The Guardian View on Boris Johnson: A Shameful Legacy

THE GUARDIAN – EDITORIAL: Removing the leader is not enough to repair the damage done to British democracy. A thorough regime change is needed

The Tory party subordinated its history, its judgment and its political identity in service of one man’s monstrous ego.’ Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA
Fraud is a word that can describe a person and an action; the deception and the deceiver. Boris Johnson is both. He is a serial liar, but also the incarnation of untruths sold to the country by the party that chose to make him their leader.

His resignation would end a dismal and destructive time for British democracy, when the unwritten codes of decency and dignity that are meant to guard against abuse of power have been tested – and found wanting.

There is scant credit available for ministers who decided in recent days that enough was enough. Their resignations performed a useful service in hastening Mr Johnson’s departure, but his unfitness for office was never a secret. Everyone who followed Mr Johnson’s earlier career path could see that it was paved with falsehoods and betrayal. The damage that his narcissistic character has inflicted on the country was foreseeable.

Too many Tory MPs appeared only to realise this in the past week. The tipping point was the case of Chris Pincher, the former deputy chief whip accused of sexual harassment. Specifically, the problem was a sequence of statements issued by Downing Street that were almost immediately found to be false. Loyalists could not keep up with the rate at which dishonesty was spewing out of No 10. » | Editorial | Wednesday, July 6, 2022

All of Boris Johnson’s weaknesses and character flaws have come to the fore now. Nobody can deny that he is simply not up to the job of prime minister.

My followers and regular visitors will be aware that I have stated these facts clearly from the very start. I feel sure you will all remember my criticisms of Alexander Boris De Pfeffel Johnson, aka BoJo!

It is not over yet for him; by some miracle, he is still clinging to power. But his demise must surely be imminent.

My greatest fear is that we will end up with someone even worse. There are not many good people left in the Conservative Party to choose from. BoJo marginalized all the best people in that party, because they were Europhiles.

© Mark Alexander

Royaume-Uni : démissions en cascade dans le gouvernement de Boris Johnson, qui s’accroche à son poste : Au lendemain des départs fracassants des ministres de la santé et des finances, plus de quarante membres de l’exécutif ont à leur tour démissionné mercredi. Michael Gove, pilier du gouvernement, a été limogé par le premier ministre. »

Chrystia Freeland: Russia’s “Sultan” Putin
REUTERS.COM: The next Russian Revolution started this month. It will be another two or three or even four decades before the Russian people take to the streets to overthrow their dictator — and the timing will depend more on the price of oil than on anything else — but as of Sept. 24, revolution rather than evolution became Russia’s most likely path in the medium term.

That’s because President Dmitri A. Medvedev’s announcement last weekend that he would step aside next March to allow Vladimir V. Putin to return to the Kremlin was also an announcement that the ruling clique failed to institutionalize its grip over the country.

We have known since 1996 that Russia wasn’t a democracy. We now know that Russia isn’t a dictatorship controlled by one party, one priesthood, or one dynasty. It is a regime ruled by one man.

“The party doesn’t exist,” said one of Russia’s leading independent economists. “The politics is all about one person.”

“There is no such thing as Putinism without Putin,” Nikolas Gvosdev, a professor of national-security studies at the US Naval War College, wrote this week in The National Interest. “Putin must still remain personally involved and at the helm for his system to function.”

That new reality might seem to be a victory for Putin. But it is a flawed triumph. His resumption of absolute power is also an admission that he and his cronies have failed in the project they set themselves in 2008. And that failure leaves the future President Putin with an Achilles’ heel. » | Chrystia Freeland | Friday, September 30, 2011

Opinion: Limited Audience, Limited Impact
YNET NEWS: Obama’s speech falsely assumed Muslims constitute monolithic community, B. Raman says

President Barack Obama’s address at the Cairo University on June 4, 2009, which was billed in advance by his staff as a historic message of goodwill and reconciliation to the Islamic world, had a limited audience. Though projected as an address to the Islamic world, it was largely an address to the Arab world and focused largely on issues of interest to the Arabs.

The Arabs constitute a minority in the Islamic world. Non-Arab Muslims living in countries such as India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia constitute the majority. The issues, which agitate them, are different from the issues which agitate the Arab world. Osama bin Laden understands this better than Obama and his advisers. That was why in his audio message released through al-Jazeera a day before Obama’s Cairo address, bin Laden focused on issues of immediate concern to the non-Arab Muslims in the Af-Pak region such as the large-scale displacement of Pashtuns from the tribal areas of Pakistan. By focusing on their plight and by holding the Americans responsible for it, he sought to make it certain that the anti-American anger in the Af-Pak region will increase rather than decrease.

Outside India, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia, the attitude of the Muslims towards the US is characterized by feelings of hostility or anger or skepticism. There is hardly any feeling of empathy or warmth. There are various reasons for the negative feelings towards the US. Some are country-specific, some are region specific and some are ethnicity specific. The negative feelings of the Arabs towards the US may be due to the Palestine issue and the perceived US support for Israel, but Palestine and Israel are not such burning issues in the non-Arab Islamic world.

No common threat uniting Muslim anger

Obama’s address seemed to have been constructed around the belief that the Muslims constitute a monolithic community and that their actions are motivated by certain issues of common concern to all the Muslims of the world. This is a wrong belief. The Muslims are not a monolithic community and there is no common thread uniting the anger motivating the Muslims in different countries and different regions. There are Muslims and Muslims and issues and issues.

If Obama wanted to address the Muslims of the world, Cairo was the wrong place from which to seek to do so. There was a time when Egypt was seen as the beacon of the Arab world. It is no longer so. Al-Qaeda and pro-al-Qaeda organizations project Egypt and its leaders as apostate. President Hosni Mubarak is a very unpopular Arab leader .Obama going to Cairo to deliver the address is seen by large sections of pro-al-Qaeda and pro-Taliban leaders as a leader of the American infidels traveling to the country of apostates to deliver an address to the Muslims from a platform provided by the apostates. >>> Bahukutumbi Raman | Wednesday, June 10, 2009

The writer served in India's external intelligence agency from 1968 to1994 and was a member of the National Security Advisory Board of the Government of India from 2000 to 2002.

Sara Miller – Opinion: Independence Day: I Am a Zionist and I Am Proud
HAARETZ: "I'll give you six months," said a close relative the day before I packed my life into two rucksacks and schlepped them 2,000 miles from Britain. A decade on, I'm still here, and proud to be an olah vatika (veteran immigrant).

Even within Israel the concept of Aliyah for Zionism's sake is often an alien one. Young Israelis in particular cannot understand why someone from an evidently prosperous country, with a culture-rich and progressive society and which is relatively terrorism free, would choose to throw it all over, leave their family and friends and move to a country so riddled with internal problems and violence.

My motivation can be summed up in one word. Zionism. In recent decades Zionism has become a dirty word in the world. It has been used as an insulting and disrespectful collective noun for the Jewish people, shorthand for the State of Israel within the context of its conflict with the Palestinians and even a synonym for the settlement movement.

It is time to reclaim the word as an expression of pride. Zionism is what has driven and will drive past, present and future Jews around the world to move to a miniscule spot of land in a war-torn region. >>> By Sara Miller | Tuesday, April 28, 2009

I. A. Rehman – Viewpoint: Pakistan’s Neo-Taliban
DAWN: THE militants’ tactical retreat from Buner, an armed operation against them in Dir and some formal assurances by the army top brass have given most Pakistanis a sense of respite. It should now be possible to comprehend the neo-Taliban phenomenon without which they cannot be overcome.

The neo-Taliban have lost all claim to leniency. They must be made to face the full might of the state, except for those who can be trusted with mending their ways. Photo courtesy of Dawn
The armed bands engaged in terrorist activities in the northern parts of Pakistan are called neo-Taliban because it is necessary to distinguish them from the Taliban that overran Afghanistan in the 1990s and about whom conservative Pakistanis entertain some wholesome notions. They condone the Afghan Taliban’s excesses against women and their animalistic hostility to arts and culture, because they want to see the same done in Pakistan. At the same time these elements still praise the Afghan Taliban for unifying their country, for checking violent disorder and for disarming non-state militias. And, latterly, they are hailed for resisting foreign intrusion.

While the neo-Taliban operating against Pakistan can outdo the Afghan Taliban in their animus towards women and democratic institutions, they display none of the characteristics attributed to the latter by their Pakistani supporters. Unlike the Afghan Taliban they are dividing Pakistan and not consolidating its unity; they are increasing violent disorder and not suppressing it; and they are raising non-state militias, not disarming the existing ones.

Finally, the Afghan Taliban could claim to be fighting for their motherland and resisting ‘imperialism’; the neo-Taliban have invaded their patrons’ motherland and are fighting for a brand of imperialism Allama Iqbal had denounced in his 1930 address. Thus, the neo-Taliban cannot be favourably compared with their Afghan predecessors.

A large number of Pakistanis have been confused by the neo-Taliban’s rhetoric that they want to enforce the Islamic Sharia. Nothing can be further from the truth. The neo-Taliban’s precursors in Afghanistan too were not driven by their love of the Sharia. For all one knows, Hikmatyar, Rabbani and Masud, targets of the Taliban offensive, also swore by the Sharia. The Afghan Taliban had a definite political objective — to capture Afghanistan for themselves. The neo-Taliban too have a purely political objective — to establish their rule in a part of Pakistan and if possible over the whole of it. >>> By I.A. Rehman | Thursday, April 30, 2009

Emanuel Shilo – Opinion: In Praise of Lieberman
YNET NEWS: Foreign minister’s induction speech merely expressed what most Israelis think

This time, Lieberman did not speak with exaggerated zeal. He did not call for the bombing of Egypt’s Aswan dam. He merely expressed the opinion of most Israeli citizens, whose vote in the last elections proved that they too, just like Lieberman, no longer believe in peace that will be achieved through concessions.

The incoming foreign minister’s declaration that in exchange for peace with Syria he is only willing to give peace – and not the Golan Heights – is the consistent continuation of his declarations from the election campaign, which resulted in an especially impressive electoral outcome.

Meanwhile, the demand for reciprocity in the relationship with Egypt will also resonate positively among many Israelis. The Israeli public is not blind to what is going on. It recognizes the country through which rockets are being smuggled, to later explode on the streets of Sderot and Ashkelon.

When it comes to Lieberman, one of the less predictable politicians in Israel, it is difficult to know when we are dealing with a frank declaration of intentions and when is it merely a smoke screen. However, if his speech on Wednesday indeed outlined his future policy, he did well by stating this as early as his first day on the job. Reminder to Bibi >>> Emanuel Shilo | Saturday, April 4, 2009

Gül nominated as candidate for president
Turkey's ruling party on Tuesday nominated Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül as its candidate for president. The move set aside a possible controversy over Prime Minister Erdogan's potential candidacy. But is Gül any better? First lady in headscarf? (Read on) by Annette Grossbongardt

Mark Alexander

Blair's ”10 utterly ruinous” years
THE TELEGRAPH: “The past decade has seen a sustained assault on public probity, economic responsibility, constitutional efficiency, the rule of law, administrative competence, liberty of the subject, and our international reputation of a sort unknown in living memory. I defer to no one in my disdain for the Major government: but, with the notable exceptions of its economic buffoonery and its toadying to pro-Europeanism, it could not hold a candle to the present crew for sheer destructiveness of our values, our way of life and our money.

If you seek its monument, look around you. Our public services, which we were told were safe only in Labour's hands, are nearly non-serviceable. As a group of doctors protested on Monday, the NHS is now so hopeless that people, having already paid high taxes for the privilege of a free-at-point-of-use service, are making huge sacrifices to pay to go privately.

Children pass record numbers of GCSEs and A-levels, and record numbers go on to university, yet employers report a shortage of able graduates and, as Jeff Randall wrote here a fortnight ago, would rather have entrants straight from school.

Council taxes, like many other imposts, have risen far faster than inflation, yet local services (bins again) are being cut. Do not be deceived by a near-doubling of the prison population in the past decade into thinking Labour is "tough on crime". The police are now a weapon of social engineering, with promotion at the highest levels contingent usually on how well an officer buys the ruling ideology, and not how good he is at catching criminals.

Crime has risen because of Labour's refusal to address the causes of criminality, notably family breakdown, poor schools and the proliferation of drugs. The knife culture, and the present epidemic of youths going around stabbing each other to death, is redolent of what a happy country Labour has made." Poor Britannia - 10 awful years under Blairism (Read it all) by Simon Heffer

Mark Alexander

Tehran true to form
The surprising thing is that we’re surprised by Tehran’s actions

TIMESONLINE: Oscar Wilde insisted that “life imitates art far more than art imitates art”. What would he have made of the present hostage crisis? Twenty-four hours before Iran seized 15 Britons its mission to the UN issued a statement expressing outrage at 300, a movie based on the Battle of Thermopylae in 480BC. In this epic struggle between a small band of Spartans and a massive army of Persians, the ancestors of modern Iran have been painted, the protest ran, as the “embodiment of evil, moral corruption”. They have a point. According to Paul Cartledge, Professor of Greek History at Cambridge University, Persia was “not a one-dimensional barbaric despotism” but, then again, it was “by no means well disposed to Greek-style democracy” either. Bullying, manipulative Iran? No change there, then by Tim Hames

Mark Alexander

Irresponsible or free? That is the question!
They insisted that she conceal her fatigues with a white abaya, cover her hair with a hijab. It was with her soft voice and in her round, girlish handwriting that the apology for her country’s actions had to be made.

This war has a workaday military guise, but as the treatment of Leading Seaman Faye Turney shows, it is a collision between two irreconcilable civilisations. Its spoils are more than oil reserves, disputed waters or regional influence, but, at its very core, the right of dominion over women.

What a perplexing and alien creature Seaman Turney must appear to this Iranian regime. A young woman working close-knit with men, proud to perform her dangerous task of piloting speedboats as well as any one of them. A wife and mother, moreover, away from her small daughter, who has put military career before marital and maternal duties. What must Iran make of this free woman

Mark Alexander

Melanie Phillips on the appeasement of Iran and the weak response of the British government to an “act of war”
”Yet in its response to these events, Britain seems to be in some kind of dreamworld. There is no sense of urgency or crisis, no outpouring of anger. There seems to be virtually no grasp of what is at stake. ...

... What on earth has happened to this country of ours, for so many centuries a byword for defending itself against attack, not least against piracy or acts of war on the high seas?

Twenty-five years ago, we re-took the Falklands after the Argentines invaded. Faced with an act of war against our dependency, Mrs Thatcher had no hesitation. Aggression had to be fought and our people defended. It was the right thing to do.

Can anyone imagine Mrs T wringing her hands in this way over Iran’s seizure of our Marines?” - Melanie Phillips

MELANIE PHILLIPS: Admiral Lord Nelson must be revolving in his grave. While on patrol in the Shatt-al-Arab waterway between Iran and Iraq, 15 Royal Marines and sailors were seized by Iran on a trumped up charge that they had entered Iranian waters.
Six days on and there is no sign of their release. On the contrary, Iran has stepped up its aggression, threatening to charge the kidnapped marines with espionage and even denying them British consular access. The Appeasement of Iran

Mark Alexander

Should women be sent into harm’s way to defend our nation?
BBC: Women now make up almost one in 10 of Britain's military personnel.

While they had served in a number of important roles since World War II, it was only in the early 1990s that the traditional gender barriers began to come down.

The separate branches of the military for women - the Wrens for the navy and Wracs for the army - were scrapped.

Out went differences like separate ranks and even different coloured badges for women who had served alongside the navy.

In came the chance for women to take on new roles from serving on ships at sea to flying RAF fighter jets or army helicopters. Women on the military frontline

WATCH BBC VIDEO: Interview with Faye Turney before her capture, discussing her rôle as mother and her military career

Should a mother join the Navy?

What was Faye Turney doing in the Gulf?

Mark Alexander

The fanaticism of Islam
Is it racist to condemn fanaticism?
THE TIMES: Once I was held captive in Kabul. I was the bride of a charming, seductive and Westernised Afghan Muslim whom I met at an American college. The purdah I experienced was relatively posh but the sequestered all-female life was not my cup of chai — nor was the male hostility to veiled, partly veiled and unveiled women in public.

When we landed in Kabul, an airport official smoothly confiscated my US passport. “Don’t worry, it’s just a formality,” my husband assured me. I never saw that passport again. I later learnt that this was routinely done to foreign wives — perhaps to make it impossible for them to leave. Overnight, my husband became a stranger. The man with whom I had discussed Camus, Dostoevsky, Tennessee Williams and the Italian cinema became a stranger. He treated me the same way his father and elder brother treated their wives: distantly, with a hint of disdain and embarrassment.

In our two years together, my future husband had never once mentioned that his father had three wives and 21 children. Nor did he tell me that I would be expected to live as if I had been reared as an Afghan woman. I was supposed to lead a largely indoor life among women, to go out only with a male escort and to spend my days waiting for my husband to return or visiting female relatives, or having new (and very fashionable) clothes made.

In America, my husband was proud that I was a natural-born rebel and free thinker. In Afghanistan, my criticism of the treatment of women and of the poor rendered him suspect, vulnerable. He mocked my horrified reactions. But I knew what my eyes and ears told me. I saw how poor women in chadaris were forced to sit at the back of the bus and had to keep yielding their place on line in the bazaar to any man. How my eyes were opened to the barbarity of Islam by Phyllis Chesler

Mark Alexander