RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://asiatimes.com/2021/10/china-must-lead-the-new-industrial-revolution/

The second great transformation of China’s economy is underway, and it won’t happen without some pain.

China’s meager GDP growth of 4.9% in the third quarter is both worse and better than it looks. Net of exports, GDP growth would have fallen to around 1%, mainly due to the air pocket in the property sector that comprises a quarter of GDP.

The good news is that China’s industrial supply chains rose to the occasion and compensated for disrupted manufacturing output elsewhere in the world. September exports rose 28% year-on-year.

China wants to shift investment toward high productivity outlets in manufacturing and services, away from construction. Its strategy depends on harnessing the new technologies of the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution, which offer a high growth path for a country with a stagnating labor force.

That’s the omelet that China’s leadership has promised; what we have for the time being are some broken eggs.

Chinese monetary officials, I reported September 24, want to reduce home prices as a matter of social policy, and they used the Evergrande crisis as a blunt instrument to do so. Once the government signaled lower home prices, current sales collapsed. The top 100 developers reported that September sales fell 37% compared with the same month in 2020. Anecdotal reports have asking prices for new homes down by 30% to 40% in some third- and fourth-tier cities.

Homes in top-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen now sell for about 50 times the average Chinese income. That number is exaggerated because employees in top-tier cities typically earn a multiple of the average income, but it still puts homes out of reach of a very large number of Chinese.

In second-tier modern cities like Chengdu or Wuhan, the ratio of home price to average income is 20:1, about the same as in Singapore. To put this in perspective, Taipei homes sell for 34 times the average income.

https://dianebederman.com/medical-care-in-the-21st-century-first-do-no-harm/

How can we condone health care that includes the unceremonious removal of a patient, especially a senior citizen, from their primary health care provider? It seems we do in Ontario. I wonder if this is all made possible by socialized medicine and  the new rules that our doctors are told to follow. Whatever happened to First Do No Harm?

I am sharing my story about “health care ” during Covid.

We talk a great deal about death with dignity. But rarely do we talk about life with dignity. We all witnessed the lack of care and compassion for our most vulnerable during Covid: seniors left alone in their beds and then denied the love of family as they died alone in hospital.

I am a senior citizen.   I was unceremoniously dumped from my health clinic; East Wellington Family Health Team in Erin, Ontario after reporting  what I consider to be below standard care from my primary physician. You know, the one that co-ordinates your health care.

I will not bore you with the details regarding the poor care given to me by my primary physician as this is not about him. I did report him to The College of Physicians and Surgeons. I should have accused him of dereliction of duty. I did my due diligence. First I reported my doctor to the lead physician, Dr. Khan, for his lack of care. No, this story is about the clinic.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17864/defend-taiwan-nuclear-bomb

U.S. President Joe Biden can reestablish deterrence by offering Taiwan a mutual defense treaty. If he does not want to do that, he should either base American nuclear weapons in Taiwan or transfer such weapons to the island so it can defend itself. In the 1980s, the U.S. beefed up deterrence of the Soviet Union by basing nuclear-tipped Pershing missiles in Europe.

China, in short, apparently believes it can run over America to make Taiwan its 34th province. To disabuse Chinese aggressors at this late date, the U.S. should ditch the decades-old “strategic ambiguity,” the policy of not telling either Beijing or Taipei what it would do when conflict was imminent, and publicly offer Taipei a mutual defense treaty.

Taiwan has always been critically important to America. The island makes advanced chips for U.S. products, anchors America’s western defense perimeter, and is a beacon of democracy. After the fall of Kabul, Taiwan is seen as the test of U.S. resolve. The U.S. should, therefore, be willing to go to extraordinary lengths to protect the island.

[T]here are no un-dangerous options for Washington.

Sha Zukang, the former Chinese ambassador for disarmament to the U.N. in Geneva, last month suggested that China create large exceptions to its announced no-first-use policy, the promise not to be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict.

“The island’s society must be warned that they better not believe the ‘rock solid’ promise of the U.S. because Washington will never fight to the death with the Chinese mainland for the island’s secession,” the Chinese Communist Party’s Global Times proclaimed on October 14, referring to Taiwan.

The words, contained in an editorial, reflects the Party’s propaganda line, and that line almost certainly reflects the thinking of Chinese leaders.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/10/17/haiti-gang-kidnaps-17-american-missionaries-including-children-n1524532

A grim report out of Haiti, where 17 U.S. missionaries returning home after building an orphanage were kidnapped, according to a voice message sent to various religious missions by “an organization with direct knowledge of the incident,” per Fox News.

According to a message from Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries, the missionaries were on their way home after building an orphanage in Port-au-Prince and were taken, along with several of their children.

Haiti has been plagued by periods of lawlessness its entire history, but the combination of the murder of President Jovenel Moïse and a devastating earthquake that killed more than 2,000 Haitians has thrown the country into more chaos than usual.

At least 328 kidnapping victims were reported to Haiti’s National Police in the first eight months of 2021, compared with a total of 234 for all of 2020, according to a report issued last month by the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti known as BINUH.

Gangs have been accused of kidnapping schoolchildren, doctors, police officers, busloads of passengers and others as they grow more powerful. In April, one gang kidnapped five priests and two nuns, a move that prompted a protest similar to the one organized for this Monday to decry the lack of security in the impoverished country.

The United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti, known as BINUH, Issued a report recently. “Political turmoil, the surge in gang violence, deteriorating socioeconomic conditions – including food insecurity and malnutrition – all contribute to the worsening of the humanitarian situation,” BINUH said in its report. “An overstretched and under-resourced police force alone cannot address the security ills of Haiti.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17843/france-election-immigration

“It is like humidity in a house. Initially the threat is invisible….” — Boualem Sansal, Algerian novelist, L’Express.

Bfmtv interviewed Fewzi Benhabib, a resident of Saint-Denis. Since his arrival from Algeria 25 years ago, he found in France the ideology from which he was fleeing in his former country “For the Islamists, it is a question of Islamizing modernity, not modernizing Islam.”

Next year, France will decide to try to save itself or continue to sink. Either way, it will unleash a tsunami that will not stop at its borders and instead flood all of Western Europe.

“Where Islam takes hold, it is forever. Islamism is based on Islam, which no one has the right to criticize. But in your countries it also plays a role in democracy and in the rule of law. Islamism exploits these values. Since democracy recognizes all opinions, from the far right to the far left, it is obliged to recognize Islam as well. All those who do not commit attacks or violent acts are, in principle, protected in a state of law. Islamism thus immediately finds itself in a conquered terrain. It is necessary to fight Islamism from the beginning. Because it is like humidity in a house. Initially the threat is invisible, it penetrates the walls which, little by little, crumble. When you realize it is too late, you have to destroy everything to clean up. It becomes a mission impossible. France is at the stage where it has just discovered that Islam is eroding her home”.

This is how Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal, in L’Express, recently described the level of Islamization in France.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17858/germany-mosques-call-to-prayer

The city of Cologne, once a stronghold of Christendom in Germany, has authorized mosques in the city to begin sounding Muslim calls to prayer over outdoor loudspeakers. The move, ostensibly aimed at promoting multicultural diversity and inclusion, represents a significant step toward the cultural normalization of Islam in Germany. It is taking German multiculturalism into uncharted territory.

Critics say that comparing Islamic prayer calls to church bells is a false equivalence because the muezzin proclaims religious slogans such as “there is no god but Allah” and “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is the Greatest”).

“The Muslim call to prayer is not like the ringing of church bells, which are a reminder of a scheduled worship service. Instead, it is a creed and a statement of political Islam, which has unfortunately been abused in many ways in recent years. The call ‘Allahu Akbar’ is not only a call to prayer, but it has also become the battle cry of jihad by Islamist terrorists.” — Necla Kelek, Turkish-born German Islam expert.

“It’s not about ‘religious freedom’ or ‘diversity,’ as Mayor Reker claims. The mosque operators want visibility. They celebrate the muezzin as a show of power over their neighborhoods.” —Ahmad Mansour, Israeli-Arab and German Islam expert.

“The Muslim call to prayer, the muezzin call, is now permitted in Cologne. Cologne’s Lord Mayor Henriette Reker calls this a ‘symbol of diversity.’ For me it is the opposite — a sign of discrimination…. In 2015, I had to flee from Bangladeshi Islamists because I publicly criticized Islamism. When I hear ‘Allahu Akbar’ from loudspeakers in Germany, I think of a lot, just not diversity…. The muezzin call reminds me of the killing of my six blogger friends by Islamists and the brutal repression of minorities…. This call from the speakers of conservative mosques is above all a show of power. The fact that the city of Cologne now allows the muezzin call with reference to tolerance is a sign of false tolerance for me.” — Shammi Haque, a Bangladeshi-born journalist in exile in Germany.

Acceding to demands from Islamic organizations sponsored by the Turkish government, the city of Cologne, once a stronghold of Christendom in Germany, has authorized mosques in the city to begin sounding Muslim calls to prayer over outdoor loudspeakers. The move, ostensibly aimed at promoting multicultural diversity and inclusion, represents a significant step toward the cultural normalization of Islam in Germany. It is taking German multiculturalism into uncharted territory.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17844/taiwan-biden-health

The Chinese communists very much want to gain control of Taiwan, and the current intelligence assessment that the Chinese leadership is probably looking at is one that spells opportunity—a weak President, wary of foreign military entanglements, whose political fortunes are crashing, and in their analysis the real possibility of a transfer of power to an even weaker and less popular vice president in Kamala Harris, who has little foreign policy chops.

The bottom line—the next year will be a high-risk period between China and the United States where serious miscalculations could take place. And that is why… the Biden Administration must send a clear signal of support now for Taiwan.

What is China planning? More than 150 air incursions into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone, testing Taiwanese response capabilities, strategies, timing and other military capabilities. Are these just Chinese war games or is China getting close to invading Taiwan? These are just some of the many questions that U.S. and other world leaders are grappling with as they try to determine the plans and intentions of China’s President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party.

Understanding “leadership intent” is one of the key priorities for intelligence collection and analysis. It is safe to assume America’s intelligence agencies are doing this with China and the Chinese are doing the same with the U.S. So, what does that have to do with U.S. President Joe Biden’s health and communist China’s intentions when it comes to Taiwan?

The Chinese are making serious assessments about what they can expect from the U.S. and the Biden Administration if they invade Taiwan. What are the plans and intentions of the Biden administration in regard to China and standing alongside the government of Taiwan? And while many here may not be thinking about it, they are also assessing Biden’s health and how that may impact U.S. response and timing.

In my experience as a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I can say we did focus on the health and wellbeing of key foreign leaders. My committee was briefed multiple times on the likely death of Cuba’s Fidel Castro in the 10 years I served on the Committee. Highlighting how difficult this task was, let’s just say they were wrong multiple times before they eventually got the assessment right.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/czech-voters-oust-communists-from-parliament-for-first-time-since-1948_4041689.html

On Saturday, Czech voters booted the communists out of parliament for the first time since the end of World War II, voting out a party whose Soviet-backed predecessors ruled the central European nation with an iron fist from 1948 until 1989’s Velvet Revolution that ushered in democracy.

The Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM) failed to retain enough seats to enter the Czech parliament for the first time since the formation of the Czech Republic in 1993 after Czechoslovakia was peacefully dissolved into two with the other state becoming Slovakia.

The KSČM took 3.62 percent of the vote, failing to meet the five percent mark needed to retain seats in both the house and the Chamber of Deputies.

Meanwhile, in a stunning upset, the SPOLU alliance, a liberal-conservative three-party coalition, captured 27.8 percent of the vote, beating Prime Minister Andrej Babis’ Action for Dissatisfied Citizens (ANO) 2011 party, which won 27.1 percent.

Another center-left-liberal coalition of the Pirate Party (PIR) and the Mayors and Independents party (STAN) received 15.6 percent of the vote, finishing in third place, as per the statistics office.

Ahead of the election, the SPOLU alliance vowed to form a coalition government with the Pirate/Stan coalition. Over the weekend, the alliance signed a memorandum on their intent to create a majority Czech government with the Pirate/STAN coalition.

The failure to secure enough votes comes amid waning support for the communist party who during their reign, jailed tens of thousands of people in forced labor camps in the 1950s and brutally repressed dissidents, including playwright-turned-president Vaclav Havel.