GUEST BLOG: Bryan Bruce – The Rule of Law.
As some of you will be no doubt aware the 11 Judges of Britain’s Supreme Court have decided unanimously that Boris Johnson’s advice to the Queen that to prorogue parliament was “unlawful, void and of no effect.”
In short they found that a Prime Minister is not above the law.
In the USA there are those would have the American people believe that their President is above the law. No true. That’s a myth spun by Richard NIxon who was forced to leave office.
The US Supreme Court actually rejected Bill Clinton’s claim of presidential immunity when he was seeking to avoid civil litigation alleging sexual misconduct while he was governor of Arkansas. In other words, being the President did not place him above the law.
My hope is that the American government and their Justice System will eventually find a way to hold Donald Trump to account especially over the Ukraine matter.
Why? Because the rule that no one is above the law is arguably our most vital protection against autocracy .
In recent years democracy has seemed to be on it’s deaath bed. Britain’s Supreme Court today gave it the kiss of life.
Bryan Bruce is one of NZs most respected documentary makers and public intellectuals who has tirelessly exposed NZs neoliberal economic settings as the main cause for social issues.
Please site the law that either Boris or Donald have broken Brian. We are all curious. The laws are being invented to fit actions that opposition interests don’t like. It’s neither democratic or legal.
D J S
David Stone: “Please site the law that either Boris or Donald have broken Brian. We are all curious. The laws are being invented to fit actions that opposition interests don’t like. It’s neither democratic or legal.”
Exactly. I also read recently (can’t recall where) that the UK Supreme Court doesn’t have the sort of constitutional role in the operation of government that it appears to have taken for itself. So its judgement is of no effect (to use its own phrase). I’ll try to find that link.
I can’t find that link to which I referred; it may have been a behind-the-paywall posting by Google on my phone. This here is the closest:
https://off-guardian.org/2019/09/24/the-supreme-court-proroguing-dangerous-precedents/
Clearly, opinion is divided on what the Supreme Court has done; equally clearly, however, Johnson hasn’t broken any law.
Bryan Bruce: “My hope is that the American government and their Justice System will eventually find a way to hold Donald Trump to account especially over the Ukraine matter.”
I (and many other people) come to this blogsite, among other things, to get away from the propaganda with which we are bombarded by the msm. I do not expect to see more of it here.
Yet this entire post is testament to the efficacy of msm propaganda. See this; it’ll give you a refreshing alternative to the tosh being dished up, in particular by the US media:
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/09/on-the-motives-behind-whistleblower-gate.html#more
And this:
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/09/trump-pushed-ukraines-president-to-investigate-issues-that-are-of-us-public-interest-.html
In this household, we have family connections to the Ukraine and to Russia. At the time, we followed the events leading to the violent putsch in the Ukraine, culminating in the installation of US-sponsored fascists and neo-nazis in the government.
The US involvement in that part of the world is utterly shameful; I include in that characterisation the contemptible Obama, his equally contemptible VP Joe Biden and the egregiously mendacious John Kerry. These people are unspeakably awful: at their feet lies responsibility for the deaths of thousands of innocent Ukrainians in the Donbass and elsewhere. And for what? The US’s (and the EU’s) pointless and barmy pursuit of their anti-Russian agenda.
If you’ve had from the msm what you know about events in the Ukraine over the past 5-6 years, it’ll be propaganda at the very best; more likely, complete fiction. Don’t believe a word of it. Give us instead a revisionist perspective: we’ve had a gutsful of the msm’s version of events.