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The UN Human Rights Council said the UK must "consider holding a referendum on the desirability or otherwise of a written constitution, preferably republican". The council has 29 members including Saudi Arabia, Cuba and Sri Lanka. It was the Sri Lankan envoy who raised concerns over the British monarchy. The resulting report said Britain should have a referendum on the monarchy and the need for a written constitution with a bill of rights.

Excerpt - KATHMANDU, May 27 (Reuters) - The Nepali government warned on Tuesday that it could use force to throw unpopular King Gyanendra out of the royal palace if he refuses to leave voluntarily after the 239-year-old monarchy is abolished. A special assembly elected in April is scheduled to hold its first meeting on Wednesday and formally declare an end to the monarchy, a key part of a 2006 peace deal with Maoist former rebels that ended a decade-long civil war. "The king must leave the palace immediately and move to the Nirmal Niwas," Peace and Reconstruction Minister Ram Chandra...

Australia will hold a referendum on removing the Queen as head of state after Kevin Rudd, the Labor leader and a staunch republican, swept to power at the weekend, bringing an end to 11 years of Conservative rule. Mr Rudd, 50, a former diplomat, has promised to hold a plebiscite on severing links with the monarchy. He said yesterday that he would withdraw Australian troops from Iraq and ratify the Kyoto pact on climate change. With 53 percent of the vote, Mr Rudd brought an emphatic end to the 11-year tenure of John Howard, an avowed monarchist who was set...

Francisco Louçã, the BE leader shows his point of views over the portuguese monarchy and its actual form.

Abstract: "The Irony of Populism: The Republican Shift and the Inevitability of American Aristocracy" analyzes the shift in the role of the Supreme Court following the movement towards a democratic Senate which culminated in the Seventeenth Amendment. The Supreme Court's shift is presented as the inevitable result of the system of mixed government that underlies the constitutional order, which orders American Government into democratic, aristocratic, and monarchical parts. While in the original conception of the constitution the Senate was the aristocratic part, the Senate would become part of the democratic part with the Seventeenth Amendment and prior procedural changes. Into...

There's a strange debate dominating the Democratic campaign so far. Hillary Clinton's calling card seems to be the experience that she possesses and that Barack Obama lacks. " 'Change' is just a word if you don't have the strength and experience to make it happen," she told an audience this past week, before promptly making the line the centerpiece of a new ad in New Hampshire and Iowa. "Hillary is the best-prepared to be president of any non-incumbent I have ever had a chance to vote for," the clearly biased Bill Clinton has said repeatedly on the trail this summer....

On the 6th of November, Sweden – and Gothenburg in particular – remembers perhaps its most famous and successful King: Gustav II Adolf, who reigned from 1611 until his death in 1632. Monday will be the 374th anniversary of his death (aged just 37) on the battlefield in Lützen in Germany during the Thirty Years War. He is the only Swedish King to have been honoured with the title “The Great” (“Den Stora”) and the anniversary of his death is an official Swedish flag day. Related Articles 'Swede's body found' in Ireland 3rd November 2006 Viking treasure found on Gotland...

PRAGUE, October 2, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- The recent reburial of the remains of Maria Fyodorovna, the Danish princess who married the future Aleksandr III of Russia in 1866, is the latest episode in a long-standing effort to cultivate the idea of restoring the monarchy in Russia. The idea gained currency under President Boris Yeltsin in 1997, when his close circle, alarmed by the Russian president's ailing health, started to think about a possible successor. Some of them turned their attention to the living descendents of the Romanov dynasty. That same year, renovation work began at the Kremlin to restore the...

Can Reza Pahlavi, heir of the late Shah of Iran, play a role in bringing down the current Iranian régime? There is a precedent. Crown Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia played a key role in organising opposition to the Milosevic régime. Alexander's only criterion for inviting opposition leaders to his conference was that they had to be advocates of democracy. He, properly, kept himself out of debates as to whether Yugoslavia or Serbia should be capitalist or socialist. The illegal decision to strip the royal family of their citizenship and their property, made by Tito immediately after the war, was reversed,...

Prince Harry will begin the training this month that will prepare him for immediate deployment in Iraq, senior officers said yesterday.For the next five months the newly-commissioned officer will take the troop commander's course in Dorset and get "up to his elbows in engine grease" while sharing a cramped and sometimes noxious tank with two others. Extra security measures have been taken at the Armour Centre in Bovington where the prince will learn to lead a troop of four Scimitar armoured reconnaissance vehicles. The training, which starts on May 22, will make Prince Harry qualified to lead his men into...

This has been an eventful month for the third in succession to the throne. Yesterday, Prince Harry graduated from the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. A week or so before, he was revealed as having visited a "lap-dancing club" in Slough in the early hours of the morning. The two occasions, it will be argued, are not of comparable significance in the young man's life. But their very difference, and their following each other so quickly, tells us something about the constitutional monarchy, its past, and the future in which it must live. Graduating from Sandhurst is one of the...

<    Return to the Main Menu | Sign up for our Newsletter | Join our new Discussion Forums | Comments and Suggestions Alexander IIIBy Scott MalsomConsidered Russia's last true autocrat, Alexander III was the epitome of what a Russian Tsar was supposed to be. Forceful, formidable, fiercely patriotic, and at 6' 4" towered over his fellow countrymen. He was the embodiment of the fabled Russian bear. He came to power at a critical point in Imperial Russian history. The Industrial Revolution had finally come to Russia and capitalism was taking root. Foreign investment within the country was at an...

The Kuwaiti government has submitted a letter to parliament to start constitutional procedures to remove the oil-rich state's ailing emir, parliament speaker Jassem al-Khorafi told AFP Monday. "Yes, I received the letter," said Khorafi, who declined to give further details. Sheikh Saad al-Abdullah al-Sabah became emir on the death of his predecessor last Sunday.

A Monarchy in Danger Freedom Today Magazine The United Kingdom By William John Hagan New Labour has become the greatest threat to the future of the British Monarchy since Oliver Cromwell. The only people to blame for this current state of affairs are those most loyal to the Crown who have somehow failed to confront the issue of public antipathy, illogically hoping that the problem would just disappear. It won’t, as long as today’s incarnation of British Labour controls Parliament. I will say this only once: what works for the United States will not work for the United Kingdom. However,...

An outlawed Iranian opposition group, which obtained a permit from the New York Police Department to hold a demonstration in front of the United Nations today, attracted an estimated 2,500 supporters to protest the presence of Iran’s president at the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly. But many of the crowd, coming from Denmark, Germany, Canada, Eritrea and Sudan, acknowledged that they had been recruited by the organization to attend the rally for money, and that all their expenses – including international air fare, hotels, and a daily stipend - had been paid by the organization. “Basically, what you...

As regular readers in this column know, my reporting senior and lawful sovereign is His Imperial Majesty Kaiser Wilhelm II. When I finally report in to that great Oberste Heeresleitung in the sky, I expect to do so as the Kaiser’s last soldier. Why? Well, beyond Bestimmung, the unhappy fact is that Western civilization’s last chance of survival was probably a victory by the Central Powers in World War I. Their defeat let all the poisons of the French Revolution loose unchecked, which is the main reason that we now live in a moral and cultural cesspool.

Tuesday, August 30, 2005 A Constitution for Iraq: Does It Matter? Tel Aviv Notes No. 145 August 30, 2005 A Constitution for Iraq: Does It Matter? Ofra Bengio Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies The birth-pangs of Iraq's new constitution are symptomatic of the deep crisis afflicting the country, and even if an agreed document is eventually produced, it may not only fail to resolve the country's underlying problems but could actually make them worse. After all, in its eighty-five years of existence, Iraq has had no fewer than six constitutions. The first was imposed in 1925...

When American bombs were raining down on what is left of Afghanistan, fellow Muslims in the neighbouring Islamic republic of Iran took out to the Streets. Contrary to our expectations in the West, they did not rally to denounce the 'Great Satan' - the name given to America by the late Ayatollah Khomeini. Instead, ordinary Iranians, in one of the most extraordinary shifts in the geopolitical landscape since September 11, challenged their own hard-line Islamic clerics who swept Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi from power in 1979. Tens of thousands of men and women also demonstrated, in several cities, after World...

Iran's reigning mullahs and the reformists who would mend the regime's theocratic ways finally have something in common: Iranians don't like either of them. That will likely mean thick voter apathy when the country elects a new president on June 17. For most of the country, disillusionment with the government is escalating. Frustrated by repressive Islamic laws, Iranians elected current president Mohammed Khatami in 1997, hoping he and his reformers would create more democratic rule. But power still resides with unelected clerics. The reformists have accomplished little. The result might surprise many Americans. Seventy percent of today's Iranians are below...

PARIS, 3 June (IPS) Prince Reza Pahlavi joined his voice to other Iranian dissidents inside and outside Iran to urge Iranians not to participate in the coming presidential elections and do not give popular legitimacy a “discredited regime”. “With more than 20 million votes, (outgoing President) Mohammad Khatami was not able to implement his reform program, what can a Hashemi Rafsanjani do, a man who is also very unpopular?”, the 45 years-old son of the late Iranian Monarch observed during a press conference held in Paris on 2 June on the invitation of the French-American Press Association, referring to reports...

Intelligence Reports | Nepal | USA 10 May 2005: With the idea to restore and stabilise democracy in Nepal, constrain King Gyanendra from future coups, and to keep the Maoists from gaining strength and eventual power, the US government has cleared the entry and operation of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which has previously intervened in Poland (through the trade union, Solidarity), Chile, Nicaragua, Eastern Europe (after the fall of the Soviet bloc), South Africa, Burma, China, Tibet, North Korea, and the Balkans. This was disclosed to Nepalese politicians in private interactions when the US assistant secretary of state,...

The second anniversary of America's expedition into Iraq passed with relatively scant fanfare. Since hostilities in Mesopotamia commenced, thousands of American and Iraqi casualties have been tallied. Every month Washington spends billion of dollars on counterinsurgency and rebuilding efforts in Iraq and further afield, which swells the nation's largest budget and budget deficit in its history[i]. As vast quantities of blood and treasure are expended abroad, Washington politicians win plaudits domestically for their warmongering, and government contracting at home and abroad burgeon, on what basis is this imperial project—financed by foreign lenders and American taxpayers—justified?... ...Democracy deconstructed As Hans Hermann-Hoppe...

NEW DELHI - Himalayan geopolitics were at play again as thousands of Nepalis braved arrest on Sunday, International Labor Day, and openly marched through Nepal's capital, Kathmandu, demanding the restoration of democracy after King Gyanendra lifted a state of emergency imposed three months earlier. For one, analysts here doubt that Gyanendra, on his own accord, made the announcement on Saturday that the February 1 state of emergency had been done away with. It is still not immediately clear what impact the announcement will have, since the king appears to retain the extraordinary powers he took on three months ago. About...

One of the most vexing questions animating observers and analysts of Iranian politics is: why despite being extremely unpopular and incompetent, are the fundamentalists still in power? One factor that may provide a partial explanation is the huge change of the dominant ethos among large sectors of the population. In the 1970s and 1980s, the dominant ethos among large sectors of the Iranian people was idealistic, altruistic, and celebrated sacrifice for the greater good. Today, on the contrary, the predominant ethos have become excessive selfishness, acquisitiveness, cynicism, and lack of willingness to make the smallest sacrifice to protect the common...

King Gyanendra of Nepal has lifted the state of emergency, which was imposed since February 1, 2005. The state of emergency was lifted as per Article 115 (11) of the Constitution, effective from midnight, said a Royal Palace notice issued late night. The King had imposed the state of emergency after dismissing Sher Bahadur Deuba government and suspended fundamental rights and press freedom. The state of emergency needs to be approved by the House of Representatives within three months for further extension, as per the Constitution. The King's imposition of emergency had invited international criticism and many international donors cut...

"According to a story in Herodotus, the nature of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, and the advantages and inconveniences of each, were as well understood at the time of the neighing of the horse of Darius, as they are at this hour." John Adams: A DEFENCE OF THE CONSTITUTIONS OF GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. [3.80] ... Otanes recommended that the management of public affairs should be entrusted to the whole nation. [democracy] "To me," he said, "it seems advisable, that we should no longer have a single man to rule over us - the rule of one is...

Monarchy: Friend of Liberty Leland B. Yeager A LIBERTARIAN CASE FOR MONARCHY Democracy and Other Good Things Clear thought and discussion suffer when all sorts of good things, like liberty, equality, fraternity, rights, majority rule, and general welfare–some in tension with others–are marketed together under the portmanteau label “democracy”. Democracy’s core meaning is a particular method of choosing, replacing, and influencing government officials (Schumpeter 1950/1962). It is not a doctrine of what government should and should not do. Nor is it the same thing as personal freedom or a free society or an egalitarian social ethos. True enough, some classical...

Letter from Fr. Brian Harrison April 8, 2005 Dear faithful Catholic friends, I am writing to all of you - some by e-mail, others by snail-mail - as the sun begins to shine on a new day: Friday, April 8th. Battling my accustomed lethargy at this hour of the day, I am stirred thus to share my impressions with you, because I believe what has happened in Rome just now represents a new and singular moment of grace. Here in the arid south of Puerto Rico it had not rained for four months prior to yesterday, the eve of John...

The Pope as Monarch: Reflections on Politics by Dr. Jeff Mirus As I ponder the life and death of John Paul II, I am reminded that there is something about a pope that is very much like a king. This analogy with the social order is far from perfect, for the Church and the body politic are very different things. But there is much to be gained from wondering about the sheer greatness of this fallen leader. For both the Church and the world, some of these gains may be political. The Ideal Form of GovernmentThe Church has never taught...

    Republicans Campaign to Abolish British Monarchy Wed Apr 6, 2005 03:57 AM ET By Paul Majendie LONDON (Reuters) - A leading Republican group, galvanized by popular unease at the wedding of Prince Charles to his longtime lover Camilla Parker Bowles, launched a campaign on Wednesday to abolish the British monarchy. "This marriage is making the case for us," said Stephen Haseler, head of the pressure group Republic which believes the time is right to put an end to the House of Windsor. Republic is embarking on its first ever membership drive, with national newspaper advertisements, e-mail petitions...

Prince Charles has voiced his dislike of facing the media at a photo call during his annual skiing holiday at Klosters in Switzerland. As he posed with sons William and Harry eight days before his wedding, the prince muttered: "Bloody people." The assembled microphones picked up his comments, mumbled to his sons, which included: "I hate doing this." Aides said Charles had been angered by paparazzi photos in the UK press of William and girlfriend Kate Middleton. When BBC Royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell asked Prince Charles about his feelings in the run-up to his wedding to Camilla Parker Bowles on...

Some of the sovereign countries who have the monarch as Head of State ‘want out’ THE confusion triggered by the Prince of Wales’s marriage to Camilla Parker Bowles could precipitate a new wave of republicanism across Britain’s former colonies and jeopardise the future monarch’s chances of becoming head of the Commonwealth. As the debate rages over whether Mrs Parker Bowles will become Queen Camilla, the issue has caused deep concern among some of the 15 sovereign countries around the world who still recognise the British monarch as their head of state. Joel Kibazo, spokesman for the Commonwealth Secretariat, which is...

Parker Bowles in line to become queen By Robert Barr Associated Press Writer March 22, 2005 LONDON -- In the latest twist in a royal wedding saga that has been full of flip-flops, the British government revealed Monday that like it or not, Britons will have to get used to Queen Camilla. That's because Camilla Parker Bowles will, by law, automatically become queen when Charles is crowned. While the public has come around to supporting the marriage, opinion polls still show strong opposition to Parker Bowles taking the title of queen. But any attempt to change the rules to bow...

Prince Charles' visit to New Zealand inevitably provokes questions about his future suitability as King of this country. Charles is an unusual personality, not easy to pin down. There is a lack of clarity about him; a certain hesitancy. As the heir to the throne, he is in a perennially impossible situation; damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. As he once said, plaintively, "There is no set-out role for me. I'm really rather an awkward problem." That awkwardness has eased somewhat since the death of his erratic wife and the decision, finally, to marry his first and...

On July 14, 2002, the Iraqi media commemorated the demise of the Hashemite monarchy in Iraq 44 years ago. The last Hashemite king in Iraq was 23 year-old King Faisal II who was assassinated at the hands of army officers led by General Abd Al-Karim Qassim who carried out the military coup of 1958. Under the auspices of the Iraqi National Congress (the main Iraqi opposition in exile), a group of about 70 former Iraqi army officers met in London on July 12, 2002 to chart the course for overthrowing Saddam Hussein's regime and installing a new regime dedicated...

[World News]: Kathmandu, Mar 5 : Waving portraits of King Gyanendra and chanting pro-monarchy slogans, hundreds of Buddhist monks today hit the streets of Kathmandu in support of the royal seizure of power. Wearing long saffron robes, more than 1,200 monks marched through the streets of Kathmandu appealing for "peace and stability", a day after police arrested a dozen activists of Nepal Communist Party-UML for challenging the power grab. "Long live the King,", "We want peace", "Our King and our country are dearer than life" read banners and placards carried by them. Dozens of riot police escorted the demonstration, which...

Seattle Catholic is not affiliated with the Archdiocese of Seattle A Journal of Catholic News and Views 15 Feb 2005 King St. Louis IX's Last Instructions to his Eldest Son Then he [Louis] called my Lord Philip, his son, and commanded him, as if by testament, to observe all the teachings he had left him, which are hereinafter set down in French, and were, so it is said, written with the king's own saintly hand: "Fair son, the first thing I would teach thee is to set thine heart to love God; for unless he love God none can...

[World News]: Kathmandu, Feb 6 : Nepal's army said it would go after the Maoist insurgents in full force, pressuring them to resume peace negotiations with the new government or face the consequences. The army's mandate is to "disarm the Maoists and bring them to the mainstream", said Brigadier-General Dipak Gurung, Royal Nepalese Army spokesman. "If they don't do it willingly, we have to do it by force," Gurung told IANS. The Royal Nepalese Army, constitutionally under the control of a security council consisting of the prime minister, defence minister and army chief, had its curbs removed Tuesday when King...

http://www.newsinsight.net/nati2.asp?recno=3160 http://india-defence.com/node/65 4 February 2005: Behind King Gyanendra’s coup, the Chinese hand is becoming visible, and it ties to the king’s son, Paras’s two visits to Hong Kong since 24 December. The Chinese were apparently putting pressure on Nepal to open trade and transit routes between Lhasa and Kathmandu, and to evict the followers of the Dalai Lama and shut down his missions. In early January, after Paras’s first Hong Kong visit, Nepal ordered closure of the Tibetan cultural centre, and subsequently, King Gyanendra put pressure to arrest and deport the Dalai Lama’s followers to China. Prime minister Sher Bahadur...

Though by no means unexpected, the Sher Bahadur Deuba government’s dismissal completes the two-and-a-half-year strangulation of Nepal’s multi-party democracy. King Gyanendra has plotted the royal takeover meticulously, ever since he sacked Deuba’s caretaker ministry in October 2002 for, it was said, failing to hold a snap-poll within six months of parliament’s dissolution. Deuba’s successor and pro-monarchist Rashtriya Prajatantra Party leader Lokendra Bahadur Chand’s government fared no better and was replaced by another headed by RPP leader Surya Bahadur Thapa. When he too failed to deliver what the king wanted, he was left with little option but to reinstate Deuba in...

Kathmandu (AsiaNews/Agencies) – King Gyanendra’s takeover of the reins of power is seen by many as a shift towards China, away from the West. For many Asia analysts, the move reflects shifting political interests. The US, the UK, the UN and India have condemned the dismissal of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba’s cabinet and the King’s decision to directly run the country. By contrast, China has not yet made any public comment, with Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quanit simply commenting that it was “an internal affair of Nepal”. Nepali analyst Deepak Thapa, head of the Kathmandu-based Himal Association's Social...

New Delhi, Feb 3 (IANS) Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's decision not to attend the SAARC summit in Dhaka is drawing flak from some South Asian nations though many see in it a subtle signal to Nepal and Bangladesh that their policies and actions are viewed dimly by India. A day after King Gyanendra sacked the Nepal government and days after unending violence killed a top opposition leader in Bangladesh, India announced that it would not attend the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit that was to begin Sunday. Indian policy makers and diplomats justified the dramatic decision. G....

KATHMANDU, FEB. 1. King Gyanendra today dismissed Nepal's Government and declared a state of Emergency, cutting off his Himalayan nation from the rest of the world as telephone and Internet lines were snapped, flights diverted and civil liberties severely curtailed. The move was the second time in three years that the King has taken control of the tiny South Asian constitutional monarchy, a throwback to the era of absolute power enjoyed by Nepal's monarchs before King Birendra, King Gyanendra's elder brother, introduced democracy in 1990. King Gyanendra denied his takeover was a coup, although soldiers surrounded the houses of the...

Nepal's king has today sacked his government and declared a state of emergency. Gyanendra, who assumed the throne in 2001 when his brother, the former king, was killed in a massacre, denied that the move was a coup. However, soldiers surround the prime minister's house as armoured cars patrol the country's capital, Kathmandu. In an announcement on state-run television, the king accused political parties of plunging the Himalayan kingdom into crisis by failing to hold elections or end the civil war with Maoist rebels. "I have decided to dissolve the government because it has failed to make necessary arrangements to...

A Future We Can Live With2005.01.29 A recent correspondent writes concerning the ongoing European population crash:It reminds me of things in the mid 5th century in Europe. After a long history of bad economic policies which stifled development and made child rearing expensive, and the growing use of foreigners to man the military, when the immigrants from the German areas began to move down to the Roman empire, it couldn't assimilate them or even stop the flow and the German elites took over, and the social disruption destroyed the Empire in the west.Very interesting. I agree. I too have wondered...

MOSCOW. Jan 20 (Interfax) - A group of Russian citizens has filed a complaint with the country's Constitutional Court, asking it to verify the constitutionality of the 1992 interstate treaty with France and the intergovernmental agreement settling claims of individuals and legal entities on the territories of Russia and France. The 1992 treaty binds Russia to repay French loans for the construction of Tsarist era railroads, plaintiff and lawyer Mikhail Voronin told Interfax on Thursday. "However, Russia has abandoned all pre-revolutionary claims of its citizens against the French government, though the total sum of the claims greatly exceeded the Tsar's...

In the wake of British Prince Harry's display of a swastika at a party last week, German politicians are calling for a ban on display of the Nazi symbol across the entire continent of Europe. Germany has already prohibited the insignia within its own borders, along with the notorious "Heil Hitler" salute. It's also against the law to distribute Hitler's book "Mein Kampf," which can be read in most countries, including Israel. "The whole of Europe once suffered under Nazi crimes, therefore it makes sense to ban Nazi symbols across Europe," Silvana Koch-Merin of Germany's Liberal Party told Scotland on...

We exhort young people, born into this society of audio-visually conditioned robots, to rise up against the reign of untruth. Leave television to its willing slaves; read the masters of your religious and national culture, read your mystics, your thinkers, your poets. Seek after truth, obey it as you would a sovereign, don’t let yourself be closed in by worldly or ecclesiastical conformity. To bind oneself unconditionally to an ideology or a religion, beyond what is just and unjust, is a properly satanic aberration. Totalitarian states that alternate between lies and violence (lies to cover up the violence, and violence...

Dear pilgrims of Notre-Dame, [snip] The Christian life is a pilgrimage, often painful, which passes through Golgotha, but is illumined by the splendours of the Spirit. And which leads to glory. Oh! We may well be persecuted, but I forbid that we be pitied. For we belong to a race of exiles and voyagers, gifted with a prodigious power of invention, but refusing—that is its religion—to be distracted from the things of Heaven. [snip] If we seek to pacify the earth, to beautify the earth, it is not in order to replace Heaven, but so that the earth be Heaven’s...

The Prince of Wales is brokering efforts to end the Muslim death penalty on converts to other faiths, The Telegraph has learned. He held a private summit of Christian and Muslim leaders at Clarence House this month to explore the centuries-old Islamic law under which apostates face persecution and even death. His intervention follows mounting anger at the treatment of Muslims who have converted to Christianity in a number of Islamic states. As an advocate of inter-faith dialogue, Prince Charles has come under pressure to criticise the religious law that, campaigners say, has resulted in hundreds of executions in countries...