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Ruth King

How to Make China Pay By John Yoo & Ivana Stradner

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/how-to-make-china-pay/

The WHO sells out to China, but we don’t have to.

One of the big questions facing the international community today is how to hold China legally and politically accountable for all its dishonesty and harm to people around the world. According to reports, U.S. intelligence agencies have confirmed to the White House that China has deliberately understated the number of its people who have contracted and died from the coronavirus epidemic. Such deceit follows Beijing’s recklessness in suppressing news of the origins, rapid spread, and lethality of COVID-19 in December and January. Chinese officials punished doctors who tried to warn of the outbreak in Wuhan, slowed identification and research on the virus, and allowed thousands to leave the region for the rest of the world.

If China were an individual, a company, or a law-abiding nation, it would be required to provide compensation for the harm it has inflicted globally. The United States alone may well suffer 200,000 or more deaths, billions in health-care costs, trillions in lost economic activity, and trillions more in new government spending. China’s failures render it legally liable under international law, but the COVID-19 crisis has exposed the crisis of ineffectiveness and corruption of international institutions. Instead of focusing on international law, the U.S. should thus protect its national interests by opting for the self-help mechanism.

International institutions provide no meaningful way to force China to remedy the harm it has caused. The United Nations Security Council, allegedly the supreme lawmaking and executive body in international law, cannot hold China to account because China and Russia exercise their permanent right to veto any Security Council resolution. China has rendered the U.N. impotent, even though U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has declared the COVID-19 pandemic the world’s most challenging crisis since World War II, as it has become a threat to international peace and security by shutting down swaths of the global economy and killing thousands, if not millions.

Coronavirus: The Looming Collapse of Europe’s Single Currency by Soeren Kern

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15856/coronavirus-euro-collapse

In Spain, which recently overtook Italy as the epicenter of the coronavirus in Europe, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez committed €200 billion — 20% of the country’s GDP — to alleviate the economic and social consequences of the pandemic. When asked how he would pay for that amount of spending, Sánchez replied that he was counting on financial help from “Europe.”

“The worst growth figure in France since 1945 was in 2009, after the great financial crisis of 2008: -2.2%. We will probably be far beyond -2.2% this year,” Le Maire told the Senate Economic Affairs Committee. “This shows the extent of the economic shock we are facing.” — French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, April 6, 2020

“Today, not a single European country is doing well, which means there is limited willingness for European countries to come to each other’s aid. They are busy dealing with their own crises. Just witness how Italy has been left alone with its crisis by Europe and now rather gets its medical support from China….” — Oliver Hartwich, Executive Director, The New Zealand Initiative, March 23, 2020

“An almighty economic earthquake is in the making. In a few weeks or months, several large European economies will require bailout and assistance packages. These will be several times larger than anything Europe has seen. Yet no country, central bank or institution will be eager or even able to provide them. Even the gargantuan sums on the table now will not be enough.” — Oliver Hartwich, Executive Director of The New Zealand Initiative, March 23, 2020

As the coronavirus unleashes economic shockwaves across Europe, the European single currency, the most visible symbol of European unification, is facing collapse.

The eurozone — a monetary union of 19 of the 27 Member States of the European Union that have adopted the euro as their common currency — is being buffeted not only by the prospect of a deep and long-lasting recession. Northern and Southern European countries are also feuding over possible financial support for Italy and Spain, the EU’s third- and fourth-largest economies, which have been especially hard hit by the coronavirus.

On March 13, European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde dismissed calls by Italy for financial assistance to help it cope with the pandemic. After her comments rattled financial markets, Lagarde quickly reversed course and said that the ECB was “fully committed to avoid any fragmentation in a difficult moment for the euro area.” Italian President Sergio Mattarella replied that Italy had a right to expect solidarity from beyond its borders rather than obstacles.

Progressive lawmakers keep feeding ‘the crime virus’

https://nypost.com/2020/04/06/progressive-lawmakers-keep-feeding-the-crime-virus/

No less an authority than former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton warns that the Legislature’s failure to truly fix last year’s botched criminal-justice reforms has set the city up for big trouble when the COVID-19 threat recedes.

“As we finally get rid of one virus, there’s going to be a second virus created by the Legislature, which is gonna be the crime virus,” he said Sunday.

As the top cop who began New York City’s decades-long success in driving down crime, and then returned to keep the miracle going under lefty Mayor Bill de Blasio, Bratton deserves a listen. If the Legislature’s leaders refuse to listen, maybe the voters will.

Bratton didn’t mince words: State lawmakers, he said, “put so much garbage in, they basically generate a lot of garbage coming out, and that reform package coming out is more of the same.”

Bratton also slammed de Blasio’s drive to dump dangerous Rikers Island detainees onto city streets amid the pandemic, echoing the worries of all five city district attorneys. Some compassionate releases make sense — but, as the DAs put it, “the city’s jail system is capable of appropriately managing the health needs of the remaining inmates.”

Congress’s COVID Response Is Stumbling.Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) Has a Plan to Fix It. By Robert VerBruggen

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-response-josh-hawley-plan-fix-relief-bill/

A lot is going wrong with the recent coronavirus bill.

T he COVID-19 relief bill was supposed to help workers affected by the crisis in two different ways. First, it offered loans to businesses to keep them solvent, promising the loans would be forgiven to the extent that these companies kept their employees on their payrolls. And second, workers who nonetheless lost their job would be eligible for expanded unemployment benefits.

The first approach should have had priority, because it keeps people attached to their employers and ready to go when this is over. That’s a key ingredient to a speedy recovery. Yet the bill’s business provisions have stumbled out of the gate, while the unemployment boost is proving more attractive than it probably should. Smoothing out the implementation of these measures should be a major short-term goal, and Congress should consider reforming, replacing, or supplementing them as soon as practicable. As it happens, Senator Josh Hawley already has a proposal in the latter spirit.

Immediately upon the bill’s passage, it was clear that these programs were less than ideal. Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute pointed out that the business rescue probably didn’t have enough funding to help all the businesses that needed it. And some Republican senators raised the alarm about the structure of the unemployment expansion: It gave out $600 per week on top of other benefits, which is more than many workers make if they stay on the job; and while it’s normally very hard to get unemployment if you leave a job voluntarily, the bill expanded eligibility to include those who had kids home from school or other COVID-related reasons for quitting. The senators thought the mismatch between unemployment benefits and wages was a “drafting error,” but it turned out to be an intentional kludge: States’ unemployment systems aren’t capable of implementing a complicated new benefit formula quickly, so the bill’s drafters resorted to the brute simplicity of $600.

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson Resists Pressure To Issue Stay-At-Home Order Rich Cromwell

https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/06/arkansas-gov-asa-hutchinson-resists-pressure-to-issue-stay-at-home-order/

“Given that Arkansas isn’t a densely populated area, the spread of the virus here has been below projections. People are socially distancing absent a stay-at-home order. Businesses and other organizations that remain open are responding with voluntary measures to slow the spread. ”

In a time when following the herd is lauded as courageous, Gov. Asa Hutchinson is exhibiting actual leadership.

U.S. Surgeon General Vice Admiral Jerome Adams issued a stern warning about the coming week. “Well, it’s tragically fitting that we’re talking at the beginning of Holy Week because this is going to be the hardest and the saddest week of most Americans’ lives, quite frankly. This is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment, only it’s not going to be localized. It’s going to be happening all over the country. And I want America to understand that.”

Adams continued, “It’s why we put out these ‘30 days to stop the spread’ guidelines. These are essentially our national stay-at-home order. And we’re working with governors to figure out their needs, their desires.”

WATCH: CBS News Posts Fraudulent Video Of ICU Nurse Crying Over Poor Working Conditions By Chrissy Clark (!!!???)

https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/06/cbs-news-posts-fraudulent-video-icu-nurse-crying-over-poor-working-conditions/

CBS News posted a video of a nurse who claimed she quit her job after being asked to work in a coronavirus ICU without a face mask.

“America is not prepared, and nurses are not being protected,” said the ICU nurse in the video. “I quit my job today. I went into work and I was assigned to a COVID patient on an ICU unit that has been converted to a designated COVID unit. None of the nurses are wearing masks.”

The video now appears to be inaccurate. Instead of verifying the legitimacy of the video, CBS added background music and captions to highlight a woman who lied about her workplace situation. The woman, who goes by Imaris on social media, has a prominent following on Instagram.

Prior to CBS picking up this video, Imaris posted on her public Facebook page that she has anxiety and bi-polar depression and had not been an employee at the hospital for over a year. She mentioned in her post that she was unsure if she was ready to return to her job.

Imaris also said the growing volume of information on coronavirus “triggers” her.

Gilead ramps up production of experimental Covid-19 treatment amid criticism over access By Ed Silverman

https://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2020/04/05/gilead-covid19-coronavirus-remdesivir/?

In response to intensifying demand, Gilead Sciences (GILD) has been ramping up production of its experimental remdesivir treatment that is being tested to combat the novel coronavirus.

The drug maker now has 1.5 million individual dosages that could be used for more than 140,000 patients and is supplying the medicine, which is being made available through clinical trials and special access programs, at no charge.

“Providing our existing supplies at no charge is the right thing to do, to facilitate access to patients as quickly as possible and in recognition of the public emergency posed by this pandemic,” Gilead chief executive officer Daniel O’Day wrote in an open letter released Saturday night. He added the 1.5 million doses will be donated for “broader distribution” following any potential future regulatory approvals.

In coming months, the company expects to increase supplies as raw materials become available and, as a result, has set an “ambitious goal” of producing more than 500,000 treatment courses by October and more than 1 million by the end of this year. Toward that end, Gilead said it is building a “geographically diverse” group of suppliers to expand global capacity for raw materials and production.

There is some evidence remdesivir, which previously failed to show benefit in Ebola virus patients, benefits Covid-19 patients, and the company has been working with researchers and several governments to get several clinical trials running. Results are expected this month.

US group offers ‘The Unapologetic Zionist’s Haggadah’

https://worldisraelnews.com/us-group-offers-the-unapologetic-zionists-haggadah/

“Our fervent hope is that through this unique compilation readers will be provided a respite from worries about coronavirus,” said the group’s director.

By World Israel News Staff

Herut, a leading American Zionist organization, is offering “The Unapologetic Zionist’s Haggadah” for Passover. The new anthology includes classic, hard-to-find essays by founding fathers of Zionism, including Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Dr. Israel Eldad.

“This Passover booklet is titled M’Avdut L’Herut, From Slavery to Freedom and we created it at this time because Jabotinsky’s brand of Zionist optimism is needed precisely in these dark days of pandemic,” said Karma Feinstein Cohen, the Executive Director of Herut North America.

“Our fervent hope is that through this unique compilation readers will be provided a respite from worries about coronavirus by the Passover thoughts we have included from the world of Revisionist Zionism, old and new.”

The 20-page PDF booklet also contains recent articles that are included with the intention of increasing understanding of the Seder and the overall holiday.

The AP begins revising history to attack Trump Carol Brown

www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/the_ap_begins_revising_history_to_attack_trump.html 

The media are not only rude and confrontational at press briefings, but they’re also re-writing history about how and when information on the virus came to light.

Facts don’t matter. There is only one goal: Get Trump.

Toward that end, manipulating timelines has become quite popular as evidenced most recently in this AP report:

As the first alarms sounded in early January that an outbreak of a novel coronavirus in China might ignite a global pandemic, the Trump administration squandered nearly two months that could have been used to bolster the federal stockpile of critically needed medical supplies and equipment.

Well that’s an interesting tale. Here are a few pesky details that were overlooked.

On January 14th, the corrupt World Health Organization (WHO) claimed there was no human to human transmission of the coronavirus.

Adam Schiff’s Dereliction of Duty Regarding Communist China

www.theepochtimes.com/adam-schiffs-dereliction-of-duty-regarding-communist-china_3299388.html

If ever there were a textbook case in Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), it is Rep. Adam Schiff of California. Since the start of Trump’s presidency he has been at the forefront of investigating the administration and the president with an avidity that approaches, even surpasses, if that is possible, monomania.

In doing so he has been a font of disinformation that might make the KGB blush. First was the bogus Russia probe and the lies surrounding the FISA court, then the endless impeachment over an ambiguous phone call and, as of last week, his proposal for a “9-11” style commission to study the U.S. response to the virus, no doubt with the president in the crosshairs.

But, as usual, Schiff is barking up the wrong TDS tree, this time to the extent of dereliction of his duty as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI).

The investigation by his committee that should be undertaken is the role of China—specifically the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) because this was not the work or fault of the Chinese people—in deliberately deceiving the world about the provenance and extent of the novel coronavirus.

If that is not the mission of the HPSCI, what is?