RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quillette.com/2019/07/23/cometh-the-hour-cometh-the-man-a-profile-of-boris-johnson/

“The rational part of my brain is still full of doubts and uncertainties. What sensible person would look at Boris’s peripatetic career and rakish personality and conclude that he is the right man to lead Britain at this moment of maximum danger? But at a more primitive level, a level impervious to reason, I cannot help but believe. From the first moment I saw him, I felt I was in the presence of someone special, someone capable of achieving great things. And I’ve never quite been able to dispel that impression.”

I first set eyes on Boris Johnson in the autumn of 1983 when we went up to Oxford at the same time. I knew who he was since my uncle Christopher was an ex-boyfriend of his mother’s and he had told me to keep an eye out for him, but I still wasn’t prepared for the sight (and sound) of him at the dispatch box of the Oxford Union. This was the world famous debating society where ambitious undergraduates honed their public-speaking skills before embarking on careers in politics or journalism, and Boris was proposing the motion.

With his huge mop of blond hair, his tie askew and his shirt escaping from his trousers, he looked like an overgrown schoolboy. Yet with his imposing physical build, his thick neck and his broad, Germanic forehead, there was also something of Nietzsche’s Übermensch about him. You could imagine him in lederhosen, wandering through the Black Forest with an axe over his shoulder, looking for ogres to kill. This same combination—a state of advanced dishevelment and a sense of coiled strength, of an almost tangible will to power—was even more pronounced in his way of speaking.

He began to advance an argument in what sounded like a parody of the high style in British politics—theatrical, dramatic, self-serious—when—a few seconds in—he appeared to completely forget what he was about to say. He looked up, startled—Where am I?—and asked the packed chamber which side he was supposed to be on. “What’s the motion, anyway?” Before anyone could answer, a light bulb appeared above his head and he was off, this time in an even more orotund, florid manner. Yet within a few seconds he’d wrong-footed himself again, this time because it had suddenly occurred to him that there was an equally compelling argument for the opposite point of view. This endless flipping and flopping, in which he seemed to constantly surprise himself, went on for the next 15 minutes. The impression he gave was of someone who’d been plucked from his bed in the middle of the night and then plonked down at the dispatch box of the Oxford Union without the faintest idea of what he was supposed to be talking about.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/sajid-javid-appointed-chancellor-as-boris-johnson-names-new-cabinet-a4197671.html

Sajid Javid has been appointed chancellor, Priti Patel home secretary and Dominic Raab foreign secretary as Boris Johnson named his new cabinet.

Mr Johnson met with his new ministers this evening after he was given permission by the Queen to form a government.

Mr Raab was also appointed first secretary of state, effectively making him Mr Johnson’s deputy prime minister. The new cabinet will also see the return of Stephen Barclay as Brexit secretary.

Arch-Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg has been made Leader of the House of Commons. He was also made Lord President of the Council and Downing Street said he would attend cabinet meetings.

Mr Johnson’s Tory leadership rival Michael Gove was named Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, while Ben Wallace was given the key role of defence secretary.

Gavin Williamson has returned to the government as education secretary after he was sacked by Theresa May earlier this year over leaked information about Chinese mobile giant Huawei.

https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/07/23/israeli-envoy-reveals-iran-hezbollah-weapons-smuggling-routes-into-lebanon-at-un-security-council-meeting/

Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations on Tuesday shared Israeli intelligence information with the UN Security Council showing Iran funneling weapons to the Hezbollah terrorist organization, highlighting the continuing threat posed by the Tehran regime and its Lebanese proxy along Israel’s northern border.

“In the years 2018-2019, Israel found that dual-use items are smuggled into Lebanon to advance Hezbollah’s rocket and missile capabilities,”  Danny Danon — Israel’s envoy to the UN — revealed to the Security Council.

Danon said that the Quds Force of  the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), which directs Iranian interventions abroad, had begun “to advance the exploitation of the civilian maritime channels, and specifically the Port of Beirut.”

Said Danon: “The Port of Beirut has become the Port of Hezbollah.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274365/european-unions-appeasement-iran-joseph-puder

The European Union (EU) leaders are anxious to preserve the nuclear deal with Iran at all costs, and they are willing to ignore Iran’s breaking the deal by enriching its uranium stockpile to 4.5%. An act that is a clear violation of the nuclear agreement, formally titled the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) signed by Iran, Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia and the U.S. (the U.S. withdrew from the deal last year). The EU efforts are reminiscent of the way Neville Chamberlain, the former British Prime Minister, believed that he could preserve the peace in Europe by having a deal with Hitler. Hitler however, never meant to adhere to the (Munich) agreement and end his aggression, and neither does Iran. The EU’s endemic predisposition toward appeasement would inevitably lead to a catastrophe. Iran would produce a nuclear bomb long before the EU agreed to take military action against the terror sponsoring, and doomsday seeking Ayatollahs.

Iran’s tactics of intimidation and provocations supplemented with violent acts by its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) or its proxies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen, resemble Hitler’s tactics in Nazi Germany’s late 1930’s. Iran’s protégé, the Hezbollah terror organization, serves as its Nazi-like SS enforcer in Lebanon, and increasingly elsewhere in the Middle East and beyond. Earlier this month the IRGC attempted to capture a British tanker in the Persian Gulf. Prior to that it had downed a U.S. drone, as well as being implicated in the damaging of oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14588/palestinians-assault-saudi-blogger

The main reason the Saudi blogger was assaulted and humiliated during his visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque was incitement.

It came mainly from the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS), a group affiliated with Fatah, and that has been described by some in the West, and even in Israel, as “moderate” and “pragmatic.”

Spitting in the face of a Saudi blogger and cursing him as an “animal” and “Zionist” is not behavior conducive to luring cash from his state — or any other self-respecting entity — that refuses to be slapped in the face while providing handouts.

When Saudi blogger Mohamed Saud arrived at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on July 22, he apparently thought he would peacefully pray at the site before proceeding to tour the markets of the Old City of Jerusalem.

Moreover, Saud apparently believed that as an Arab Muslim, he would be warmly welcomed by his Palestinian brothers.

He was wrong.

The moment Palestinians noticed the Saudi blogger at one of Islam’s holiest sites, they demonstrated to him how they treat their Arab brothers.

Videos that surfaced on social media showed a number of Palestinians hurling insults and spitting at Saud. One Palestinian later threw a plastic chair at him as he left the compound.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14569/greece-undoing-damage

The new government took office with an apparent sense of genuine purpose… The new government has transferred the handling of illegal immigration from the auspices of the Ministry for Migration Policy to that of the Ministry of Citizen Protection, treating the issue as a national-security threat.

The Mitsotakis-led government is also reversing its predecessor’s course where foreign policy is concerned, stressing a desire to enhance Greek-American relations. One step in illustrating a closer alliance with the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is the recognition of Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s transitional president in his battle against Nicolás Maduro. Another step is strengthening ties with Israel.

Greece now has a single-party government… which means that it will not be forced to compromise with Marxists and Social Democrats. This situation bodes well for the major economic and social reforms that Mitsotakis… was elected to undertake.

Mitsotakis deserves a chance at home and abroad to prove that opening up the economy while clamping down on forces that threaten Greek democracy can undo the damage done by years of socialist rule.

The July 7 elections in Greece have ushered in a new era of promise, with the victory of the center-right New Democracy Party leader, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, over the incumbent prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, head of the left-wing Syriza coalition.

The vote represented the Greek people’s frustration and disgust not only with the failures of the Syriza-led government, which wreaked havoc on the economy and state institutions, but with the accompanying widespread corruption and anarchy that overtook the country.

The new government took office with an apparent sense of genuine purpose, seemingly intent on exacting immediate change. The new Minister for Citizen Protection, Michalis Chrysochoidis, for example, set to work with the encouraging pledge to reform the police force. He announced that he would make law enforcement more efficient, through better recruitment policies, backup for anti-crime units and by enabling raids into virtual “no-go” zones, such as Exarchia, a hotbed of drug-dealers, anarchists and illegal immigrants.

https://www.jns.org/boris-johnson-becomes-uk-prime-minister-amid-brexit-tension

He has had warm ties with the British Jewish community and Israel stemming from his time as mayor of London, and later, as foreign secretary under former Prime Minister Theresa May.

Boris Johnson overwhelmingly was elected by his Conservative Party on Tuesday to become the next party leader and prime minister of the United Kingdom.

In his victory speech, Johnson, who defeated Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt in the party race, promised that he would “deliver Brexit, unite the country and defeat Jeremy Corbyn.”

Johnson, 55, who succeeded Theresa May, comes to power amid several crises wracking his country. He has to deal with a do-or-die Oct. 31 deadline to leave the European Union, known as “Brexit,” and the potential economic and political ramifications to arise from that. At the same time, he will need to push back against Iranian aggression, especially in the aftermath of the regime seizing two U.K.-owned oil tankers, as well as handle growing anti-Semitism in the country, especially within the rival Labour Party.

Earlier this month, Johnson warned Iran to “cease this madness” over violating the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, adding that he’s “prepared” to reimpose sanctions on the regime.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14584/eu-top-down-powers

An examination of von der Leyen’s main policy proposals reveals that she is calling for a massive expansion of top-down powers of the European Commission. Her proposals would substantially increase the role of Brussels in virtually all aspects of economic and social life in Europe — all at the expense of national sovereignty.

Von der Leyen warned that Brussels would overrule EU member states opposed to her tax overhaul… She called for a comprehensive “European Rule of Law Mechanism” to ensure the primacy of EU law over the national laws of EU member states. She warned that there would be financial consequences for member states that refuse to comply…. She called for a change in rules so that the EU could act even without the unanimous consent of EU member states.

“What you’ve seen from Ursula von der Leyen today is an attempt by the EU to take control of every single aspect of our lives. She wants to build a centralized, undemocratic, updated form of Communism that will render [obsolete] nation state parliaments, where the state controls everything, where nation state parliaments will cease to have any relevance at all.” — Nigel Farage, European Parliament, July 16, 2019.

Former German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen has been narrowly confirmed as the next President of the European Commission, the powerful administrative arm of the European Union.

In a secret ballot in the European Parliament on July 16, von der Leyen, a close ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, received 383 votes, only nine more than the 374 required — the lowest margin since the position of President was established in 1958. She will take over from Jean-Claude Junker in November 2019 for a five-year term.

Before the vote, von der Leyen promised an ambitious left-leaning policy program on climate change, taxes, migration and the rule of law. Many of her pledges — which would require transferring yet more national sovereignty to unelected bureaucrats in Brussels — appeared aimed at enticing support for her candidacy from Greens and Socialists in the European Parliament.

In the final vote, however, the Socialists were divided in their support for von der Leyen and the Greens formally opposed her. Interestingly, von der Leyen won with the support of eurosceptics in Central and Eastern Europe after she publicly criticized the way the EU has treated them due to their opposition to mass migration.