AAI To Revise Their Dishonest ‘Disclosure Document’

Atheist Alliance International (AAI) has recently published a ‘Disclosure Document’, which first admits to extensive corruption over many years, and then offers a set of dishonest apologetics that seeks to excuse their wrongdoing. The document contains a large number of deliberate and calculated lies, which can be easily demonstrated using the contemporaneous records. Brian Kernick, the purported President of AAI, has now written a letter that promises to revise this document. This decision has been prompted by “some affiliate member” groups, and the relevant extracts from the letter are illustrated below.

There are a number of problems with this letter, which include the following issues:

• Brian Kernick proposes to extend the 18th December 2022 deadline, which is created by the timetable in his own bogus Bylaw 59. It is not within the power of the AAI President (or within the authority of the AAI Board) to waive Bylaws, otherwise there would be no point in having Bylaws.
• It is proposed that “the meeting may vote to amend motions”. This is totally outside the terms of even their own bogus Bylaws. An amended motion would by definition be a new and different motion. Creating a new motion during the meeting would by definition ensure that the advanced notice period for new motions in the Bylaws was not respected.

At the end of his letter, Brian Kernick promises that “in a few days” he will circulate changes to the AAI ‘Disclosure Document’. The imperative in this regard is not only to change the document so that it provides honest information, but also to clarify how the initial version of the document came to include so many lies.

For example, the AAI ‘Disclosure Document’ is available in full at the bottom of this page, and it states that:

“The Board has put a great deal of effort into conducting a thorough review …”

Quote from AAI ‘Disclosure Document’

The document then goes on to cite “Board papers” as the source of the membership numbers graphed in red and blue in the diagram below, even though the true membership numbers (along with the sources of each data point) are superimposed in green on top of the original graph.

The red and blue lines are just lies, fabricated by the AAI Board. It is not good enough to merely accept the falsity of these numbers. Those who authored the document must provide the sources they used to construct the original graph, and explain how they came to deceive AAI members in this way. Which exactly were the “Board papers” that they used as part of the “thorough review” that gave us this graph? This same transparency must be offered in relation to the other lies in the AAI ‘Disclosure Document’, some of the most consequential of which are summarised below.

‘AGM’ Quorum

The AAI ‘Disclosure Document’ states that, “the 2018 AGM was quorate”. That is a lie, which relies of the pretence that ‘Mindful Meditation Of Secular Buddhism’ was a valid affiliate member group of AAI. The dishonest people currently purporting to be the Board of AAI, know that this is not true. The extract from the AAI Voting Register illustrated below, shows how an atheist group properly becomes an affiliate member group of AAI.

‘Mindful Meditation Of Secular Buddhism’ could not have properly become an affiliate member group of AAI, because at the time when this purportedly happened there was no valid AAI Board with any authority or mandate to adopt new affiliate members. Moreover, despite repeated questions on this topic, those who have already admitted breaking almost every other AAI Bylaw in relation to the 2018 ‘AGM’, have been unable to provide an iota of evidence that ‘Mindful Meditation Of Secular Buddhism’ met any of the onerous standards required to become an affiliate member group of AAI.

‘Mindful Meditation Of Secular Buddhism’ was not a valid affiliate member group of AAI, and there was not a quorum of 5 affiliate member groups at the bogus 2018 ‘AGM’. No business transacted at that meeting was in any way legitimate.

Legitimacy of Bylaws

The AAI ‘Disclosure Document’ greatly understates the wrongdoing associated with the bogus 2018 ‘AGM’. However, just taking the admissions made in that document and quoting them verbatim, it has now been accepted that:

• Many valid affiliate member groups were improperly excluded from the 2018 ‘AGM’, such that “… they should have been invited to the AGM. So this was an infringement of the Bylaws.”
• None of the notification requirements with respect to providing advance visibility of motions to affiliate member groups were adhered to, such that “Members were notified of the AGM late, and the final agenda may not have been sent. These were infringements of the Bylaws.”
• Multiple affiliate groups were allowed to vote at the bogus 2018 ‘AGM’ which were not entitled to vote, such that “… members that voted at the 2018 ‘AGM’ were associate members so their votes should not have counted.”

Picking any one of these admissions in isolation, would on its own totally invalidate the bogus 2018 ‘AGM’, such that no business conducted at that meeting could be considered legitimate. For example, this meeting unlawfully excluded a large number of affiliate member groups from the debate on the future of the Bylaws, and several of those groups would have been arguing for alternative approaches. The meeting was deprived of their votes, which would have changed the outcome. Just on its own, this fact renders the vote that took place to adopt radical anti-democratic new Bylaws, entirely illegitimate. Moreover, taking all of these issues together, leaves it impossible to accept any aspect of the anti-democratic new Bylaws introduced during that meeting.

Conversely, the AAI ‘Disclosure Document’ just makes these admissions and then assumes that they should all be ignored, as if none of these very serious infractions ever occurred. For example, the document goes on to make statements such as:

“Bill Flavell, John Richards, and Howard Burman were not formally elected until February 02, 2020.”

Quote from AAI ‘Disclosure Document’

This so-called “election” in 2020 was conducted following the bogus and anti-democratic Bylaws from the 2018 ‘AGM’. These bogus Bylaws have already been admitted to be totally illegitimate, and so no actions taken following these Bylaws have any validity. Specifically, no Directors appointed following those Bylaws can be considered valid and legitimate Directors of AAI. It is simply not good enough to first accept that the anti-democratic 2018 Bylaws were not legitimately adopted by the alliance, and then justify an enormous volume of subsequent wrongdoing based on following those bogus Bylaws. The people responsible for this debacle must deal directly with the fact that their organisation is totally illegitimate, and that there is no valid mechanism to follow anything other than the pre-2018 Bylaws.

Legitimacy of Board

The AAI ‘Disclosure Document’ accepts that despite pretending to be representative of dozens of atheist groups worldwide, their so-called Board was never elected for many years. However, their recent admissions relating to other false statements in the document, makes this situation even worse. For example, the AAI ‘Disclosure Document’ states that, “six Directors could simply have been elected by the Board under the 2018 Bylaws after the AGM”. Following the publication of the document though, Bill Flavell has since accepted that this statement just isn’t true, as illustrated below:

Again, the approach of the AAI ‘Disclosure Document’ is to make a breathtaking admission, and then just carry on regardless as if it never happened. Here we have an admission that there were no valid Directors of AAI, and there was no valid AAI Board, for many years. Of course, this means that no actions taken by these individuals was in any way legitimate, or could be considered in any way to be the valid actions of AAI. These people were totally without authority or mandate, and represented nobody but themselves.

Notwithstanding this, the AAI ‘Disclosure Document’ goes on to describe how these individuals added new affiliate members and arranged meetings to bring new people onto the so-called AAI Board. They were not in a position to do any of these things, and none of these actions were taken on behalf of AAI. It is simply not good enough to first accept that those claiming to be the AAI Board were nothing of the sort, and then go on to describe all of their decisions as if they were somehow decisions taken on behalf of a longstanding democratic alliance of atheist groups. The people responsible for this debacle must deal directly with the fact that their so-called Board is totally illegitimate, and that there is no valid mechanism to consider any decisions they have made as being the authentic decisions of AAI.

Conclusion

The problem at AAI is that almost every Bylaw has been broken, such that the current so-called Board has no legitimacy to do anything at all on behalf of the alliance. Brian Kernick is proposing to deal with the situation by breaking an entirely different set of Bylaws, in entirely different ways.

Instead, Brian Kernick might consider that he should first tell the truth and correct the record with respect to all the lies his so-called Board has published within the AAI ‘Disclosure Document’. Implicit within this is the requirement to provide an explanation as to how all these lies came to be published in the first instance. Then, Brian Kernick might consider that the only way out of this situation is to allow the valid members to democratically decide the future of the organisation, according to the valid Bylaws. Why would he possibly be opposed to submitting himself for election in the same way that every other Director was elected before the bogus 2018 ‘AGM’? Why would Brian Kernick insist that only the invalid outcome of the illegitimate 2018 ‘AGM’ can decide the future for AAI?

---

• AAI Disclosure Document