In the midst of an economic downturn and resulting widespread unemployment, as families struggle to make ends meet in austerity Britain by an onslaught on public spending cuts, with the poorest sections of society a risk of being crippled by housing benefit cuts and other changes to welfare, we witness the grandiose spectacle of Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee as a icon of the British people’s deference to the privilege and pomposity of our monarchical hierarchy and the unquestioned centrality of the ruling class which it represents.

The celebration of Queen Liz’s Diamond Jubilee is a mock feudal ceremony, dressing our system of democracy up in fancy clothes and giving the masses bread and circuses so as to draw attention away from the real issue – where power lies in our constitution and how it is exercised.

The Crown is a fusion of Monarch with body politics (the law) and the Royal Perogative on constitution means significant aspects of the state’s activities are exempt from parliamentary scrutiny, such as the Queens’ Order in Council to overturn a Judicial Review into forced migration of the indigenous population of Diego Garcia in the middle of the Indian Ocean where the USA has an large army and naval base. Additionally, our Monarchical centrist semi-democracy means the Prime Minister has the powers of a King (for eg. Tony Blair entering into prior arrangement with George Bush to commit the UK to the Iraq War, or David Cameron ruling out referring Minister Jeremy Hunt to a ministerial code inquiry after the exposure of Hunt’s clear breach of that code in his non-disclosure to Parliament of communications he had with James Murdoch of News International in advance of his quasi-judicial role deciding on regulatory approval of NI’s bid for BSkyB).

Recent exposure of an uncomfortable lineage between the leadership of the Tory Party, a mafia-like newspaper corporation and corrupt police officials, as well as the suspicious, creepy death of a young man on secondment at MI6 have raised in the publics' consciousness a dark, sinister sub-text that exists under the radar of this country's national affairs. For a long time the establishment have long been able to get away with public exposure of crooked affairs by a deferential public; this is joined by a part of the public view also stymied with apathy. However, recent events in light of such a trying economic situation have increased critical distrust of the establishment. Whilst not necessarily translating to resentment of the Queen and Royal Family, it must be said that general ambivalence to the nationalism mood to celebrate the Diamond Jubille festivities is very much apparant.

The guardians of the status-quo openly celebrate that the monarchy is the “stabilising factor” which should ensure that the oligarchy never really loses control and celebrate that the monarchy might “step in” (ie: military rule/autocracy) if things get out-of-hand (ie: out of their hands).

However, this event not only raises the issue of our constitution. There is also the reality of how this country’s structure of elite privilege has as it’s foundation a jurisdiction of global reach that is host to an arrangement that is fundamental to the workings of a corrupt world financial system. In the midst of austerity and impending global economic depression, the Royal Family, which costs the UK taxpayer £37 million a year (on top of vast sums accrued through agricultural subsidies on account of land-holdings), under it’s figurehead’s jurisdiction as “the Crown” are owners of tax haven protectorates around the globe such as the Cayman Islands which have been central to the cause of the global financial crisis which taxpayers have had to bail out, which has conversely led to the wave of austerity. Tax-havens offer global capital ‘get out of regulation free-cards’, as well as freedom from tax. According to the IMF, elite corporations and individuals (popularly referred to as the 1%) hold a third of total wealth on the planet and as much as $18 Trillion in offshore banks (& that’s not counting Switzerland). [The City of London operates in the same way, under the jurisdiction of a private corporation – the Corporation of London; Cameron’s opt-out of a EU agreement on invoking a transaction tax across Europe appeared to serve the interests of his hedge-fund buddies and ruling-class constituency].

Off-shore tax havens are central to the liberalised international financial system, building into this system complex liability structures, which have allowed risks to build-up unseen, increasing vulnerability to sudden shocks. The financial-capitalist model is susceptible to collapsing in on itself, as it nearly did in 2008, because, in an increasingly interconnected world, with the banking system so intertwined across the globe, a severe crisis in one place will have a domino effect across the world. The system, which survives on a positive spiral of monetary value forever spiralling upwards, can just as easily spiral dramatically downwards at an accelerated speed with a financial collapse and run-on-the-banks, as happened in Argentina in 2001.

Tax havens are central to this process, and so, were instrumental in causing the global financial crisis of 2008 and it’s continuing crisis which the majority are paying for.

That is why part of the solution must be an overhaul of the Crown’s defacto autocracy in it’s jurisdiction of territories it holds which are central to the problem of how the world financial system is currently functioning. The only solution must be to close down these tax-havens across the globe, as well as introducing a tax on unearned income and to levy a tax on financial transactions.

All of these problems are centered around the fundamental dynamics of class oppression, which on first view the Queen & the Royal Family are more an emblem of that division based on exploitation rather than an direct cause - until we consider the reality of tax havens and how the Queens' ownership of these terrorities in effect gives sanction to perhaps the main operational function within the system of wealth expropriation within the global capitalist system and protects the hoarding of wealth by the global rich.
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Website: www.reclaimthejubilee.org went live at 18:00 but was down after just 2 hrs - somehow nobbled.

What is Jubilee?

This special year was the year according to Ancient Hebrew law in which slaves were freed and debts cancelled and land left untilled. In Greek this was translated to Iobelaias and in Latin Jubilee, meaning call-out or “Shout for Joy”.

The Jubilee Year required
- the Forgiveness of all Debts
- Land left Fallow
- the Compulsory Return of all Land to its Original Owners or their Heirs, (except the houses of laymen within walled cities)

In effect, Jubilee law meant land should not be leased for more than 50 years.


Origins
The term Jubilee derives from the hebrew word “Yobel” or “Yobhel”, meaning ram. The term derives from the fact that the “Jubilee year” was announced by a blast on an instrument made from a ram’s horn called a shofar, every 49* years on the Jewish Holy Day of Yom Kippur.
[every 49 years because the end of each cycle was the end of 7 cycles of a sequence of Sabbatical years (7x7=49)].
Debt forgiveness was also found in Ancient Athens, where in the 6th century BCE, the lawmaker Solon instituted a set of laws called seisachtheia, and which canceled all debts and retroactively canceled previous debts that had caused slavery and serfdom, freeing debt slaves and debt serfs.
In addition, the Qur'an (the Muslim scripture) supports debt forgiveness unable to pay as an act of charity and remission of sins for the creditor. The injunction is as follows:
If the debtor is in difficulty, grant him time till it is easy for him to repay. But, if ye remit it by way of charity, that is best for you if ye only knew.
—Qur'an 2:280

RECLAIM THE JUBILEE!
www.reclaimthejubilee.org

Leviticus 25: 13 – “In the year of Jubilee, each of you may return to the land that belonged to your ancestors”


For a Jubilee celebrating a last chance of renewal on earth towards global economic parity that wipes away unpayable gargantuan debt, returns human society to environmental equilibrium with Mother Earth and puts all her inhabitants on a more equal footing.

This is nothing less than humanity’s last exit strategy from self-inflicted ruin and maybe the Earth’s last hope of renewal on it’s current life-cycle.

It is also a judgement on Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee and the privilege and pomposity that our monarchical hierarchy represents, whose jurisdiction of global reach encompasses tax havens which are fundamental to the workings of a corrupt world financial system.