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Javier E

Trump and Johnson aren't replaying the 1930s - but it's just as frightening | George Mo... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ohnson-fascism-us-uk-rightwing

fascism authoritarian crisis trump culture politics 1930s 2020s

shared by Javier E on 02 Jul 20 - No Cached
  • anger that should be directed at billionaires is instead directed by them. Facing inequality and exclusion, poor wages and insecure jobs, people are persuaded by the newspapers billionaires own and the parties they fund to unleash their fury on immigrants, Muslims, the EU and other “alien” forces.
  • From the White House, his Manhattan tower and his Florida resort, Donald Trump tweets furiously against “elites”. Dominic Cummings hones the same message as he moves between his townhouse in Islington, with its library and tapestry room, and his family estate in Durham. Clearly, they don’t mean political or economic elites. They mean intellectuals: the students, teachers, professors and independent thinkers who oppose their policies. Anti-intellectualism is a resurgent force in politics.
  • Myths of national greatness and decline abound. Make America Great Again and Take Back Control propose a glorious homecoming to an imagined golden age. Conservatives and Republicans invoke a rich mythology of family life and patriarchal values. Large numbers of people in the United Kingdom regret the loss of empire.
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  • Extravagant buffoons, building their power base through the visual media, displace the wooden technocrats who once dominated political life. Debate gives way to symbols, slogans and sensation. Political parties that once tolerated a degree of pluralism succumb to cults of personality.
  • Politicians and political advisers behave with impunity. During the impeachment hearings, Trump’s lawyer argued, in effect, that the president is the nation, and his interests are inseparable from the national interest.
  • Trump shamelessly endorses nativism and white supremacy. Powerful politicians, such as the Republican congressman Steve King, talk of defending “western civilisation” against “subjugation” by its “enemies”. Minorities are disenfranchised. Immigrants are herded into detention centres.
  • Political structures still stand, but they are hollowed out, as power migrates into unaccountable, undemocratic spheres: conservative fundraising dinners, US political action committees, offshore trade tribunals, tax havens and secrecy regimes.
  • The bodies supposed to hold power to account, such as the Electoral Commission and the BBC, are attacked, disciplined and cowed. Politicians and newspapers launch lurid attacks against parliament, the judiciaryand the civil service.
  • Political lying becomes so rife that voters lose the ability to distinguish fact from fiction. Conspiracy theories proliferate, distracting attention from the real ways in which our rights and freedoms are eroded
  • With every unpunished outrage against integrity in public life, trust in the system corrodes. The ideal of democracy as a shared civic project gives way to a politics of dominance and submission.
  • All these phenomena were preconditions for – or facilitators of – the rise of European fascism during the first half of the 20th century. I find myself asking a question I thought we would never have to ask again. Is the resurgence of fascism a real prospect, on either side of the Atlantic?
  • It is easier to define as a political method. While its stated aims may vary wildly, the means by which it has sought to grab and build power are broadly consistent. But I think it’s fair to say that though the new politics have some strong similarities to fascism, they are not the same thing.
  • Trump’s politics and Johnson’s have some characteristics that were peculiar to fascism, such as their constant excitation and mobilisation of their base through polarisation, their culture wars, their promiscuous lying, their fabrication of enemies and their rhetoric of betrayal
  • But there are crucial differences. Far from valorising and courting young people, they appeal mostly to older voters. Neither relies on paramilitary terror
  • Neither government seems interested in using warfare as a political tool.
  • Trump and Johnson preach scarcely regulated individualism: almost the opposite of the fascist doctrine of total subordination to the state.
  • Last century’s fascism thrived on economic collapse and mass unemployment. We are nowhere near the conditions of the Great Depression, though both countries now face a major slump in which millions could lose their jobs and homes.
  • Not all the differences are reassuring. Micro-targeting on social media, peer-to-peer texting and now the possibility of deepfake videos allow today’s politicians to confuse and misdirect people, to bombard us with lies and conspiracy theories, to destroy trust and create alternative realities more quickly and effectively than any tools 20th-century dictators had at their disposal.
  • this isn’t fascism. It is something else, something we have not yet named. But we should fear it and resist it as if it were.
hannahcarter11

Boris Johnson, Seen as a Trump Ally, Signals Alignment With Biden - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...boris-johnson-joe-biden.html

World Johnson trump biden

shared by hannahcarter11 on 30 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Prime Minister Boris Johnson rolled out ambitious, back-to-back initiatives on military spending and climate change this week, which have little in common except that both are likely to please a very important new person in Mr. Johnson’s life: President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.
  • The prime minister, whom President Trump has embraced as a like-minded populist, is eager to show he can work with the incoming president as well as he did with the outgoing one.
  • That is important, analysts said, because Brexit will deprive Britain of what had historically been one of its greatest assets to the United States: serving as an Anglophone bridge to the leaders of continental Europe.
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  • Mr. Johnson has yet to deliver on another challenge that would please Mr. Biden: a trade agreement with the European Union. Mr. Biden has already voiced concern to Mr. Johnson that if the negotiations go awry, it could jeopardize the Good Friday Accord, which ended decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.
  • Mr. Johnson cast his initiatives as gestures of support to allies, even at a time when the pandemic has busted public finances.
  • “Britain must be true to our history, to stand alongside our allies, sharing the burden, and bringing our expertise to bear on the world’s toughest problems,” Mr. Johnson said in introducing the defense spending plan to the House of Commons.
  • the Biden team will look favorably on this announcement because Biden will be as sensitive as Trump was, and Obama was, to the willingness of allies to shoulder more of the burden.”
  • Mr. Biden has pledged to reinvigorate America’s climate policy by swiftly rejoining the Paris climate accord. Analysts said he would also try to heal strains in the NATO alliance, which has been under relentless attack by Mr. Trump, who has accused other members of not paying their fair share of its costs.
  • The defense budget, Mr. Johnson claimed, will be the largest expansion of military spending since the Cold War: an increase of 24.1 billion pounds ($31.9 billion) over the next four years. That is nearly triple the increases his Conservative Party promised in its policy manifesto during the 2019 election.
  • The climate package, which claims to do nothing less than ignite a “green industrial revolution,” sets a goal of making Britain a net zero emitter of carbon dioxide by 2050. It would change the way people heat their homes and invest in alternative energy sources, in addition to banning the sale of new fossil fuel-powered vehicles by 2030.
  • The climate package lacked the levels of investment pledged by Germany and France to reach their emissions-reduction targets. The military budget contained no information on what the money would be spent on; that is to be decided by a review of foreign, defense, security and development policy that will concluded early next year.
  • Mr. Biden’s defeat of Mr. Trump has radically reshaped the landscape for Mr. Johnson, confronting him with an American leader who opposed Brexit and is unlikely to make an Anglo-American trade agreement a priority, as the pro-Brexit Mr. Trump did.
  • Britain’s emphasis on defense, Mr. Fraser said, plays up a competitive advantage over France and Germany. Both spend proportionately less on their militaries and are not as closely integrated in security matters with the United States.
  • Britain confirmed the creation of a National Cyber Force, a joint venture of the Defense Ministry and GCHQ, the electronic surveillance agency.
  • Still, as several experts noted, Mr. Johnson’s bid to be useful to Mr. Biden will mean far less if Britain fails to strike a trade deal with Brussels. A yearlong transition period is set to expire on Jan. 1, and economists warn that not having a new agreement to take its place would do serious harm.
Javier E

The parable of Boris Johnson | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...the-parable-of-boris-johnson

politics history crisis culture

shared by Javier E on 20 Jan 22 - No Cached
  • In the coming days or weeks, he may be kicked out of office by his own MPs. More likely, he will cling on in 10 Downing Street under the permanent threat of eviction. Either way, he no longer controls the fate of his own premiership.
  • Downing Street indulged in routine late-night booze-ups while the rest of the country was under strict lockdown. The prime minister’s disingenuous attempts to wriggle out of being blamed did him no good—indeed, they served only to reveal his and his wife’s own carousing.
  • Double standards at the top tend to corrupt the whole of public life. More important, it raises two other of Mr Johnson’s attributes that plague post-Brexit Britain.
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  • The first is Mr Johnson’s childish lack of seriousness about the business of government. Downing Street’s fightback this week, supposedly under the title “Operation Red Meat”, launched a fusillade of Tory-pleasing pledges to abolish the BBC licence fee and stop asylum-seekers from reaching Britain across the English Channel.
  • The government says it will get the Royal Navy to police the seas and send applicants away, reportedly to be processed in Ghana or Rwanda. None of that bluster survived the briefest encounter with reality.
  • This lack of seriousness has infected the government.
  • This week the Tories took credit for the fact that Britain has the fastest annual growth rate in the G7 and that output regained its pre-pandemic level in November, ahead of forecasts. But they have not grappled with Brexit’s probable long-term hit to productivity, of about 4%.
  • Over five years, Britain’s growth rate has been poor. Inflation, which reached 5.4% in the 12 months to December, a 30-year high, means real average weekly pay is less than in 2007. Business investment is lower than before the referendum.
  • unveiled plenty of big economy-boosting ideas, including levelling up prosperity across Britain, tearing down planning restrictions and making Britain a science superpower.
  • The big ideas are either still slogans or have been quietly abandoned
  • At the same time, the Tories have pressed ahead with crowd-pleasing, illiberal bills that trample civil liberties and restrict the rights of new citizens. It is a mark of Mr Johnson’s unseriousness that he tosses aside his vaunted classical liberal beliefs as carelessly as an empty bottle.
  • To get Brexit done, Mr Johnson agreed on a customs border in the Irish Sea and then proceeded to pretend he hadn’t.
  • He argued that Britain would escape the regulatory straitjacket of the European Union, but he has avoided doing much deregulating—which, however swashbuckling it sounds in a headline, tends in real life to be unpopular.
  • To prosper, Britain needs decent relations with the EU, its closest neighbour and biggest trading partner. But Mr Johnson relishes picking fights instead, because he likes to play to the gallery.
  • Mr Johnson has crumbled because he repeatedly failed to tell the truth to Parliament and the nation about Downing Street’s bacchanals.
  • First he declared that his staff did not hold parties. When that was disproved, he denied knowing about them. When it emerged that he had been at one, he said he had not realised they counted as parties. And when it was claimed that he had been warned they did, he seemed to suggest that he misunderstood the rules his own government had drafted. It is a pattern that stretches back to his time as a journalist, when he lied to his editors; to when he was an editor, when he lied to his proprietor; and to when he was a shadow minister, when he lied to his party’s leader.
  • almost half of Conservative Party members still believe that Mr Johnson’s account of Number 10’s revels is true, compared with just 13% of all voters in a poll published a few days earlier.
  • the excesses of Partygate have shown that the post-Brexit Tory party has lost touch with reality.
  • It is a strength of the parliamentary system that MPs can bring about a rapid change of direction. If the Conservative Party is to find its way, it will need a new leader. If reforms are to take root, they will need detailed planning and sustained application.
Javier E

Britain's Guilty Men and Women - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...671812

history uk pm crisis decline politics

shared by Javier E on 22 Oct 22 - No Cached
  • Today, Britain is very much not on the edge of national annihilation, whatever the hyperbolic coverage of the past few weeks might suggest. But it is in the grip of chaotic mismanagement that has left the country poorer and weaker, having lost its fourth prime minister in six turbulent years since the Brexit referendum and with an economy pushed close to its breaking point.
  • when did this era of the small people begin? What was its genesis?
  • He had also signed up to a new European treaty that left a fatal tension at the heart of Britain’s membership in the European Union. Major’s European compromise left Britain inside the European Union but outside its single currency. In time, the inherent tension in this position would reveal itself in disastrous fashion—the historian Niall Ferguson has called it “Brexit 1.0.”
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  • 1990 offers a deeper origin story. That was the year Margaret Thatcher was pulled from office and replaced by John Major, a man no one thinks of as a giant. Major inherited a country in a stronger position than at any time since the 1960s, yet handed over power to Tony Blair having frittered away the Conservative Party’s reputation for economic management.
  • The stars of the show were the three prime ministers before her—Boris Johnson, Theresa May, and David Cameron—with supporting roles for the former chancellor George Osborne and former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.
  • When Blair left office in 2007, the country was still relatively unified and prosperous. It fell to Gordon Brown, Blair’s replacement, to watch everything explode in the great financial crisis. All of these milestones—1990, 1997, and 2007—have legitimate claims to be the genesis of the current crisis. Yet none quite fits. The regime of little men had not begun. That came in 2010
  • For the past 12 years, Britain has been led by a succession of Conservative prime ministers—each, like Russian dolls, somehow smaller than the last—who have contrived to leave the country in a worse state than it was when they took over
  • Without Truss realizing it, Britain had become too weak to cope with a leader so small.
  • In this absurd hospital drama, there were also walk-on parts for two former Labour leaders, Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn. And Boris Johnson is now attempting a comeback!
  • May was a serious, qualified, thoughtful Conservative who had opposed Brexit but now assumed responsibility for it. But she was simply not up to the job. Being prime minister requires not just diligence and seriousness but political acumen and an ability to lead. She had too little of either.
  • Both Cameron and Clegg had been elected leader of their respective parties through American-style primaries. Back then, such votes were lauded as “democratization,” much-needed medicine to treat an ailing old constitution. They were no such thing. Rather than injecting more democracy into the process, they did the opposite—empowering tiny caucuses to send their minority tribunes to challenge parliamentary rule.
  • Miliband would further “modernize” the process with rule changes that would send the party careering toward populist extremism and electoral annihilation under Jeremy Corbyn. In time, such institutional vandalism would have dire consequences for both the Conservative and Labour Parties, and therefore the country.
  • Cameron and Clegg went to work hacking back public spending with extraordinary severity. The result was that Britain experienced the slowest economic recovery in its history, which meant that the coalition government failed to balance the books as it had hoped—exactly, in fact, as Labour had warned would happen
  • Britain had bailed out the bankers and then watched them get rich while the rest of the country got poorer. No wonder people were angry.
  • Cameron began to panic about the threat to British interests from a more cohesive euro-zone bloc—which was an inevitable consequence of Major’s compromise. After Cameron’s demands for new safeguards to those interests were ignored, he vetoed the euro zone’s reforms. The euro zone went ahead with them anyway. One year into Cameron’s premiership, in 2011, the nightmare of British isolation within the EU had come true.
  • For the next five years, the British prime minister took a series of gambles that ended in disaster. Alarmed by his veto failure, Cameron concluded that Britain needed to renegotiate its membership entirely—and put it to voters in a referendum, which he promised in 2013. By then he had also agreed to a referendum on Scottish independence. Britain’s future was on the line not once but twice.
  • A year after his election victory, Cameron had to keep his promise of a referendum on Europe, lost, and resigned. As with the Scottish case, he had refused to countenance any preparations for the possibility of a winning Leave vote. Cameron left behind a country divided and a Parliament that did not want Brexit but was tasked with delivering it without any idea how. By any estimation, it was a catastrophic miscarriage of statecraft.
  • A second origin date, then, might be 1997, when Tony Blair came to power. Blair proved unable to change Major’s compromise and pursued instead a series of radical constitutional changes that slowly undermined the unity of the country he thought he was building.
  • May was hampered throughout her troubled final years as prime minister with a leader of the opposition in Jeremy Corbyn, who was ideologically hostile to any conciliation or compromise with the Tories, empowered by both his own sense of righteous purity and the mandate he had twice received from Labour Party members. He, after all, had a mandate outside Parliament.
  • Despite his brief tenure, Johnson remains one of the most influential—and notorious—figures in postwar British history. Without him, the country likely would not have voted for Brexit in the first place, let alone seen it pushed through Parliament.
  • In their first act in power, Truss and Kwarteng blew up the British government’s reputation for economic competence—and with it went the household budgets of Middle England.
  • Guilty Men was indeed something of a character assassination of Neville Chamberlain, Baldwin, and MacDonald, among others. Many historians now say these appeasers of the 1930s bought their country much-needed time.
  • each, unquestionably, left their country poorer, weaker, angrier, and more divided. Over the past 12 years, Britain has degraded. A sense of decay fills the air, and so, too, a feeling of genuine public fury.
Javier E

The May delusion: Britain's new prime minister will regret appointing Boris Johnson | T... - 0 views

www.economist.com/...may-delusion

UK cabinet brexit

shared by Javier E on 16 Jul 16 - No Cached
  • Brexit will be the defining issue of Mrs May’s premiership. It cannot just be cordoned off. Moreover, its success depends not just on how it is perceived at home, and how it goes down in the Conservative Party, but what it actually achieves. On that front, the prime minister has appointed the wrong people.
  • The new foreign secretary is clever, worldly and magnetic, as I argued in my recent profile of him. Personally he is likeable. But he is also gaffe-prone and the progenitor of a series of undiplomatic comments about other peoples. Much more damning: he is unscrupulous, unserious and poorly organised. His leadership campaign failed not because he lacked the potential to go all the way, but because he struggled with basic daily tasks. Michael Gove only plunged the dagger twixt the former mayor’s shoulder blades because he had been driven to exasperation by Mr Johnson’s forgetfulness and lack of preparation (rumour has it he had written barely a third of his announcement speech by the early hours of the day he was due to give it).
  • Brexit, believe it or not, is about more than opinion polls and Tory traumas. It is about Britain’s future: a future that will turn not on the doubtful willingness of foreign governments to bend over backwards to tolerate British demands, but on the ability of the government in London to persuade them of its case and reconcile the desires of the British electorate with those of EU27 electorates. Brexiteers do not like to admit it, but whether or not Britain gets a deal that will satisfy its population and rein in the populist surge in the country is largely a function of that ability.
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  • It is like putting a baboon at the wheel of the Rolls Royce. Sure, the steering wheel, clutch and accelerator will keep the baboon happy and busy. But the price in collateral damage could be high.
Javier E

After Boris Nemtsov's Assassination, 'There Are No Longer Any Limits' - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-are-no-longer-any-limits.html

assassination russia

shared by Javier E on 01 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Putin’s aggressive foreign policy, his increasingly conservative domestic policy, his labeling the opposition a “fifth column” and “national traitors,” his state television whipping up a militant, nationalistic fervor — all of this creates a certain atmosphere. Putin, after all, has a history of playing with fire, only to have the flames get away from him. After years of the Kremlin tacitly supporting ultranationalist, neo-Nazi groups, the same skinheads staged a violent protest at the foot of the Kremlin walls in 2010 while riot police officers stood by and watched helplessly. Today, a rabid nationalism has swallowed up most of the country, and it is no longer clear that Putin can control it. “In this kind of atmosphere, everything is possible,” Pavlovsky told me. “This is a Weimar atmosphere. There are no longer any limits.”
  • Nemtsov’s assassination took that warning to its logical conclusion. Now, “we live in a different political reality,” tweeted Leonid Volkov, a prominent opposition activist. “The fact that they killed him is a message to frighten everyone, the brave and the not brave,” Yashin said. “That this is what happens to people who go against the government of our country.” Anatoly Chubais — who, like Nemtsov, served in the Yeltsin government, and who remains close to Putin — visited the site of the shooting this morning. “If, just a few days ago, people in our city are carrying signs that say ‘Let’s finish off the fifth column,’ and today they kill Nemtsov,” he said in a statement, referring to the Kremlin-sponsored anti-Maidan protest in Moscow last weekend, “what will happen tomorrow?” Or, as Albats put it, “Hunting season is open.”
redavistinnell

EU referendum: Leaving EU 'big gamble' for UK security - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...olitics-eu-referendum-35628051

referendum leaving security bbc news

shared by redavistinnell on 22 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • EU referendum: Leaving EU 'big gamble' for UK security
  • David Cameron will face MPs later as he presents his case for the UK remaining within the 28-member organisation.But Mayor of London Boris Johnson has again insisted that the country has a "great future" outside the EU.
  • The prime minister will outline details to MPs in a Commons statement, starting at 15.30 GMT, of last week's deal with EU leaders on reforms to the terms of the UK's membership, which paved the way for him to call a referendum on EU membership on 23 June.
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  • He rejected claims by former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith, one of six Cabinet ministers campaigning for the UK to leave the EU, that the UK's membership actually exposed it to greater security risks, pointing out that the EU had taken the lead in confronting Russia over its annexation of Crimea and Iran over its nuclear programme.
  • "It is through the EU that you exchange criminal records and passenger records and work together on counter-terrorism...We need the collective weight of the EU when you are dealing with Russian aggression or terrorism. You need to be part of these big partnerships."
  • It is less than 48 hours since the referendum date was announced, but already the campaigning is in full swing. The leave campaign has been given a major boost by Boris Johnson, who says the only way to change the EU is to vote to go.
  • Leaving his home in north London, Mr Johnson said his immediate focus was his remaining time in City Hall and there would be plenty of time to discuss the issue of Europe, and the UK's "great future" outside it, over the next four months.
  • "There is only one way to get the change we need - and that is to vote to go; because all EU history shows that they only really listen to a population when it says no," he wrote.
  • Several other senior Tories - including Justice Secretary Michael Gove - have already said they will join the Out campaign.
  • In a 2,000-word column for the Daily Telegraph, Mr Johnson said staying inside the union would lead to "an erosion of democracy".
  • The prime minister, who argues EU membership offers more power to the UK, will take his case to the Commons this afternoon.
  • However, his father, Stanley Johnson, told BBC Radio 5 live he disagreed with his son's argument.He denied Mr Johnson's decision had been a "career move", saying he had "completely thrown away" any chance of a post inside Mr Cameron's cabinet by aligning himself against the prime minister.
  • The prime minister announced the date of the in/out referendum outside Number 10 on Saturday, having returned from agreeing a deal in Brussels that he argued gave the UK a "special status" within the EU.
Javier E

Opinion | Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Rise of Radical Incompetence - The New Yo... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...conservatives-boris-trump.html

incompetence competence populism sovereignty government bureaucratic Politics gop trump culture

shared by Javier E on 13 Jul 18 - No Cached
  • One thing the two men share is a recklessness that looks like courage in the eyes of their supporters, but which also sabotages the work of policymaking and diplomacy.
  • On the lengthy efforts of Mrs. May's government to arrive at a compromise with Brussels, Mr. Trump scoffed that “deals that take too long are never good ones.”
  • These are two incommensurable ideas of what power consists of, although any effective state must have both at its disposa
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • the arguments underway inside Britain’s Conservative Party speak of a deeper rift within liberal democracies today, which shows no sign of healing. In conceptual terms, this is a conflict between those who are sympathetic to government and those striving to reassert sovereignty.
  • When we speak of government, we refer to the various technical and bureaucratic means by which policies and plans are delivered. Government involves officials, data-gathering, regulating and evaluating. As a governmental issue, Brexit involves prosaic problems such as how to get trucks through ports.
  • Sovereignty, on the other hand, is always an abstract notion of where power ultimately lies, albeit an abstraction that modern states depend on if they’re to command obedience. As a sovereign issue, Brexit involves bravado appeals to “the people” and “the nation.”
  • nobody has any idea what “hard” Brexit actually means in policy terms. It is not so much hard as abstract. “Soft” Brexit might sound weak or halfhearted, but it is also the only policy proposal that might actually work.
  • One way to understand the rise of reactionary populism today is as the revenge of sovereignty on government. This is not simply a backlash after decades of globalization, but against the form of political power that facilitated it, which is technocratic, multilateral and increasingly divorced from local identities
  • A common thread linking “hard” Brexiteers to nationalists across the globe is that they resent the very idea of governing as a complex, modern, fact-based set of activities that requires technical expertise and permanent officials
  • The more extreme fringes of British conservatism have now reached the point that American conservatives first arrived at during the Clinton administration: They are seeking to undermine the very possibility of workable government.
  • What happens if sections of the news media, the political classes and the public insist that only sovereignty matters and that the complexities of governing are a lie invented by liberal elites?
  • it gives rise to celebrity populists, personified by Mr. Trump, whose inability to engage patiently or intelligently with policy issues makes it possible to sustain the fantasy that governing is simple.
  • another byproduct of the anti-government attitude is a constant wave of exits.
jayhandwerk

Boris Johnson backs diplomatic solution to North Korea crisis | Politics | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...solution-to-north-korea-crisis

politics US policy johnson

shared by jayhandwerk on 25 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • While Johnson will stress that the US president has “an absolute duty” to prepare for a possible military option if North Korea is about to attack the United States, the foreign secretary will say diplomatic efforts must be paramount.
  • Johnson is also to use his speech, extracts of which were released in advance by the Foreign Office, to praise the Iran nuclear deal, another diplomatic effort repeatedly condemned by Trump.
  • While the government is careful to avoid directly criticising Trump, Johnson is making it very clear by highlighting Tillerson’s method that he does not support the US president’s notably more aggressive approach.
Javier E

Andrew Sullivan: How Boris Johnson Could Still Get a Brexit - 0 views

nymag.com/...-johnson-bad-start-brexit.html

national emergency psychedelics brexit

shared by Javier E on 07 Sep 19 - No Cached
  • It seems to me that one thing our culture has lost is a space for “existential reckoning.” Perhaps its polar opposite is being Very Online.
  • forcing us into such a reckoning is what religion and brutal reality once did for many: It challenged us to assess ourselves fully, to see ourselves under the eyes of eternity, to live with the knowledge of death under a cloud of unknowing. This perspective was reinforced by modes of pre-secular thought as well as by the lived experience in previous generations of existential danger, illness, hunger, and death.
  • In a secular world of previously unimaginable comfort and long lives, we rarely get to access the existential fear and dread that counterintuitively can lead to serenity and perspective. Maybe in modernity, psychedelics are therefore the best alternative to traditional religion, and may begin to replace or supplement its function, as our disenchantment blocks our access to the faith of the past.
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  • I’ve never been more aware of the presence of God than when I have taken psilocybin. And the God it unveils is a loving one, at peace with us — the God I was taught to believe in. You can become aware of the need for love and forgiveness, as your barriers to feeling and knowing slowly give way to acceptance of what is, and unity with it
  • this can be terrifying. Human consciousness is often terrifying: “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me,” as Pascal once said.
  • But for people approaching death, or enduring depression, or lost in addiction, access to these deeper truths can also provide real spiritual sustenance, and uplift.
  • It isn’t that the chemicals force you to feel one way; it is that they allow you to feel more deeply what you already know but hide from yourself, and this knowledge can lead to a change in your life.
  • Those of you who voted Democrat in the last election may have been under the impression that this would prevent new funding for Trump’s wall. But in our current neo-monarchy, your vote doesn’t really count. The Congress, it turns out, only has the power of the purse when the president doesn’t declare a fake national emergency to steal it
  • The entire national emergency shtick is a relatively recent one (the National Emergencies Act was passed in 1976), and it exists because norms have always dictated that a president would be responsible enough not to abuse it
  • Senator Mike Lee’s Article One Act strikes me as a shrewd response. It allows a president to declare a national emergency, but specifies that after one month, the emergency expires unless the Congress renews it by a simple majority. Right now, the Congress can only cancel an emergency declaration with a veto-proof two-thirds majority.
annabelteague02

Boris Johnson: UK Prime Minister tests positive for coronavirus - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by annabelteague02 on 27 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • In a video, Johnson said he was experiencing a temperature and a persistent cough, which are key symptoms of the virus, and that he took a test on the advice of the country's chief medical officer, Chris Whitty.
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 27 Mar 20
       
      he got tested when he started having symptoms, which is setting a good example for his country
  • Few heads of government, however, have contracted it.
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 27 Mar 20
       
      is it possible they have contracted it but refuse to get tested so they don't really know?
  • The infection also raises concerns over Johnson's fiancee, Carrie Symonds, who is pregnant.
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 27 Mar 20
       
      that's troubling. i hope she is healthy and staying isolated and safe
brookegoodman

Ridley Scott mocks Donald Trump over coronavirus response | Film | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...utcase-boris-johnson-rationing

crisis culture trump

shared by brookegoodman on 27 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Ridley Scott, the director of Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator and The Martian, has taken aim at Donald Trump and Boris Johnson over their leadership during the coronavirus pandemic.
  • Scott, who was born shortly before the second world war, suggested that countries, the UK in particular, should reintroduce rationing because “people are buying so much food and then the food is rotting”.
  • Scott also said the disparity in the quality of coronavirus coverage across the US news networks was “insane”.
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  • Scott reiterated the advice for people to remain in their own homes, saying: “It’ll be an experience of mild to severe flu for most people and old geezers like me have gotta watch my back.”
Javier E

We scientists said lock down. But UK politicians refused to listen | Helen Ward | Opini... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...coronavirus-science-who-advice

politicians scientist advice response pandemic uk

shared by Javier E on 15 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • It’s now clear that so many people have died, and so many more are desperately ill, simply because our politicians refused to listen to and act on advice. Scientists like us said lock down earlier; we said test, trace, isolate. But they decided they knew better.
  • it is the role of policymakers to act on the best available evidence. In the context of a rapidly growing threat, that means listening to experts with experience of responding to previous epidemics.
  • When I say that politicians “refused to listen”, I am referring to the advice and recommendations coming from the World Health Organization, from China and from Italy. The WHO advice, based on decades of experience and widely accepted by public health leaders and scientists around the world was clear – use every possible tool to suppress transmission. That meant testing and isolating cases, tracing and quarantining contacts, and ramping up hygiene efforts
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Neither the advice nor the science were followed that week. My colleagues, led by Neil Ferguson, published a report on 16 March estimating that without strong suppression, 250,000 people could die in the UK. The government responded that day with a recommendation for social distancing, avoiding pubs and working from home if possible. But there was still no enforcement, and it was left up to individuals and employers to decide what to do. Many people were willing but unable to comply as we showed in a report on 20 March. It was only on 23 March that a more stringent lockdown and economic support was announced.
  • etween 12 and 23 March, tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of people will have been infected.
  • So where to now? Once again, public health experience, including modelling, leads to some very clear recommendations. First, find cases in the community as well as hospitals and care homes; isolate them, and trace their contacts using a combination of local public health teams and digital tools.
  • The current best estimate is that around 1% of those infected will die.
  • Second, know your epidemic. Track the epidemic nationally and locally using NHS, public health and digital surveillance to see where cases are continuing to spread
  • Build community resilience by providing local support for vulnerable people affected by the virus and the negative impact of the control measures.
  • Third, ensure transmission is suppressed in hospitals, care homes and workplaces through the right protective equipment, testing, distancing and hygiene
  • Fourth, ensure that the most vulnerable, socially and medically, are fully protected through simple access to a basic income, rights for migrants, and safety for those affected by domestic violence.
  • I am not looking to blame – but for scrutiny so that lessons can be learned to guide our response. We need to avoid further mistakes, and ensure that the government is hearing, and acting on, the best advice.
Javier E

Trump's push to shorten the coronavirus shutdown proves the captain is flying blind | D... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...es-the-captain-is-flying-blind

trump pandemic response policy politics

shared by Javier E on 24 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • t represented yet another violent policy swing. First, Trump told Americans there was nothing to worry about and the virus would disappear “like a miracle”. Then he spun 180 degrees and declared himself “a wartime president”, issuing federal guidelines urging Americans to limit social contact and stay home. Now, it seems, he is pivoting back to the original position.
  • Trump’s Pollyannish tone was jarring on day that people were dying and hospitals desperately running short of masks and other equipment. It made for a startling contrast with the UK’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, who announced a strict lockdown in Britain, and the draconian measures in place across Europe. It also begged the question of whether citizens would sufficiently trust him to feel safe returning to work or public places and whether state governors would have the final say in any case.
  • But the president insisted “we can do two things at one time”, adding: “We have a very active flu season, more active than most. It’s looking like it’s heading to 50,000 or more deaths – deaths, not cases. 50,000 deaths – which is, that’s a lot. And you look at automobile accidents, which are far greater than any numbers we’re talking about. That doesn’t mean we’re going to tell everybody no more driving of cars. So we have to do things to get our country open.”
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  • Senator Lindsey Graham, usually a Trump loyalist, warned in a tweet: “There is no functioning economy unless we control the virus.”
andrespardo

First Thing: get ready for a long summer on lockdown | US news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-for-a-long-summer-on-lockdown

coronavirus corona crisis

shared by andrespardo on 27 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • get ready for a long summer on lockdown
  • New Zealand easing Covid-19 restrictions, but Deborah Birx says Americans can expect social distancing measures for months to come.
  • New Zealand has “won the battle” against widespread, undetected community transmission of the coronavirus, said the country’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, who announced the lifting of some lockdown measures on Monday after just one death and one new confirmed case of Covid-19 was recorded in the preceding 24 hours.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Hospitals in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the pandemic began, have discharged the last coronavirus patients, while some of Europe’s worst-affected countries are preparing for the cautious easing of restrictions.
  • Boris Johnson is back in No 10 after recovering from Covid-19, and once again taking charge of the UK government’s faltering response to the pandemic.
  • xplained his country’s more successful approach, telling Laura Spinney how Angela Merkel rose to the challenge of the pandemic:
anniina03

Brexit impasse: An election may be the only way - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

policy politics

shared by anniina03 on 24 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • One step forward, two steps back. That seems to be the pace at which the UK is moving towards its exit from the European Union, even as it nears its current Brexit deadline at the end of the month.
  • Johnson's vote on his deal was indicative of its level of support in Parliament, but it wasn't definitive. There still has to be a "meaningful vote" on his pact, and an amendment which passed on Saturday means that every piece of his agreement also needs to be supported in Parliament before Britain can leave the EU.
  • On Tuesday, Johnson won the first parliamentary vote on the legislation designed to implement his deal. The bill passed the confusingly named second reading by by a decent majority, too -- 329 votes to 299. But some Labour MPs who dislike the deal say they voted in favor so that it could move onto the next phase, when amendments can be added.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Boris Johnson finally won a vote on a Brexit deal in Parliament -- only to have his hopes dashed minutes later, when MPs rejected his three-day timetable to rush the legislation through the Commons.
  • Given the likelihood of an extension, Johnson on Thursday opted to come good on his pledge to call an election rather than stomach a lengthy delay.
  • The ball is now in the court of the opposition Labour party, which must agree to the election if it can go ahead.
johnsonel7

Leaked Report on Russian Brexit Interference Raises Questions | Time - 0 views

time.com/...terference-brexit-uk-elections

politics britain russia

shared by johnsonel7 on 18 Nov 19 - No Cached
  • Questions about the British government’s failure to release a report on Russia’s interference in the country’s politics continued to dog Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Sunday as critics said leaks from the document raised concerns about the security of next month’s election.
  • “Boris Johnson therefore needs to clear up the confusion, spin and speculation around this (intelligence committee) report by publishing it in full at the earliest opportunity,’’ she told the Times. “If not, people will rightly continue to ask: what is he trying to hide from the British public and why?”
  • Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 U.S. presidential election found that Russia interfered in the vote in a “sweeping and systemic” fashion. While President Donald Trump dismissed the findings, the U.S. investigation put Russia at the center of worries about the integrity of elections worldwide.
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