Closing Bulletins & Article

31 October 2019 to LATE-January 2020

Author: Peter M. Southwood (Dr)

_____________________________________________________________________________

27 JANUARY 2020

Closing Bulletin no. 3 (of 3) on ‘The Education of Nations: An Indictment’ is available here

On the 100th anniversary of the month in which the League of Nations was formally established, this Bulletin provides an indictment of a book entitled The Future of War: A History written by Sir Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King’s College London, England and published by Penguin Books in 2018. He is hereafter referred to as ‘the author’. The three-part indictment states:

(i) That the author’s lack of reference to this writer’s four Project on Demilitarisation (Prodem) Briefings and International Peace Project Briefing no. 1 was either deliberate or the result of wilful (and inexcusable) ignorance. Thus, this decision or failure to act was a political one without academic excuse or justification.

(ii) That the underlying reason for the behaviour in (i) is a sycophantic relationship with the UK Government, which the author shares with many other academics in the fields of war studies, peace studies, international politics and related subjects.

(iii) That the major academic centres of War Studies in King’s College London, Peace Studies in the University of Bradford and International Politics in the University of Aberystwyth are so infected by politics in the application of genuine research findings to the problems of war or peace that the public benefit has been subordinated to the benefit of individual academics who prefer to promote than test their own views on conflict areas.

The resulting recommendations are intended to ensure that the Education of Nations will thereby be a barometer of the prospects for peace or war.

_____________________________________________________________________________

6 January 2020

Closing Bulletin no. 2 (of 3) on ‘The Soul of the Nation’ is available here

This Bulletin examines the links between religion, politics and the law through the intervention of the Chief Rabbi in the recent UK General Election campaign. His Comment in The Times on 26 November 2019 raised his concerns about anti-Jewish racism in the Labour Party and led to responses from, inter alia, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Muslim Council of Britain. The de facto Law Officer for Public Benefit analyses the political interventions by these leaders of the three Abrahamic religions and concludes that they cannot be defended on secular or theological grounds. His recommendation to turn back to God and away from self-centredness as the foundation for securing peace and prosperity (‘shalom’) paves the way for the third and final Closing Bulletin later this month on the Education of Nations, 100 years after the League of Nations was officially established.   

_____________________________________________________________________________

13 December 2019

An open letter to the Speaker of the House of Commons concerning the swearing-in of MPs is available here

The letter draws attention to the seriousness of taking an oath of allegiance, or making a solemn affirmation, to the Crown. Not one MP who spoke in Parliament on 25 September 2019, when the Attorney General answered questions on ‘Legal Advice: Prorogation’, referred to their oath or solemn affirmation. [See Hansard.]

_____________________________________________________________________________

31 October 2019

Closing Bulletin no. 1 (of 3) on ‘The Queen and the Law’ is available here

The Bulletin questions the Attorney General’s defence of the Government’s legal advice to Her Majesty on the prorogation of Parliament, which led her into illegality according to the UK Supreme Court judgment of 24 September 2019. He stated in Parliament, on the following day, that ‘At all times the Government acted in good faith…’ Rather Her Majesty was not dealt with fairly. The Attorney General ‘s conflicts of interest need to be recognised and the recommendation of the de facto Law Officer for Public Benefit in England and Wales (LawPB) adopted to ensure that the Queen’s commitment to acting within the law is also reflected in what she is asked to do publicly.

Closing Article no. 1 (of 3) on the same theme is available here

The Article provides the historical background to the Paris Peace Conference 1919 and a more detailed exposition of the accompanying Bulletin no. 1 (with full references). The purpose is to establish why Her Majesty is a living symbol of what ‘acting in good faith’ means without which it is impossible to apply an ‘irenical perspective’ objectively to establish a state of peace in our time.

A private prosecution of three current or previous Attorneys General (called D1, D2 and D3) is proposed for alleged offences under the Perjury Act 1911 relating to Peter Southwood’s judicial review proceeding in 2018 highlighting their conflicts of interest. More details of that case were published on 18 January 2019 here

An overview is published today for the public benefit as the case cannot currently proceed to court due the anticipated financial costs involved.

The relevant documents are:

  • An Overview of the legal basis for proceeding with a private prosecution of D1, D2 and D3 is available here

  • The evidence of Peter Southwood’s Judicial Review Claim form of 26 March 2018 (pages 1 and 2) and the actus reus of the offence by D1’s solicitor (pages 1 and 3 of the Interested Party’s Acknowledgement of Service of 24 April 2018) are available here

  • The evidence of the deception alleged to have been perpetrated by D3 (the Defendant as accessory), D1 (the Interested Party until 9 July 2018) and D2 (the Interested Party from 9 July 2018). These are letters they wrote to the Courts arguing (unsuccessfully) that the Interested Party was ‘the correct Defendant’ to try to demonstrate that D1’s declaration on 24 April ’18 was not false after all. These letters are available here

N.B. Names of the lower level officials involved, and their direct contact details, have been blocked out as it is proposed that any future prosecution would be against the principals only.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Sponsor’s Privacy notice

The Bulletin no. 1 is being dispatched by post to officeholders in institutions who may be interested but not to named individuals, i.e. the data base is entirely impersonal. The two future Bulletins are scheduled to be distributed in the same way and there is likely to be little or no overlap in the list of recipients.