RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/boris-johnsons-tories-lose-majority-in-parliament-as-fight-to-delay-brexit-erupts/

Britain’s ruling Tory party lost its parliamentary majority Tuesday as the melee continues over legislation to delay the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union.

Conservative Phillip Lee defected to the Liberal Democrats amid Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s speech against legislation that would delay Brexit three months past the October 31 deadline. Lee, who had been a Tory for nearly three decades, said the party has become “infected with the twin diseases of populism and English nationalism.”

Lee’s defection changes Johnson’s political calculus amid the chaotic Brexit fight, but will not automatically trigger a new election. The Liberal Democrats and some members of Johnson’s own party vehemently oppose exiting the European Union without a deal in place to mitigate the consequences of the move, but Johnson has forged ahead, vowing to push Brexit through whether or not a deal is reached with the EU.

“If that happens, all the progress we have been making will have been for nothing,” Johnson said of the legislative proposal to extend the October 31 deadline, saying it would force the U.K. to accept whatever deal the EU demands. “There are no circumstances in which I could accept anything like it. We promised the people we would get Brexit done. Enough is enough. The country wants this done.”

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who backs the delay bill, slammed Johnson’s remarks, calling the prime minister’s policies “dangerous and reckless.”

Johnson has threatened call a snap general election and kick members who oppose a no-deal Brexit out of the party.

“Let’s get on with the people’s agenda,” he said.

https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/09/article/merkels-in-beijing-pence-is-in-poland/

A senior Polish official explained to me recently why his country couldn’t accept American demands to exclude Huawei from Poland’s buildout of 5G broadband. During the early 2010s, the United States ignored Poland entirely, but Huawei made a long-term commitment, and built the country’s entire telecommunications infrastructure. To exclude Huawei at this point would be disruptive as well as prohibitively expensive. Besides, the official explained, Poland’s economic future was bound up with China’s. Its flagship national project, an enormous new airport 40 kilometers east of Warsaw, will be “China’s gateway to the continent.”

That is the background to Vice President Mike Pence’s appearance in Poland on Tuesday to sign a “security pact” requiring “rigorous review” of telecommunications suppliers, that is, Huawei. The pact declares, “We believe that all countries must ensure that only trusted and reliable suppliers participate in our networks to protect them from unauthorized access or interference.” 

One strains to recall another such “security pact,” or to comprehend just what such a pact means in terms of diplomacy. It obligates the Poles to nothing except a formal review process. Germany’s telecom regulator undertook such a review process and declared last April that “no equipment supplier, including Huawei, should, or may, be specifically excluded.” German and Chinese government and industry sources report that the Chinese telecom giant persuaded the German government that its 5G technology would not enable China to spy on the Germans, but rather would prevent the United States from doing so. A senior German official is said to have told US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that Germany was not aware of China tapping Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone, as the US reportedly did in 2013.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14804/iran-zarif-welcome-europe

The behavior of European leaders towards Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during his visit illustrates how frightened they are of the Iranian regime and how these non-stop moralists will seemingly do anything for money. Iran’s strong anti-Israel rhetoric apparently does not bother them, either.

Trade with Iran is crucial to many European countries. That is one possible explanation for the seeming doublespeak in which European leaders have been engaging since the establishment of the Islamic Republic 40 years ago — boasting among themselves and with the United States about setting a shining example of human rights, yet giving their Iranian counterparts a pass on this issue.

Those of us who sought refuge away from the brutality of the Iranian regime observe with sadness and horror these desperate attempts by many European leaders to please Tehran. Europeans should be viewing the situation with equal sadness and horror.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif made a surprise appearance at the Group of Seven (G7) Summit in Biarritz, France, which ended on August 26. Prior to his attendance at the gathering in France, he stopped in Sweden and Norway. Denmark was not part of his itinerary, of course, due to Copenhagen’s rocky relations with Tehran, over last year’s assassination attempt against an Iranian Sunni separatist on Danish soil.

The purpose of Zarif’s trip to Europe, apparently, was to discuss ways to ease tensions in the Persian Gulf and rescue the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — the nuclear deal with Iran from which US President Donald Trump withdrew in May 2018.

Zarif’s European tour spurred many human rights activists and Iranian opposition groups abroad to protest. Zarif, after all, represents a regime that is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading violators of human rights. Those in Iran who raise a voice against Tehran’s policies in any realm are often incarcerated: Among them are labor activists, lawyers and women’s rights activists, children’s rights activists, journalists, members of ethnic and religious minorities, environmental activists and even wildlife activists.

Days before Zarif’s trip, in fact, UN human rights experts called on the regime in Tehran to release three women recently sentenced to decades in prison for violating the law that women must wear the hijab.

The demonstrations in Europe were aimed both at Zarif and at European authorities for hosting him. In Stockholm on August 21, peaceful protesters outside the Swedish Parliament were so harassed and beaten by police that Reza Pahlavi — the Maryland-based heir to the throne of the former Iranian monarchy (his father’s ouster coincided with the 1979 Islamic revolution that ushered in the reign of the ayatollahs) — released the following statement: