Is Britain’s parliamentary democracy dead?
“Gove, who is in charge of planning for no deal, did not commit to abide by any law which rebel MPs will attempt to pass this week that could mandate an extension to article 50 in the event of no deal.” Jessica Elgot of the Guardian reports.
This according to a new survey of 2,000 British adults, John Anderer of Study Finds reports.
| Remain | 51% |
| Leave | 46% |
| Indecisive | 4% |
Boris Johnson has seen his one-vote parliamentary majority vanish today, Kate Proctor, Peter Walker, and Heather Stewart of the Guardian report.
The parliament has taken control and ruled out a no-deal Brexit. Good!
| Stop No-Deal Brexit | 329 MPs |
| Allow No-Deal Brexit | 300 MPs |
French filmmaker Olivier Meyrou filmed Yves Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Berge in 1998 for a documentary that hasn’t been released until now, Roger Friedman reports.
The appetite for leaving the EU is all but dead in most member states.
Zimbabwe’s former dictator is dead.
“The man who had been hailed as the hero of Africa’s struggle to throw off colonialism had turned into a tyrant, trampling over human rights and turning a once prosperous country into an economic basket case,” BBC writes.
That’s what a man with contempt for facts and knowledge says to justify his intellectual laziness.
“Boris Johnson referred to David Cameron as a ‘girly swot’ in a recent cabinet paper,” Peter Walker of the Guardian reports.
“Ditching credit cards for facial recognition will remove the last physical barrier between our bodies and Corporate America,” Quentin Fottrell of Market Watch reports.
Dutch News reports that British companies have upped their investments more than five-fold since the Brexit referendum. Meanwhile, the Dutch divest in Britain.
Good news from Washington, one Europhobe less in the White House. “I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House,” Trump tweets.
“Accordingly the court will make an order declaring that the prime minister’s advice to HM the Queen and the prorogation which followed thereon was unlawful and is thus null and of no effect,” the judgement reads.
Apparently Boris Johnson is the first British prime minister to have been found by a court to have misled the monarch.
“Ministers forced to publish documents predicting public disorder, rising prices and disruptions to food and medicines,” Heather Stewart and Peter Walker of the Guardian report.
A new ECFR report suggests a majority of Europeans no longer rely on the US providing security in Europe and want the EU to develop stronger defence mechanisms to remain neutral in international conflicts.
The former permanent secretary at Britain’s Department for Exiting the EU tells the Guardian a no-deal Brexit would mark the beginning of a complex series of negotiations:
“It is not a clean break: what it does is it takes us legally out of the EU. But what it can’t do is undo all of the very close economic ties that we have with the EU, on which so much of our trade as a country depends. And nor would we want to undo all of the close security ties that we have with the EU.
“And because of the importance of those ties both for the EU and the UK, it will remain hugely important to have those expressed through a formal relationship. In other words, we’re going to have to negotiate—and that negotiation on the future relationship starts with citizens, money and the border on the island of Ireland.
“So the notion that no deal somehow means that we can turn our backs on the EU and break all our ties is just nonsensical.”
If you knew proof of the extreme depth of human stupidity, check out these tattoos at The Sun.
Is a new war looming? “The attacks against Abqaiq, the world’s largest oil processing facility, and the Khurais oil field in eastern Saudi Arabia knocked out nearly half of Saudi Arabia’s oil production,” Arab News reports.
“The home town of Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Åkesson has ruled that the gay-pride flag should no longer fly outside the local council offices,” The Local reports.
The homophobes are marching again.
“France reports 74% rise in offences against Jews and Germany records 60% surge in violent attacks,” Jon Henley of the Guardian reports.
British the Brexit czar Stephen Barclay says EU must take risks with Irish border, Daniel Boffey of the Guardian reports.
As expected, the Europhobic Tories will try to make Europe responsible for their mess.
Astronomers around the world are monitoring an interstellar comet hurtling through the solar system, Marina Koren of the Atlantic reports. It’s the second time in less than two years that an object from another star swing by.
Something this bad has to be good, right?
“This massively enlarged prostate of a film can only make you wince with its badly acted geronto-ultraviolence,” Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian writes.
The euro will pose a fundamental question to the Europeans over the next five years, Jan Techau thinks. Will Europe create political unity where economic integration dictates it?
I hope the answer is yes.
President Trump pressed the Ukrainian president in a July call to investigate Joe Biden’s son, an apparently blatant mixture of foreign policy with his 2020 re-election campaign, New York Times reports.
Violent groups infiltrated a peaceful climate change march in Paris, smashing shop windows and torching dustbins en route, Kim Willsher of the Guardian reports.
I had no idea there was such a thing as nude stunts. Jeffrey Bloomer of Slate opened my eyes and made me smile.
Greta Thunberg addressed the UN Climate Action Summit in New York today. I admire her climate activism, but she’s dead wrong on economic growth. The planet will not get better by people getting poorer.
“Thousands of Labour members were handed a shocking pamphlet openly comparing Israel to Adolf Hitler’s Nazis ahead of a debate on Palestine at their conference in Brighton,” Lee Harpin of the Jewish Chronicle writes.
The same source also reports that an anti-Israel activist told Labour members at a conference meeting that Jewish lobby groups weaponise false claims of anti-Semitism.
And police were forced to remove this racist poster welcoming Labour members to the party conference.
“The supreme court has ruled that Boris Johnson’s advice to the Queen that parliament should be prorogued for five weeks at the height of the Brexit crisis was unlawful,” Owen Bowcott and Severin Carrell of the Guardian report.
“Ideology has invaded the human soul itself to expel God from it,” Brazil’s nutjob president Jair Bolsonaro said when addressing the UN General Assembly today.
Puzzling speech to say the least.
“The future does not belong to globalists, the future belongs to patriots,” America’s nutjob president Donald Trump said when addressing the UN General Assembly today.
He’s making a false antinomy.
At the UN General Assembly, Turkey’s nutjob president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan shows a fake propaganda map when criticising Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
Read Shany Mor’s article about this map.
Erdoğan says nothing about his country’s treatment of Kurds.
In Sweden, today, several employees were given leave with pay to strike for the climate. Truly a contradiction in terms. Next step is the married bachelor.
I just listened to Nigel Farage’s speech at the Brexit Party conference in London. Put aside his contempt for Europeans, a worrying thing was how he hailed the Commonwealth (former British Empire) and USA as Britain’s only true friends.
The alt-right’s favourite Kremlin-controlled YouTuber, it seems.
From an article by the Guardian’s Carole Cadwalladr:
I watch the speeches. They have titles like “Who the Hell [sic] You Think You Are? Nigel Farage throws egg in Eurocrat faces.” And “Can’t Barrage the Farrage [sic].” They’ve been viewed millions upon millions of times.
Richard Corbett, the leader of the Labour party in the European parliament, explains how it works. “Farage turns up once a month and often what he talks about has absolutely nothing to do with what’s being discussed. You think, what’s going on? And then you realise it’s got nothing to do with the parliament. It’s just for his social media output. Sometimes he doesn’t even hang around for the answers. Two minutes later, he’s back on the Eurostar and gone.”
It’s these YouTube set-piece speeches, pumped via the site’s algorithm to the phones and laptops of an entirely new generation, that are Farage’s power base now. And, at the centre of this, is RT (formerly Russia Today), the Kremlin-controlled English-language broadcaster. RT made Farage a YouTube star.
Members at the ongoing party conference decided that the Center Party should work to ban circumcision of boys unless there are medical reasons, Expressen reports.
Yesterday, Austria’s 33-year-old conservative Sebastian Kurz won the snap elections. The far-right FPÖ, meanwhile, dropped from almost 26% at the last election to around 16%. Good news!
Apparently, Boris Johnson, as London mayor, gave taxpayers’ money to an American businesswoman with no business in London. He’s now been referred to police watchdog over possible corruption.