{"id":180853,"date":"2016-12-11T21:30:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-12T02:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/12\/11\/both-a-stopped-clock-and-boris-johnson-are-right-twice-a-day\/"},"modified":"2016-12-11T21:30:00","modified_gmt":"2016-12-12T02:30:00","slug":"both-a-stopped-clock-and-boris-johnson-are-right-twice-a-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/12\/11\/both-a-stopped-clock-and-boris-johnson-are-right-twice-a-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Both a Stopped Clock, and Boris Johnson, Are Right Twice a Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Boris Johnson, breaking with a decades long policy of abject sycophancy to the House of Saud, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2016\/dec\/07\/boris-johnson-accuses-saudi-arabia-of-twisting-and-abusing-islam\">has called out the oil rich nation for their antediluvian and violent legacy<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/boris\">Boris Johnson<\/a> accused Saudi Arabia of abusing Islam and acting as a puppeteer in proxy wars throughout the Middle East, in remarks that flout a longstanding Foreign Office convention not to criticise the UK\u2019s allies in public. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The foreign secretary told a conference in Rome last week that the behaviour of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/saudiarabia\">Saudi Arabia<\/a>, and also Iran, was a tragedy, adding that there was an absence of visionary leadership in the region that was willing to reach out across the Sunni-Shia divide. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">At the event, Johnson said: \u201cThere are politicians who are twisting and abusing religion and different strains of the same religion in order to further their own political objectives. That\u2019s one of the biggest political problems in the whole region. And the tragedy for me \u2013 and that\u2019s why you have these proxy wars being fought the whole time in that area \u2013 is that there is not strong enough leadership in the countries themselves.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/>The foreign secretary then identified Saudi Arabia and Iran specifically, saying: \u201cThat\u2019s why you\u2019ve got the Saudis, Iran, everybody, moving in, and puppeteering and playing proxy wars.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Needless to say, the usual suspects, industries dependent on Riyadh and old Middle East &#8220;experts&#8221;, have been squealing about this like stuck pigs.<\/p>\n<p>In the words of Otto Maddox, &#8220;F%$# that.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Boris Johnson, breaking with a decades long policy of abject sycophancy to the House of Saud, has called out the oil rich nation for their antediluvian and violent legacy: Boris Johnson accused Saudi Arabia of abusing Islam and acting as a puppeteer in proxy wars throughout the Middle East, in remarks that flout a longstanding &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[815,876,842,863],"class_list":["post-180853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-foreign-relations","tag-honesty","tag-house-of-saud","tag-schadenfreude"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180853"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180853\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}