NORTHERN IRELAND PROTOCOL IS NOT INTERNATIONAL LAW!

Article 2: Principles of the United Nations "The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles. The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.

Participants in RTE’s THIS WEEK IN POLITICS repeatedly stated that the Northern Ireland Protocol, BREXIT and indeed the Good Friday Agreement are all unalterably part of international Law. The argument runs that the Good Friday Agreement is part of international law and that BREXIT (the Withdrawal agreement) and the Northern Ireland Protocol were negotiated of necessity to safeguard and uphold the Good Friday Agreement. But the Good Friday Agreement, a collusive arrangement negotiated by the British and Irish Governments with Catholic and Protestant paramilitaries is NOT valid under customary international law, much less under the provisions of United Nations resolution 1373 unanimously adopted by the Security Council following the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers of 9/11 in which 450 Irish firefighters and 350 Irish policemen heroically perished. BREXIT itself was negotiated by ignoring the outcome of two binding sovereign Irish referenda in which Ireland rejected both the Treaty of Nice and the Treaty of Lisbon. Consequentially, neither Treaty ever validly entered into force and the whole BREXIT and Article 50 procedure lacked any validity in Law. In addition, Premier Leo and Foreign Minister Simon decided not to appoint any sovereign negotiators charged with defending Ireland’s vital interests at the Negotiations in London and Brussels. This genuinely and entirely avoidable suicidal diplomatic and political strategy breached international law and left the negotiation, upholding and defence of Ireland’s vital sovereign national interests in the covetous hands of Boris Johnson’s British negotiators and the equally grubby and unprincipled hands of former French Fisheries Minister Michel and the assorted fifth columnists working full-out within the Commission delegation to further the interests of France, Germany and the European Central Bank by seeking to destroy and damage Ireland’s economy and its sovereign interests, including Ireland’s sovereign national territory and borders by leaving them insecure, uninspected, undefended and exceedingly vulnerable to the principal benefactors to derive solace and profit from the conclusion of the Good Friday Agreement, Gerry Adams and Mary Lou Mac Donald and the terrorists of the Provisional IRA. The Northern Ireland Protocol, deliberately negotiated by the UK and non-sovereign European Commission specifically to by-pass Ireland's sovereign interests infringes Aricle 2 (1) of the UN Charter (quoted above) and so cannot be part of international law.Almost all political commentators and analysts have wishfully sought to take every possible short-cut in international relations law and have resolutely and, most unhelpfully, determined to ignore all the most basic rules of public international Law (the Law of Nations), which is the centuries-old body of Laws governing the conduct of negotiations and international relations between Sovereign States or Sovereign Nations. The basic rules and principles of public international law have been deliberately ignored and by-passed, and continue to be ignored and by-passed, in the most bizarre and frightening manner by both the United Kingdom and the European Commission, including in the negotiation of the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol and its now infamous Article 16. Crucially, the European Commission is NOT even a subject of International Law and is therefore not legally or practically entitled to conduct or participate in sovereign international relations, i.e. negotiations aimed at binding sovereigns or the representative institutions of sovereign States. But both the United Kingdom and the European Commission are equally guilty in this respect because the United Kingdom is HERSELF not legally entitled to negotiate with the European Commission and by this subterfuge by-pass the rights of, indeed ignore the existence of Ireland, a sovereign state. In the long run, Ireland, the people of Ireland and the good and proper conduct of diplomacy and international relations must inevitably be the victims of a monstrous piratical and mercenary approach which reflects more the attitude of Cromwellian Puritans and French revolutionary sans-culottes than the civilised behaviour of proper members of the international community of Nations. This contemptuous behaviour, or to be more precise skulduggery, may form the basis for some good, even though usually less than gripping and riveting television, but the combination of joint official British Government trickery and European Commission contempt although undeniably confusing, and deliberately and successfully designed and intended to obfuscate has produced very little genuine wisdom or yielded value or insight to what amounts in the end of the day NOT to genuine international negotiations, but to a carefully and very expensively organised and choreographed “BREXIT” FRAUD! As midnight looms and the hour of Truth approaches in the European negotiations, most popularly, most frequently and most unhelpfully dubbed “BREXIT”, a term of contempt conjured up by the Murdoch Press, it is high time for both the United Kingdom and the European Commission to pause to consider the monster they have unleashed, and are unleashing, in gross and complete contravention of all generally accepted and acceptable principles of International Law. Sovereign states became the essential component of international law and international relations under the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, which followed the Counter-Reformation and brought to an end the murderous Thirty Years War and the devastating almost endless European Wars of religion between the Catholic and the Protestant Powers of Europe. The concept of sovereignty and sovereign states dates back at least to the Biblical Book of Wisdom, but most working definitions of sovereignty and sovereign states define “sovereign states” as having a permanent population, a defined territory, one government and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states. It is also normally understood that a sovereign state is neither dependent on nor subjected to any other power or state. In the leading 1928 “Island of Palmas” case decided before the International Court of Arbitration, the sole Swiss arbitrator Max Huber stated “Sovereignty in the relations between States signifies independence. Independence in regard to a portion of the globe is the right to exercise therein, to the exclusion of any other State, the functions of a State. The development of the national organisation of States during the last few centuries and, as a corollary, the development of international law, have established this principle of the exclusive competence of the State in regard to its own territory in such a way as to make it the point of departure in settling most questions that concern international relations.” Article 2 paragraph 1 of the United Nations Charter states that the United Nations Organisation is founded on the sovereign equality of Member States. Clearly, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the individual member States of the European Union are sovereign, but the European Union as a whole (the so-called EU 27 is NOT and CANNOT act as a single party in sovereign international negotiations, especially when the purpose of this mathematical imbroglio or subterfuge is purely and solely to disregard Ireland’s sovereignty and to completely disregard the lawful, legal and legitimate interests of the Irish sovereign State and to render and leave the Irish people, economy, jobs, financial sector, agriculture and Irish (not European) fishing interests undefended and hopelessly vulnerable! The ongoing European negotiations (NOT properly speaking “BREXIT”) fail to address or take account of the most fundamental questions concerning Ireland as an independent sovereign state and, in practice and in effect, totally disregard not just the rights of the Irish people, but the very existence of Ireland as a Sovereign State. Continuing to avoid these fundamental questions and issues in the concluding stages (for better or for worse) of the so-called “BREXIT” negotiations will only serve to accentuate what is clearly already shaping up to a crash in slow motion and a disastrous outcome, guaranteed to bury Ireland and its sovereign people beneath a great deal of collateral damage with the certainty of violating Ireland’s sovereignty and the equally great probability of destroying the Irish economy and costing thousands of jobs and livelihoods South and North of the Border. Extraordinary as it may seem, it has yet to be established what is the basis in public international Law for these European negotiations? The European Union is a legal construct in which sovereign States agree to surrender or pool a share of their sovereignty in accordance with the provisions, and only in accordance with the provisions of mutually negotiated, agreed and ratified international instruments or treaties which only enter into force, in and for ALL the parties involved, when all the treaties in question (including not just the Treaty of Lisbon, but also the Treaty of Nice) have been adopted, acceded to and ratified in accordance with the domestic national legal and constitutional provisions of every member State party to the legal treaties in question. In Ireland’s case, following upon the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of “Attorney-General v Crotty”, a mandatory sovereign vote by the Irish people voting in a validly-held constitutional referendum is required to bind Ireland, the Irish people and the Irish State to the provisions of any such treaties. The Irish people voting in a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty (and the Treaty of Nice) refused to give their assent to accede to both those Treaties. There is NO provision in the Irish Constitution or under Irish Law allowing for either of those referendum to be voted upon a second time. Consequently, a huge insuperably dark cloud hangs over the validity and the legitimacy of the enlarged European Union (following Nice) and the provisions of the Treaty of Lisbon and the explosive, destructive and corrosive Article 50. In effect, the United Kingdom and the European Commission and the other member States of the European Union illegally chose to ignore Ireland’s sovereign decisions, expressed in two binding mandatory referendum by the sovereign Irish people to reject Ireland’s adherence and accession to both the Treaty of Nice and the Treaty of Lisbon. As a result, of the decision by the United Kingdom and the European Commission (and then Foreign Minister, now Taoiseach Michael Martin), unconstitutionally, illegally and unlawfully to force the Irish people to vote twice on both the Treaty of Nice and the Treaty of Lisbon, means that neither Treaty was ever validly adopted, accepted, ratified, or ever validly entered into effect. The invalidity of both the Treaty of Nice and the Treaty of Lisbon inevitably mean that Article 50 never acquired legal force. As a result, the European negotiations lack any valid legal foundation or constitutional basis. This is the sombre position in international Treaty Law, but it then inevitably begs the question as to what these European negotiations are actually all about and what their precise strategic significance is? The reader will note that in this article, I constantly stress that Ireland is sovereign, but that the European Union is NOT Sovereign. Wherever and whenever possible I choose to refer to the European negotiations, not to the BREXIT negotiations (a vulgar invention of the Murdoch press). These negotiations do not so much concern the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union, in reality the European negotiations address, and are intended to address, the future shape of government on these islands, of the European polity and of the European continent. These negotiations inevitably involve the United Kingdom, Germany and France, the two principal Western European powers and former NAZI powers (masquerading as the European Commission). Many believe that the ultimate aim of the negotiations is to negotiate and draft an international Treaty. But to have an international Treaty, you must have negotiations between sovereign parties leading up to a Treaty. By definition these parties must be sovereign States. The United Kingdom and Ireland are sovereign States and they have borders or frontiers. But the European Union and the Commission are not sovereign and they are not States. They do not have borders or frontiers; nor indeed under the Law of Nations (Public International Law) are they entitled to negotiate or be parties to sovereign agreements. This is also the case with the so-called EU 27. The EU 27 is not a construct known to international Law, including international Treaty Law. The EU 27 has no existence in international law, to put it simply, the EU 27 does not exist in legal reality, but is a fraudulent lie or fiction. The United Kingdom have also deliberately engaged in “deceit” by concocting an imaginary and “backstop”, a concept unknown to international law. Even more bizarrely, the United Kingdom has agreed to be shut out from a great many key meetings where its future was being decided. Assuming the European Union actually is a valid legal construct, despite Ireland’s rejection of both the Treaty of Nice and the Treaty of Lisbon (including Article 50) then the United Kingdom was still a full member of the European Union and the European Council could NOT meet without the United Kingdom being present. Late though it may be, to enjoy even hypothetical validity, the European negotiations could only proceed in the format of a diplomatic conference which conforms with established European and international legal practice. Sovereignty finds its origins in history, politics and religion. The Book of Wisdom makes it clear that sovereignty is a gift from God. The High Kingdom of Ireland, a God-given land, was known for millennia before the emergence of the United Kingdom, France and Germany. Indeed, Ireland was known for centuries as “The Land of Saints and Scholars”, because it preserved the Christian heritage of Rome at the time of the Germanic, Frankish and Barbarian Invasions which destroyed the Roman Empire and resulted in the Dark Ages. Sovereign Ireland must be represented as a full and plenipotentiary actor at the European negotiations. Ireland must be afforded the opportunity to defend its national interests, territory and frontiers as a sovereign State in international negotiations, free from the overweening influence and control of a motley crew of property and currency speculators, wholesale abortionists, arms-dealers, terrorists and tax-dodgers as truly personified, incarnated and incorporated by the European Commission and the European Institutions and Central Bank. From the time of Olympian Zeus, the all-powerful rapist and god of Ancient Greek Mythology, who in the guise of a White Bull repeatedly raped and violated Europa, Europe and the myth of Europe have remained difficult, violent and dangerous and despite the so-called European project and the ever-growing and encroaching European Union, the European Union far from proving itself as a great Peace Project has remained exceptionally violent, greedy and acquisitive. Peace has in Truth NOT prevailed in Europe in the name of Free Trade and Commerce since the end of the second World War. The Wars in the former Yugoslavia with their grim mixture of genocide and ethnic cleansing reminded us that the Spectre of Hitler’s Nazi Holocaust is never very far away. Real Justice, Equity, Fairness and Democracy have always been in very short supply at the European Union and at the European Commission, which is a grim genocidal off-shoot from the Second World War armaments industries that fuelled the Holocaust. The United Kingdom have been less than honest in this imbroglio, but Ireland, which is still hopelessly weak and vulnerable from the mauling inflicted by the Celtic Tiger would be very unwise to place its faith in the ever more rightward-leaning Europe and the current tripartite Irish coalition, undoubtedly representing the ultimate shoddy marriage of convenience, a marriage founded purely on thirst for power and forged upon the unlawful fate and the blood of countless unborn and the terrible curse of abortion! Irish people now live in fear of speaking their minds openly and of being seen or judged to be simply old-fashioned, traditional, straightforward and essentially decent, honest and Christian. Reason, Logic and Science indicate beyond the slightest shadow of doubt that human life begins at conception. Yet, berated and assaulted by outraged hysterical feminism Christian heads remain firmly beneath the parapet. Abortion is murder. But “termination” is used as a “cleansing expression” instead on RTE in the hope that “a rose” by any other name will sound more acceptable and smell more sweet! Irish politics and society are short on vision. The decision NOT to give the manageable Astra Zeneca vaccine to the over 70s is itself an assault on the right to life of the elderly, the group most vulnerable to the corona virus. Big, awkward, romantic, alcoholic Patrick Kavanagh would not fit in among today’s Blue-shirts. He was a poet and a genius. In his “To the Man after the Harrow, he speaks of the farmer driving his horses through the mists where Genesis begins. Genesis tells the story of God’s creation of the World. But Genesis also tells us that sin and evil came into the World. Christ died to redeem us all from sin. But redemption did not halt sin. A simple look at our World will confirm this. The Kingdom of God and a world of deceit and danger live side by side. Virtue, battling for life, not serving death and Mammon, is its own reward! But is that what these European negotiations are all about? In this bitter covert fight for power and wealth embodied in the European negotiations aimed at benefiting Britain, France, Germany and even perhaps Russia? Are these European Negotiations also genuinely concerned with securing the well-being and welfare of smaller, poorer, less powerful States, including Ireland and the Irish? Psalm 2 asks “Why do the Kings and Nations of the Earth rage so furiously against God and against the Lord’s anointed?” These European negotiations are a classic case in point! Ireland’s fate must not be sealed by a combination of British duplicity and European Commission greed and opportunism. The next stage should not be fought before the corrupt and far from impartial European Court of Justice. Ireland must use its term on the United Nations Security Council to appeal to the organs of the United Nations, including the International Court of Justice, to defend Ireland’s vital sovereign national interests. Treaty Law can only defend parties to international treaties if they are prepared to defend themselves by standing up for the rights which valid lawful legal treaties are negotiated and ratified to establish, protect and defend!  

Maurice James, Barrister at Law, United Nations (1373) Counsel