UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia ruled lawful
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Is this the same British court that has ruled that the findings of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on Assange's UK-imposed situation being a gross human rights violation is invalid?
Somehow I don't trust the UK courts when it comes to international human rights violations.
Especially if you consider that May famously said that human rights will have to be neglected if they stand in the way of fighting terrorists.
Even before the Brexit referendum she was on the record, when she was Home Secretary, as wanting to leave the European Court of Human Rights.
“The ECHR can bind the hands of parliament, adds nothing to our prosperity, makes us less secure by preventing the deportation of dangerous foreign nationals – and does nothing to change the attitudes of governments like Russia’s when it comes to human rights,” she said.
“So regardless of the EU referendum, my view is this: if we want to reform human rights laws in this country, it isn’t the EU we should leave but the ECHR and the jurisdiction of its court.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/25/uk-must-lea...
Her reaction to the terrorist attack(s) is just her finding a new excuse to justify what doing what she wanted to do already. A horrible, horrible person.
This has been her reaction to every single terrorist attack going back years and years.
Note there's been talk about a "British Bill of Rights" along these lines for years, and there's still no proposal for how it would differ to the ECHR beyond removing jurisdiction of the ECtHR.
Some would say it already exists...
> Somehow I don't trust the UK courts
ref: http://newsthump.com/2017/07/07/bbc-accused-of-being-lefty-r...
The article points out that the right wing - prominently the Conservative Party and elements of the press - accuse the BBC of having a socialist bias to the point of misrepresenting conservative viewpoints.
(Example: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32537024)
Likewise, the left wing - notably papers such as the Guardian and the Independent - accuse the BBC of giving too much exposure to right win parties.
(More farage examples:https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/may/30/bbc-complaints...
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/06/why-nigel-farag...)
The comment you are replying to is responding to criticism that the UK courts are 'not to be trusted' when it comes to human rights. The response is that the UK courts aren't trying to dismantle human rights - more that they are trying to find the best compromise and reach a fair middle ground.
Human rights and, in this case, anti-arms trade activists will see this as being sympathetic to the arms trade. In other cases, the courts will frustrate those in the arms trade for being too restrictive. For example, it took 15+ years to be able to deport Abu Qatadar, a known hate preacher.
At the same time, in any very complex set of overlapping rules, it only requires finding a suitable expert to extract the conclusion you decided on up front.
Theresa May may have said that, but the courts don't agree, and the UK is still party to the ECHR.
The court was asked to block arms sales on the grounds that the gov'ts decision to sell arms to Saudi Arabia was Wednesbury unreasonable. For a decision to be Wednesbury unreasonable, it must be so irrational that no sensible person could have arrived at it.[0]
This is a really high bar.
The court held that the decision to sell arms didn't meet this bar. This was the expected outcome — it's pretty rare for government decisions to be overturned for Wednesbury irrationality. This case was a long shot by the CAAT. This doesn't mean the court thought arms sale was good, moral, or anything else. But English courts doesn't have the power to strike down decisions (that are within the power of the government to make under statute or common law) for not being good or moral.
(IANAL).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Provincial_Picture_...
http://www.uniset.ca/other/cs6/2001EWCACiv789.html is a good example of a case where a government decision was overturned on Wednesbury irrationality grounds. (Ctrl-f for "judgment of the court" and start reading there)
I cannot wait to find out, although I expect to be an old man by that time, the true nature of our relationship with Saudi. Considering our extremely close involvement in all things Saudi since it's inception [0], I suspect our countries are more intertwined than most realise.
All of the human rights abuses, funding of terrorism abroad, 9/11 etc it truly is a puzzle why they get away with so much with the West. It is quite easy to get conspiratorial about the whole thing.
Could it be that the West has made a deal with Al Saud (oil, strategic geopolitical area), but the Ulama (separate from the Royals) are those who do not comply? Any recommended reading from someone who knows about this topic?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabia%E2%80%93United_Ki...
Gaddafi was going to make a gold backed currency so he had to be taken out. Still nobody will tell us where the 200 billion in gold he had has gone.
The Syria situation is over a pipeline to Europe, Russia doesn't want that to go through Qatar/Saudis/US do, so we fund rebels to overthrow the "dictator". Putin has said that the petrodollar must die, which is why he is public enemy #1, petrodollar is what keeps the US on top. This is what keeps the dollar demand strong despite nothing backing it.
People only become dictators when they threaten our interests. We protect and overlook Saudis human rights abuses because they help push our agenda in the Middle East. The trillions made by the MIC is just icing on the cake.
To make it fun, drink every time you see mention of the Jews, Masons, and NWO while looking through the results.
Yes, but you need to have enough of your own curiosity to look into it. Not everyone is curious about it, nor should they need to be, the world would be less interesting if everyone had the same interests. However, it is useful for non-curious people to have some grounding in current events, which is supposed to be the function of the news media, but much of today's news media is utter shite. Take any topic covered by the mainstream media that you know something about and you'll easily find disinformation and lies by omission.
For example, if the prospect of the euro as an alternative reserve currency is so threatening, such that the USA would engage in a hugely expensive war to stop Iraq selling oil in euros, then why didn't the US take other, far less controversial actions to block the euro's development in the first place?
The single currency was a well-known plan for decades in western Europe, where the US enjoyed massive political and economic leverage during the cold war. If the entirety of the US' foreign policy is designed to defend the petrodollar, then why tolerate the development of an alternative global currency at all?
And yet, they didn't just tolerate it, they encouraged it. For example, here is a quote from an interview with Romano Prodi, former president of the European Commission, in 2002, about the US attitude to the euro[1]:
"But I tell you, in that moment, U.S., they could have destroyed the euro if they wanted, and they never did. They always helped it. And I'm very grateful for that because I think that the American Treasury understood that the euro is useful for all the world to have a strong currency. I think that in this moment, in these two years of crisis, without the euro, you know, Asian crisis, Argentina, September 11th, we could have a lot of-- of turbulence that we avoided because of the euro."
[1] https://charlierose.com/episodes/27900
Far from explaining US foreign policy, looking at everything through the lens of the petrodollar makes it totally inexplicable.
Isn't terrorism (in the face of ISIS and the likes) one of the top menaces for the UK ?
So isn't supplying arms to these guys similar to pouring gas onto the flame and then wondering why everything's on fire ?
Maybe in the top ten, but a long way after climate change, ill health, Brexit, etc etc.
could be something else
could be anything at all
Selling them arms also give you leverage over them - the UK might be able to use that to get them to do a better job with civilian casualties.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandar_bin_Sultan_Al_Saud
"Bandar has formed close relationships with several American presidents, notably George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, the latter giving him the affectionate and controversial nickname 'Bandar Bush'."
"Bandar helped negotiate the 1985 Al Yamamah deal, a series of massive arms sales by the United Kingdom to Saudi Arabia worth GB£40 billion (US$80 billion), including the sale of more than 100 warplanes. After the deal was signed, British arms manufacturer British Aerospace (now BAE Systems) allegedly funnelled secret payments of at least GB£1 billion (US$2 billion) into two Saudi embassy accounts in Washington, in yearly instalments of up to GB£120 million (US$240 million) over at least 10 years."
"A court affidavit filed on 3 February 2015 claims that Zacarias Moussaoui served as a courier between Osama bin Laden and Turki bin Faisal Al Saud in the late 1990s, and that Turki introduced Moussaoui to Bandar.[68] Zacarias Moussaoui stated on oath and wrote to Judge George B. Daniels that Saudi royal family members, including Prince Bandar, donated to Al-Qaeda and helped finance the September 11 attacks.[69] The Saudi government continues to deny any involvement in the 9/11 plot, and claims there is no evidence to support Moussaoui's allegations in spite of numerous previous intense investigations, noting that Moussaoui's own lawyers presented evidence of his mental incompetence during his trial.[68] Leaked information from the redacted portion of the 9/11 Commission Report states that two of the 9/11 hijackers received $130,000 in payment from Bandar's checking account. [70]"
People who care about the rule of law [1]. Once upon a time, we lived in a world where random people decided what is and isn't moral. It wasn't fun. So we decided to codify conventions in laws [2]. If your fellow countrymen disagree that the law should be changed, that's your problem, not the ruling.
They do not advocate to ignore the law. Instead they advocate simply to not sell those weapons, so the law does not apply in the first place.
Enforcing changes through the law is ineffective in cases like this, the companies can easily find loopholes, such as selling to a middleman who operates outside the legal jurisdiction in which they operate. The only way that's truly effective is to change the culture of those working within the arms companies, and you can do that most easily through hitting them where it hurts, i.e. their profits. There are ways and means of effectively resisting the actions of these companies, and if those that are pleased about this legal ruling believe that it will placate those that oppose them, they're dead wrong.
It's the main reason the Tories are obsessed with escaping ECJ jurisdiction, since that court doesn't take orders.
Arms sales to Saudi Arabia are awful, in my opinion, but it categorically not for the courts to decide if the are morally good. That’s a political issue.
On the contrary, I have the only meaningful argument (about the actual thing that matters, whether it should be approved or not) -- and the counter-argument put forward is just about the legality (and even that depends on ..."secret documents" not admitted to the public to judge the case).
(Not to mention that courts make moral judgements all the time).
The courts can decide just on the legality.
"(Not to mention that courts make moral judgements all the time)."
But they shouldn't - their duty and extent of power is only in interpreting the law, not morality.
Now if you want to argue that the law should be different, or have some argument on how the arms sales could/should have been judge illegal, go ahead.
You could also argue that the UK government should apply pressure on the arms manufacturers to stop selling to Saudi Arabia, by e.g. denying them government contracts, applying closer scrutiny when it comes to export licences, threatening to change the law (as governments so often like to do when it comes to copyright enforcement), and that their failure to do so shows how much influence and corruption the arms manufacturers hold. Influence that could well be considered traitorous, and result in criminal prosecutions.
But that's all conjecture.
Legality is just a way to enforce what we consider wrong and right -- that is, morality.
What you describe (they only consider legality) is a bug not a feature -- and a bug that has been exploited many times, from scammers exploiting loopholes, to Jim Crow laws, to the Nuremberg trials.
Courts should (and under good judges do) strive to judge based on the spirit of the law (morality) not the letter (legality).
(Not that morality here doesn't mean some prudish values as the word is sometimes casually used -- I refer to the general concept of what's moral (justice) vs what's merely permitted (law)).
And courts typically do consider the spirit of the law. But they must consider the spirit of the existing law, not the law you might wish exists.
Is this law? Or guidance? For example, the universal declaration of human rights (UDHR) is not legally binding [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human...
> The British courts have always been
> nearly as politically supine as the
> Russian ones.
people who use your programs do not necessarily tell you
Also some surprising information such as reports of Saudi anti-missile systems intercepting SCUD missiles aimed at Jeddah and Riadh from the Yemeni border.
A common misconception: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...
This is what the Saudi side claims, but when an independent survey analyzed 8600 bombings, they found that 37% had civilian targets, 42% had military targets, and 21% could not be determined. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/16/third-of-saudi...
Saudi planes are also routinely bombing archaeological sites and old monuments. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/13/world/middleeast/yemen-sa...
Please also note that the North Yemen that is bombed is not under the sole control of the Houthi forces. The followers of the previous (sunni) president, Saleh, are allied to the (unorthodox shia) Houthi.
But to your point, yes that might be true today. But that about tomorrow? Will there be perceived (psychological) threat by the people.
If SA didn't have oil we'd marginalize them for their form of government.