RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/boris-johnson-declares-not-too-late-to-save-brexit/

In a resignation speech Wednesday, MP Boris Johnson castigated Prime Minister Theresa May for failing to uphold the British electorate’s vision of Brexit in negotiations with the European Union, insisting that it’s “not too late” to negotiate a return to complete British sovereignty.

Johnson began the speech by praising May’s initial vision for Brexit, laid out in a speech she delivered last year at Lancaster House, but quickly pivoted, accusing her of allowing a “fog of self-doubt” to compromise Britain’s position in talks with the E.U.

“Even though our EU friends and partners liked the Lancaster House vision — it was what they were expecting from an ambitious partner — we never actually went to Brussels and turned it into a negotiating offer,” Johnson said before the House of Commons.

The former foreign secretary and Mayor of London went on to detail the specific sacrifices he believed May had made thus far in negotiations, emphasizing Britain’s lack of autonomy to negotiate its own trade deals under the agreement she has proposed.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12723/germany-deportation-system

Aidoudi’s asylum request was rejected in 2007 after allegations surfaced that he had undergone military training at an al-Qaeda jihadi camp in Afghanistan between 1999 and 2000. During his training, he had allegedly worked as a bodyguard for Osama bin-Laden.

The government in North Rhine-Westphalia confirmed that for years Aidoudi had been receiving €1,168 ($1,400) each month in welfare and child support payments.

“Salafists such as Sami A. have no business in Germany and should be deported. Germany should not be a retirement retreat for jihadists.” — Alexander Dobrindt, Member of the German Bundestag.

A court in Gelsenkirchen has ruled that deporting a self-declared Islamist — suspected of being a bodyguard of the former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden — was “grossly unlawful” and ordered him returned to Germany.

The case has cast a spotlight on the dysfunctional nature of Germany’s deportation system, as well as on Germany’s politicized judicial system, which on human rights grounds is making it nearly impossible to expel illegal migrants, including those who pose security threats.

The 42-year-old failed asylum seeker from Tunisia — identified by German authorities as Sami A., but known in his native country as Sami Aidoudi — had been living in Germany since 1997. Aidoudi, a Salafist Islamist, is believed by German authorities to have spent time in Afghanistan and Pakistan before the al-Qaeda attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001. Since then, he was under surveillance by German intelligence for propagating Islamist teachings and attempting to radicalize young Muslims. He had “far reaching” relationships with Salafist and jihadist networks, according to an official report leaked to the German newsmagazine, Focus.

Aidoudi’s asylum request was rejected in 2007 after allegations surfaced that he had undergone military training at an al-Qaeda jihadi camp in Afghanistan between 1999 and 2000. During his training, he had allegedly worked as a bodyguard for Osama bin-Laden. Aidoudi denied the charges and claimed to have been studying during that time in Karachi, Pakistan.

Despite rejecting Aidoudi’s asylum application, German courts repeatedly blocked his deportation out of fears that he could be tortured or mistreated in his homeland.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/theresa-may-covert-third-way-brexit-plan-sparks-backlash-constitutional-crisis/

The prime minister covertly tried to impose a ‘third way’ and now faces a backlash.

A massive political and constitutional crisis is gathering pace in Britain. It began earlier this year, perhaps as early as February, when Prime Minister Theresa May began to run her own private policy on Brexit through officials in Downing Street and the Cabinet Office — a policy that was different from, and arguably opposite to, the Brexit policy that had the approval of the cabinet and the public. But it emerged that something unorthodox might be happening only two weeks ago, when reports began to circulate in Whitehall and Westminster that the prime minister would advise a Chequers cabinet meeting on the next Friday to choose a hitherto unknown “third way” rather than two earlier options for leaving the European Union Customs Union.

When an alarmed David Davis — the secretary of state for exiting the European Union — saw her on the Wednesday before Chequers (interestingly, the Fourth of July), she allegedly denied to him that any such third-way document existed. In the following two days, however, leaks from Downing Street made it clear that a showdown of some kind was in the offing. One aide, apparently thinking he was some kind of hard-nosed White House staffer from the West Wing television series, told the media that if a cabinet minister resigned at Chequers, he would immediately lose his official car and be compelled to stand on principle and take the long walk of shame to pick up a taxi at the gate.

I’ll let an extract from my account in the Australian pick up the story from there:

That didn’t seem the worst of threats — it’s a fifteen minutes stroll through pleasant countryside. But it did set the tone for one of the least agreeable country-house weekends in history — one apparently designed by someone with training in East German psy-ops and hostage psychology management: Isolate them in a remote location, cut off their escape, take away their phones, give them complex bureaucratic papers to read, cut the time for reading short, examine them on their reading, confuse them, mock any mistakes they make, demand they sign the document, threaten them with non-personhood if they refuse, and if they do refuse, tell them the decision has already been made by the Party and that their refusal is meaningless. It was a brilliant technique — call it Applied Stockholm Syndrome — and it worked. Most of those present nodded smilingly and signed; some were reluctant but they signed too in order not to spoil the occasion, and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson even proposed a toast to Big Sister. Happy to be still in power, they all got into their cars and returned to London.