not support the speed stamps that the data recorded. The files could not have been downloaded and transmitted over the internet, and certainly not across the Atlantic. The speed of the download was so fast it could only have been accomplished by attaching a drive into the DNC computer itself. It was an inside job.

This view was confirmed by a group of former Intelligence community experts who wrote a memo to President Donald Trump, emphasizing that the data was taken locally.

They wrote:

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Was the “Russian Hack” an Inside Job?

Executive Summary

Forensic studies of “Russian hacking” into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computer. After examining metadata from the “Guccifer 2.0” July 5, 2016 intrusion into the DNC server, independent cyber investigators have concluded that an insider copied DNC data onto an external storage device.

Something smelt foul. The intelligence community in charge refused to make any scientific evidence to back up their political assertions. They said that no evidence had been adduced that Russians were involved. Any attempt to analyse the evidence was resisted!

Why the FBI neglected to perform any independent forensics on the original “Guccifer 2.0” material remains a mystery – as does the lack of any sign that the “hand-picked analysts” from the FBI, CIA, and NSA, who wrote the “Intelligence Community Assessment” dated January 6, 2017, gave any attention to forensics.

They concluded:

From the information available, we conclude that the same inside-DNC, copy/leak process was used at two different times, by two different entities, for two distinctly different purposes:

-(1) an inside leak to WikiLeaks before Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016, that he had DNC documents and planned to publish them (which he did on July 22) – the presumed objective being to expose strong DNC bias toward the Clinton candidacy; and

-(2) a separate leak on July 5, 2016, to pre-emptively taint anything WikiLeaks might later publish by “showing” it came from a “Russian hack.”

The second leak by ‘Guccifer 2.0’ was alleged to be a Russian or he may have been dressed up to be one using the CIA tool box. CIA Director Brennon was sacked by President Trump and his security clearance removed.

Thus it is highly unlikely that any Russians were involved at all. The FBI management refused to make a direct investigation of the DNC computers. They were never confiscated and examined by forensically. Instead, they contented themselves to have a contracted company, Crowdstrike, who worked for the DNC issue a report that was never finalised.

Secretary of State Pompeo has discussed this conclusion with Binney, as far back as 24 October 2017 when Pompeo was the new CIA Director. Is the UK parliamentary committee on Intelligence not familiar with this? Is the EU?

Given the importance of the issue it is appalling that the key ‘game changer’ issue has not been properly investigated in open Court.

The European Commission seems also to hold to the, as yet uncertain and probably untenable, idea that Russians cyber-hacked the DNC computer across the Atlantic internet. On June 2019 the Security Union Commissioner Julian King still repeated the Russian hack story as if it were a fact.

Are the UK, the EU and millions in the USA and across the world being fooled by what is easily testable Fake News?

Will the Faull, Weiler, Sarmiento Brexit Plan work? What will?

Three eminent, self-confessed Remainers have published a legal plan to avoid Prime Minister Johnson’s cliff-edge of No Deal on 31 October. Law Professors Joseph Weiler, NYU and lately of Florence EUI, Daniel Sarmiento of Complutense University of Madrid and Sir Jonathan Faull, formerly head of the European Commission Legal Service, published their plan called ‘An offer the UK and EU cannot refuse‘ on the constitutional law site, Verfassungsblog.

If adopted, they hoped it could avoid the cliff edge if the UK’s rejected the Irish Backstop and the EU refused to yield. The Irish Backstop is a guarantee that the UK will respect Customs Union law for trade flows until the British introduced some technological or legal alternatives that would ensure the Irish Peace was not threatened and no customs posts would be re-established.

The proposal included features to guarantee both the integrity and autonomy of the EU’s and UK’s respective customs and their regulatory territories. It aimed to do so without a Customs Union between the two parties or a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

How?

The core of the proposal was the mutual recognition of both legal systems in the courts of both Ireland and the UK. An Irish judge would make sure the animal, product or service followed UK law if the destination was UK. A UK judge would make sure goods destined for Ireland and the EU would follow EU Regulations. The Proposal evoked considerable resonance in several media, both positive and negative; many questions were asked to which they addressed in a FAQ.

Prof Weiler writes that both legal systems must be equal and there would be no ‘outsourcing’:

“The current Backstop as it stands would already rely extensively on the integrity of the UK legal system and UK officials to collect the Common External Tariff of the projected Customs Union and to ensure that UK manufactured goods comply with the EU regulatory standards to give but two of many examples.
Is this, then, not “outsourcing”? In some cases as part of the Backstop the Union has insisted on on-site inspection and supervision by Union officials. That is included in our alternative Proposal too, albeit, importantly, on a reciprocal basis. In effect our proposal introduces all the cooperation procedures introduced in the Backstop, but it adds further instruments, as well as domestic remedies, including criminal penalties, to ensure effective enforcement.

Furthermore, the proposal incorporates a dispute settlement mechanism based on the withdrawal agreement’s enforcement mechanisms. Overall, then, this can hardly be considered to be any more “outsourcing” of the customs union than the Backstop itself envisages – in fact it is less. And, not to be forgotten, the UK under the Proposal would be “outsourcing” control of the integrity of its customs and regulatory territory to the Republic.

What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. It is somewhat perverse to characterize an arrangement based on reciprocal enforcement, joint inspections, close cooperation and mutual trust as being a form of unacceptable “outsourcing” to a third state. And if the premise of any agreement is that one cannot trust the other partner, the Backstop is doomed.”

Will it work? My answer is NO.

I base that on Schuman’s own words. It fails to understand the origin, purpose and future of the supranational system of democracy and law that Robert Schuman created with the founding fathers in the 1950s. That brought peace.

But the system was not completed democratically because of the antidemocratic opposition of Charles de Gaulle, an autocrat who seized power in France throughout the 1960s. Unfortunately afterwards instead of restoring the original Community system to its full glory, subsequent politicians showed themselves to be neo-Gaullists who preferred wheeler-dealing in closed Councils to transparent democracy and proper elections.

Why won’t the professors’ scheme work?

What may be sauce for the goose may be sauce for the gander but the judicial source of decision-making for the EU-27 goose is not the same as the source for an independent, post-Brexit UK gander or any other third State.
Gaullist smoke still blows over reality. You either have a fully working, democratic Community system with its law machinery fully integrated by the people's consent or you revert to War.

1. Complexity. Take the case of the 2013 horse-meat scandal when 70,000 horses in N Ireland went missing and ended up in lasagna and other food products. It was found that the ‘beef’ was not only horse and pig meat but also chicken feathers. (https://democracy.blogactiv.eu/2013/02/21/elysee2-horsemeat-fraud-and-de-gaulle%e2%80%99s-cuckoo/) The ‘meat’ travelled across the EU through possibly half a dozen countries from Romania, Luxembourg to UK (and other) dining tables.
What would have happened if UK and/or N Ireland were not members of the same legal system whether for quality control or ’severe criminal fines’?

2. Two different levels of legal order. The Community system is based on what Schuman called an independent international judiciary, a supranational Court.
National Courts are based on judicial principles of natural law (honest analysis, fairness etc) that should be universally recognized but also on determining the material interests of the parties. Interests are determined inside a national context. Interests differ across borders and among individuals of different backgrounds. Who owned the chicken feathers? Were they sold legally? How, where and when did the pig turn to beef?
National courts are competent in analysing and judging the interests within their domains. They are not generally recognized beyond their borders.
Mutual recognition and control would have to involve not only UK with Ireland but all the other EU Member States. At each stage it would have to be identified as being for ‘UK export’ or ‘EU export’ as various, multiple -origin ingredients made their way to their final designation of UK table-ready or EU.
This sort of multiple origin and value-added is likely to be more complicated for foods and its associated criminal activities than cars and machinery.

3. Backstop guards integrity. It is not a matter of the EU not trusting the Brits but guarding the integrity of its independent supranational judiciary.
The backstop is not a bargaining chip but a guarantee of the integrity of the whole legal order.

4. Undermining Europe’s purpose. Removing the backstop is even more dangerous than letting the integrity of the European legal order go down the plughole.
The backstop is the plug to retain Europeans’ pledge for No More War inside the same Community system.
The European system was set up to make war ’not only unthinkable but materially impossible’ (Schuman Declaration).
The EEC was designed to prevent Trade War turning to hot war, and Euratom was to prevent Atomic war by having community ownership of fissile materials (www.eurdemocracy.com ).
This is why the European Court is the final authority (Luxembourg for Community matters and Strasbourg for democratic Human Rights.)

5. Governments change laws and systems fail. Legal systems are also subject to deterioration and decay. In UK the parliamentary customs of Erskine May are changed and undermined within a span of months. Inevitably the legislative process too.
The first danger signal for Europeans is in Human Rights violation by government systems. When the national system is found wanting, there is a possibility of the Council of Europe suspending the Member State. Greece was suspended under the Colonels.
When the Greek legal order changed, mutuality was impossible. Recognition of the Human Rights Convention by autocrats meant nothing. (Politicians do cheat and lie!)
That is why mutual recognition of European and third State systems is not possible. It is incompatible with a single source European Legal Order.

The Schuman Solution.

The only proven way to ensure that both sides in a dispute are content with the outcome is to make sure that their rights are respected — starting with human rights.

What is obvious to most thinking citizens but is not blindingly obvious to politicians is that citizens’ human rights and fundamental freedoms have been totally ignored ever since the Maastricht Treaty. Politicians have changed the original Community treaties designed to stop war into a power grab often against the people’s will, public opinion and opposite to what to the people say in referendums.

When the British were asked to vote on Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty on European Union, it was totally illegal. They had never agreed to the Lisbon Treaty. They had not agreed to the European Union in the first place. They had only agreed to the European Community by referendum in 1975.

The 1975 referendum is still the people’s voice on the matter. When in 2016 Britons voted to leave the “European Union” it means that for them the Treaty on European Union is dead! Europeans want to revert to the democratic European Community.

The French and Dutch voted in referendums against the articles that were latter incorporated in the Lisbon treaty.

And the British referendum on the Constitutional treaty, that had been set for the period after this, was withdrawn. Politicians said there was no chance of UK and many other countries agreeing to it. The Constitutional Treaty had to be withdrawn. But it wasn’t.

It was re-introduced as the Lisbon Treaty against the wishes of practically all Member States!

Europe’s new constitutional arrangement –that politicians acknowledge had no public support and would be rejected in a vote — was imposed by a cartel of political parties acting as autocrats. This is a POLITBURO system. It owes its heritage both to de Gaulle and the Soviet system!

What should be done? So first, Britons have to vote on whether they agree to the Lisbon Treaty before any action can be taken about withdrawal. Governments can’t use Article 50 if the Treaty is not authorised by referendums. Governments of all colours refused to recognize this elementary human right of the citizens to vote their assent or dissent. They need a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Other countries should vote on it too. Politicians refused them the chance.

Britons also need to have a referendum on withdrawal from the Euratom treaty. The British government says that UK is leaving Euratom. But the Government never announced that it was part of the 2016 referendum. No publication mentioned that it was under consideration. No minister said UK would withdraw from Euratom if citizens voted to leave the EU. And no ballot paper in the Referendum of June 2016 mentioned leaving Euratom.

If Europe is to have a realistic future, the citizens must have their rights respected and leaders should be replaced with honest ones.

Brexit: Cause and Solution

Now on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tcJKfuMYCk

Why in 1975 were Britons enthusiastic to join the European Community and its Common Market and are now intent on leaving the "European Union"?
In the1975 Referendum, two out of three voters confirmed British membership of the European Community. With good reason. Peace and prosperity. That was the aim of French Prime Minister Robert Schuman, the founder of the European Community. He delivered the goods.
'Wisdom is better than weapons of war' says the Book he often read. For more than than 2000 years the nations of western Europe were at war every generation. After World War 2, although everyone expected war again either with Germany or the USSR, it did not happen. Why? This video explains how and when the European Community and the Council of Europe with its Convention of Human Rights made several types of war 'not only unthinkable but materially impossible'. 'But a transgressor can destroy much good,' says the Book. Politicians then changed the Community system into a "European Union".

• They made major anti-democratic changes.
• They refused to secure Human Rights guarantees.
• They refused to hold referendums on what were fundamental Constitutional changes.

Bureaucracy increased. Politicians still met behind closed doors in the Council of Ministers as they did when de Gaulle tried to rule the Continent. Some Continental countries had referendums. The Council ignored the result when it was negative. Nor were other countries allowed to confirmed changes made by the Council to override referendums. Why? That is the heritage of the French autocrat, Charles de Gaulle, 1958-69, who vetoed British membership without any democratic authority to do so. He also denied elections to the European Parliament and the other crucial legislative bodies that should represent workers, industries, consumers and regions. Presently the secretive EU system also mimics the Politburo system of the Soviet bloc. It denies Human Rights to 98 per cent of the population who are not members of the favoured political parties! The deep cause of Europe's malaise is this Democratic Deficit and Denial.

The UK is deeply attached to Democracy. Yet its politicians made 'cast-iron' promises of referendums at each stage but refused to implement these referendums. The video explains why the 2016 referendum on leaving the European Union was ILLEGAL. Even if the result is accepted it means leaving "the European Union" the undemocratic additions and amendments to the European Common Market. Not the European Community! How can this Politburo system be changed? Can Europeans regain true democratic relations among its peoples? The YouTube video explains these deep causes and presents the democratic solution to Europe's crisis. It also predicts that once these changes are made Europe will again enter on a new economic miracle that will outclass the postwar boom, its 'thirty glorious years'.

BREXIT, Boris and Bluff on 1 November?

Will BREXIT happen?

Yesterday UK’s new Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, reaffirmed the date for leaving the “European Union” as 31 October. The next day the new European Commission will take office. Will UK still be a Member State?

He gave a very upbeat speech in the Commons about how UK was going to be Great Again and lead the world.

“By 2050 it is more than possible that the United Kingdom will be the greatest and most prosperous economy in Europe…”

The United Kingdom will stay united despite the different votes. “Our Constitutional settlement, our United Kingdom will be firm, will be secure. Our Union of nations beyond question. Our democracy robust.”

“…we must take some immediate steps. The first is to restore trust in our democracy and fulfil the repeated promises of Parliament to the people by coming out of the European Union – and doing so on 31 October. I and all ministers in this Government are committed to leaving on this date, whatever the circumstances. To do otherwise would cause a catastrophic loss of confidence in our political system. It will leave the British people wondering whether their politicians could ever be trusted again to follow a clear democratic instruction.”

“I do not accept the argument that says that these issues can only be solved by all or part of the UK remaining in the customs union or in the single market.”

“I believe that at this pivotal moment in our national story we are going to prove the doubters wrong again. Not just with positive thinking and a can-do attitude, important though they are. But with the help and the encouragement Government and a Cabinet that is bursting with ideas, ready to create change, determined to implement the policies we need to succeed as a nation. The greatest place to live.”

“I believe that if we bend our sinews to the task now, there is every chance that in 2050, when I fully intend to be around, though not necessarily in this job we will look back on this period, this extraordinary period, as the beginning of a new golden age for our United Kingdom.”

My question was: had he read my book, that I sent him when he was Foreign Secretary in September 2016? It has Churchill and Robert Schuman, the founder of European democracy on the cover. (Boris has written his own biography of Churchill as leader).

On the back cover the text starts with the phrase “A Golden Age could be ahead, not only for Europe but for the planet.” That is based on the premise that ethical democracies have the greatest means for growth and prosperity as well as social well-being.

A “Golden Age” will only occur when Europeans ban trade wars against themselves in a fully democratic Customs Union. That is what Schuman’s government proclaimed in 1948. In May 1950 he made WAR, “unthinkable and materially impossible“.

Secondly, President Trump famously advised Mrs May when PM that the best way forward was to “sue the EU” not get into endless negotiations. That is exactly what I say in chapter 3, written three years ago. Two strategies were presented: painful and fruitless negotiation or legal clarification first about political corruption and fraud that caused “Democratic Deficit and Denial“.

Painful and fruitless negotiation is a continuing fact. Legal action is inevitable. Justice demands it. Human Rights have been violated since the Maastricht Treaty.

The book is available free on the US site www.academia.edu in a shorter pdf version “Don’t Brexit, Fix it!”

Have the Prime Minister and US President read anything in the book? Who knows. But it is not likely the UK and other European politicians will pay any attention to it. They are the guilty ones! Past politicians were all responsible for acting as if European democracy can be made by a cabal plotting to stop the people’s voice in referendums being followed.

The treaties all made powerful changes on the Constitutions of European countries. The people must agree or reject them. All the changes, however, were made either WITHOUT the people’s consent or directly AGAINST the people’s voice.

When the people say NO, it should mean NO.

The only valid European referendum in the UK was the 1975 referendum when two-thirds of the electorate voted in favour of membership of the European Communities.

Mr Cameron’s 2016 referendum was a dishonest trick. He gave a ‘cast iron guarantee‘ of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty itself. Then refused to do so.

The 2016 referendum was not not about accepting the Lisbon Treaty or not. It was about Article 50 of that Treaty! The people had NOT endorsed it! Everyone knew it would never be endorsed in a referendum. That Article and many others of the Lisbon Treaty had already been rejected by referendums in France and the Netherlands. European politicians told UK that the British people should not have a referendum on it.

Honesty is the only way to have peace in Europe. For Boris, he would have to pay attention to the several chapters about telling the truth and replacing Brussels secrecy with open politics. Robert Schuman, when a prisoner of the Nazis SS, refused to collaborate and tell a lie to save his life. The book also describes a Seven Day Mental Diet to free the mind of self-deception!

Boris is gung-ho for leaving on 31 October. Will it happen or will he be blocked in parliament? Will the cost to industry eventually tip a change? Will there be private legal action in the Courts?

Certainly the policy to change the “Irish Backstop” — equivalent to puncturing the legal integrity of the Customs Union and the Single Market — will not happen. It would require 27 States to deny the Rule of Law in European politics. That is delusion. But UK could stay within Customs Union of the European Community system and ditch the anti-democratic, corrupt additions of the “European Union”.

At the moment I see no evidence that the new UK Government have this intention. We will have to wait and see when reality strikes.

Questions to UK Attorney General Cox and Brexit Committees

To House of Commons and House of Lords Brexit Committees

Questions to be put to Attorney General Geoffrey Cox.

Please circulate to all committee members:

Serious flaws in the legal procedure for the Brexit Article 50 letter have been pointed out to Parliament in two enclosed Petitions. Action, and legal and constitutional clarification is urgently required. Six copies of the book “Brexit and Britain’s Vision for Europe“, sent to Brexit Secretaries of State and Brexit Committees, deal with the issues in full.
The petitions raise three issues, vital for the prosperous future of the UK and good relations with our European partners.

1. Euratom. No ballot paper was issued, nor prior notification given, nor publication made, nor Government statement in Parliament about leaving Euratom before the vote of 23 June 2016. Nuclear security, energy and medicines should not be compromised by a flawed Brexit concept defying and overstepping any legal authority of the people in the referendum. No assent was given. Whatever HMG thinks, or opinion Parliament later passes, Euratom is a distinct and separate international treaty for 28 Member States in a Community system.

2. European Union only, not EEC. The ballot paper was about leaving “the European Union” not the European Communities. The 1975 Referendum gave a two-thirds majority in favour of staying in the European Community.
The European Union was defined in the subsequent treaties as additions to the European Economic Community, EEC. This included new institutions and bureaucracies. Many times referendums were promised. None materialised. Major changes were introduced against the popular sentiment, especially in the Lisbon Treaty, almost identical with the undemocratic and rejected Constitutional Treaty.
The Euratom and European Coal and Steel Communities were not subsumed in the EU.
Leaving the European Union means leaving EU treaties that have not been ratified by the people in the 1975 referendum. It does not mean leaving the EEC Customs Union, Single Market or nuclear safeguards of Euratom.

3. Referendum required for Treaty validation. The articles modifying the EEC to make it the EU Treaty were rejected in referendums in France, the Netherlands, Ireland. The exact words of article 50 were rejected by referendums when it was called the Constitutional Treaty. They would almost certainly have been rejected in UK had the referendum been carried out at any time before 2016. It was promised by both Labour and Conservatives. They stated such a referendum was necessary to validate it. HMG cannot use referendum article 50 in the unvalidated EU Treaty. It is an abuse and a breach of duty. It is both unsafe and dishonest.
First, a review is needed. Article 50 needs to be paused. The treaty needs ratification by referendum to validate it. So said both governments. HMG is now trying to use this flawed operation to override the non-exit clauses validated by the 1975 referendum. It is unsafe to do so. Both the EEC and Euratom have articles stating that the treaties are “concluded for an unlimited time” (article 240 EEC, 208 Euratom). Why? Because all States and peoples agreed that Open Democracy was the only way for the future of Europe to solve problems. HMG cannot override the people’s voice and due constitutional process without dire consequences.

Petition on Euratom

Petition Article 50 treaty Flaw

UK’s and Europe’s future and prosperity depends on tackling its common responsibilities for the Democratic Deficit. Europe’s history shows that in 1950 its two millennia of wars and killing can be changed into unprecedented peace. This new challenging phase needs to be tackled with the same determination for honesty and good will to all.
Many thanks for your urgent attention to this. I look forward to hear your response.
David Price
Editor, Schuman Project
eurDemocracy