RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17052/eu-vaccination-failure

The vaccination rollout has been plagued by bureaucratic sclerosis, poorly-negotiated contracts, penny-pinching and blame shifting — all wrapped in a shroud of secrecy. The result is a needless and embarrassing shortage of vaccines, and yet another a crisis of legitimacy for the EU.

“The European Commission ordered too late, limited its focus to only a few pharmaceutical companies, agreed on a price in a typically bureaucratic EU manner and completely underestimated the fundamental importance of the situation. We now have a situation where grandchildren in Israel are already vaccinated but the grandparents here are still waiting. That’s just completely wrong.” — Markus Söder, Bavarian premier and possible future German chancellor.

“I now fear that the European Union will find itself in the impossible situation of having to prolong some of the existing [Covid-19] restrictions beyond the summer, while both Britain and the United States start to normalize. That is the cost of the vaccine delays: a very high cost in lives, prestige and further economic losses.” — Bruno Maçães, political scientist and former Portuguese Europe Minister.

“The commission decided to aggrandize its competence and it wasn’t up to the job — it didn’t have the right people or the right skills.” — Adrian Wooldridge, political editor, The Economist.

“In the dispute over the delivery delay of the AstraZeneca vaccine, the EU Commission is currently making the best advertisement for Brexit: It is acting slowly, bureaucratically and protectionist. And if something goes wrong, it’s everyone else’s fault.” — Bettina Schulz, commentator, Die Zeit.

The European Union’s much-touted campaign to vaccinate 450 million Europeans against Covid-19 has gotten off to an inauspicious start. The vaccination rollout has been plagued by bureaucratic sclerosis, poorly-negotiated contracts, penny-pinching and blame shifting — all wrapped in a shroud of secrecy. The result is a needless and embarrassing shortage of vaccines, and yet another a crisis of legitimacy for the EU.

As of February 11, the EU had administered vaccines to approximately 4.5% of its adult population, compared to 14% in the United States, 21% in the United Kingdom and 71% in Israel, according to statistics compiled by Our World in Data. The EU’s vaccination fiasco comes as many European countries are struggling to combat an extremely virulent third wave of the coronavirus and healthcare systems across the continent are once again at breaking points.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/02/posttrump_world_of_censorship_and_canceling_is_alive_and_well_in_canada_too.html

Recently, Jagmeet Singh, a friend of Black Lives Matter agitator Shaun King and leader of Canada’s far-left party, pushed out an online petition over Twitter demanding that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declare Proud Boys Canada a “white supremacist terrorist” organization. The call came immediately after U.S. Proud Boys members were apparently found involved in the Capitol Building mêlée that led to House Democrats impeaching President Trump a second time.  

Although it’s not supposed to be the Twitter followers of Singh’s New Democratic Party who decide who is and isn’t a threat to our national security, Singh’s bit of Two Minutes Hate did exactly what was intended: it pushed last week Canada’s version of Homeland Security to label the group an official “terrorist organization.”  Proud Boys Canada is now apparently in the same category as the Islamic State.  

It’s difficult to see the move as anything but pointless.  It also drips with hypocrisy as well as alarmist, diversionary politics. 

While the Perry Ellis shirt-wearing and fighting-prone Proud Boys certainly aren’t my cup of tea, the group denies being an organizational force behind the Capitol Building siege.  Further, as far as I’ve read about them, the group’s membership is apparently open to all comers (of any race) and always has been.  Moreover, I’ve never heard either its current leader (Enrique Tarrio, non-white) or its founder (Gavin McInnes, married to a non-white woman) state that any racial group is superior or deserves to rule supreme over others — a requirement, it would seem, for a group open to everyone. 

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/feb/10/yemen-magician-bidens-misdir

When the magician tells you to look right, look left, because that’s where the action is.

Unfortunately, Congress looked right.

In a striking bipartisan vote, the Senate voted to keep the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. Good move, but not where the action is. Instead, the Biden administration has announced it has a  series of steps planned to restore funds and political status to the Palestinian Authority, including the possibility of reopening the Jerusalem Consulate – understood as the American Embassy to the Palestinians.

The UN, EU, and U.S. all sanctioned Iran at some point since 1980. While effective in some areas, the sanctions did not prevent Iran from cheating on its nuclear and ballistic missile obligations. President Biden has announced an intention to return in some form to the 2015 JCPOA – and from there, to negotiate another, stronger deal. In response, Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said the U.S. must first lift sanctions – most importantly, oil and banking sanctions, which are terrorism-sponsorship-related, not nuclear or missile related. Congress is working to prevent that. Good idea.

But the action on Iran is on the other side.  In Yemen.

The President announced the lifting of the terrorism designation from Houthi rebels in Yemen, couched in diplo-speak: “This decision has nothing to do with our view of the Houthis and their reprehensible conduct, including attacks against civilians and the kidnapping of American citizens. We are committed to helping Saudi Arabia defend its territory against further such attacks.”

So, the Houthis are acknowledged to behave like a terror organization, and their “reprehensible conduct” includes the use of child soldiers, but the Biden administration plans to ignore that. Why?

Look left.

https://asiatimes.com/2021/02/sino-forming-south-of-the-border/

Huawei’s development of Mexico’s mobile broadband infrastructure has powered extraordinary growth
Mexico’s retail ecommerce sales growth led the world in 2019.

Sometime in 2015, I sat in the back of a Mexico City taxi, reading instructions from Waze to the driver. We took detours through small residential streets, zigzagged from one major artery to another, and hung risky U-turns – all of which cut half an hour from our travel time. I had to give the directions because the driver didn’t use Waze, because, like most Mexican taxistas in 2015, he couldn’t afford the mobile broadband, which cost more in Mexico than in any other large country.

That was then. By 2020 about a third of Mexico City drivers were using the navigation app. In 2019 Mexico had 77 mobile broadband accounts per 100 people, vs. only 23 accounts in 2013. And Mexico last year had the world’s highest percentage growth in e-commerce.

This transformation had something to do with my taxi ride of 2015, at least tangentially. I had a cabinet-level meeting at Mexico’s Ministry of Telecommunications, in my then capacity as head of Americas for a Hong Kong investment banking boutique. As I reported in my book You Will Be Assimilated: China’s Plan to Sino-Form the World, I introduced top Huawei executives to senior Mexican officials, then debating an overhaul of the country’s woefully inadequate broadband system.

Nothing happened in 2015; later that year Jack Ma acquired the boutique and within a few months fired the Western bankers. But in 2017 Mexico invited Huawei and Nokia to build a “shared network” (red compartida) for mobile broadband. Banned from the United States, Huawei flourished in Mexico, and its broadband base stations provide service for dozens of Mexican cities, including a few that originally were assigned to Nokia. The cost of broadband service plunged and the number of subscribers more than tripled. Waze, a luxury that only a visiting gringo could afford in 2015, now serves 2 million users per day in Mexico City alone, and Mexico has become the app’s number four market globally. Anyone who has tried to negotiate the Mexican capital’s paralytic traffic knows how much that improves quality of life.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/re-election-londons-sadiq-khan-

In a little under three months, Sadiq Khan will be re-elected Mayor of London.

It is not guaranteed, of course. Londoners will head to the polls on May 6 to cast their votes in local elections, both for the office of Mayor of London and for members of the Greater London Assembly, a body designed to scrutinize the office.

But it feels horribly like a forgone conclusion.

The Conservatives are putting up about as much fight as Switzerland. Their candidate, Shaun Bailey, feels like a token effort, put up to tick the box but not expected to achieve much.

Others are making a bolder effort. Brian Rose from London Real has acquired a blazing black and red bus bearing his name and is valiantly touring the 32 London boroughs in his attempt to get elected, but faces impossible odds. As I know from personal experience, campaigning alone is hard. The fastest way to learn about the power of the party is to try to run without one. Brian is up against the might of the Labour Party and its vice-like grip on the levers of power in this city.

It is exasperating. Because of Labour and Union support, and Muslim majority in inner city London, it is impossible to still the wrecking ball that is Khan.

London is unrecognizable from the city many Americans once knew and loved. It is screaming out in pain, like a stuck creature desperate to be put out of its misery. This week there were 14 stabbings in one 24-hour period, leaving two dead in the street where they were cut down. And not a word was heard from the gilded cage of the London Mayor.

Stabbings are so often gang-related, confined to certain zip codes and certain segments of the population (young, black, living in sink estates), that it is easy for the Mayor to turn a blind eye.

It is the reason British natives are fleeing the capital in their droves. Burglaries and assaults are so commonplace as not to merit an officer in attendance, while the opportunity to do some politically-correct policing has the boys in blue falling over themselves to be seen. When diversity is the end goal, all else is lost along the way.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17051/international-criminal-court-threatens-peace

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has long had its sights on what it no doubt considers an unholy trinity: Israel, the US and Britain…. First, these are the three Western democracies most active in using legitimate military force to defend their interests. This is anathema to the left-liberal doctrine of ICC officials and their soul-mates in such morally dissipated places as the UN Human Rights Council. Second, they wish to virtue signal, deflecting criticism that the court is biased against African states….

Yet by its charter, dealing with countries that lack the will or capability to bring their own to justice is the sole purpose of the ICC. This does apply to some states in Africa and elsewhere but demonstrably does not apply to Israel, the US or Britain, each of which have long-established and globally respected legal systems.

The ICC’s design against Israel is the latest in a long history of endeavours to subjugate and scourge unwilling Jewish people deemed incapable of regulating themselves. When you examine the unexampled contortions the court has gone through just to get to this point, you have no choice but to question whether antisemitism is the motive.

The effects of the ICC’s decision will be profound. This is only the end of the beginning. Unless halted, investigations into spurious allegations of war crimes will go on for years, perhaps decades, creating a global bonanza for all who hate Israel, including at the UN, the European Union, various governments and in universities and so-called human rights groups.

But the most detrimental effect of the ICC’s decision will be felt by Palestinian Arab people who, for decades, have been abused as political pawns by their leaders and who would be the greatest beneficiaries of any peace agreement with Israel. The ICC’s ruling makes such a deal even more remote today.

In an unprecedented move early last year Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Australia, Canada, Uganda and Brazil petitioned the ICC, of which all are members, arguing that a formal investigation could not be launched as the Palestinian Authority does not meet the definition of a state under the Rome Statute that established and governs the court.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) waited until after US President Joe Biden took the oath of office before unilaterally handing itself territorial jurisdiction over Israel — more than a full year since the pre-trial chamber was asked to rule on the matter. Mindful of President Donald J. Trump’s sanctions against ICC staff, including revoking Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s US entry visa, and his warnings against efforts to brand Israel and other allies as war criminals, court officials lacked the steel to make an announcement while he remained in the Oval Office.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16978/turkish-reforms-repression

The Turks’ political journey toward the West began a century and a half ago, but Turkey now remains as distant from universal democratic values as the Ottoman Empire was at its collapse.

Modern Turkey’s darkest years came between 1976 and 1980, when a campaign of political violence, wrought by a multitude of far-left and far-right urban guerilla groups, killed more than 5,000 people. That era only came to an end when the military took over the country in a completed coup d’état and the violence subsided.

Twenty years later, a militant Islamist, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, pledged radically to reform Turkish democracy and make it an inseparable part of Europe — via full membership in the European Union. Two decades after that pledge Turkey’s democracy remains as remote from Europe’s civil liberties, democratic culture and checks and balances as Abdulhamid’s empire was in 1876.

The Turks’ political journey toward the West began a century and a half ago, but Turkey now remains as distant from universal democratic values as the Ottoman Empire was at its collapse. The parallels between failed Ottoman and Turkish reforms are worth a look.

During that 150-year period, in addition to building railway systems on imperial soil, systems for registering the population and control over the press were established, along with the first local modern law school in 1898. The most far-reaching reforms occurred in education: many professional schools were established for fields including the law, arts, trades, civil engineering, veterinary medicine, customs, farming and linguistics.

It was Sultan Abdulhamid II who was under Western pressure to reform his ailing empire. On December 23, 1876 the Ottoman constitution was solemnly promulgated with the aim of winning the hearts and minds of the Great Powers of Europe, only to be suspended when external pressure abated, and its author sent to exile. At the beginning of the 20th century, another constitutionalist reformer group, the Committee of Union and Progress, threatened the sultan with a coup d’état, ending Abdulhamid’s reign.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/real-socialism-john-stossel/

People hate America’s big disparities in wealth. It’s a reason why, among young people, socialism is as popular as capitalism.

The Democratic Socialists of America want a country based on “freedom, equality and solidarity.” That sure sounds good.

But does socialism bring that?

My new video debunks several myths about socialism.

One reason for socialism’s continued appeal is linguist Noam Chomsky. For generations, his work has taught students that capitalism is “a grotesque catastrophe.”

I assumed the fall of the Soviet Union would put an end to such misinformation. It did — for about a month.

But since then, the lust for socialism has come back strong. Today, Chomsky says that the Soviet Union “was about as remote from socialism as you could imagine.”

https://spectator.us/topic/whos-coronavirus-investigation-confirms-worthlessness/

So, according to the World Health Organization‘s latest findings, it is most likely that the COVID-19 virus jumped from an animal to a human. It is unlikely that the pathogen spread due to a leak from a lab in Wuhan. The WHO did not rule out the possibility of a lab leak entirely, but made clear they would not investigate that thread any further.

The WHO, of course, has proven itself to be far from trustworthy on matters related to China and the coronavirus. The international organization last January repeated a false claim from Chinese authorities that there was no evidence of ‘human-to-human transmission’ of COVID-19. The WHO initially praised China’s totalitarian lockdown measures for containing the virus, only to later say that they do not advocate lockdowns as the primary form of controlling the spread.

There are other reasons to be skeptical of the WHO’s investigation as well. China was able to delay the start of the investigation by several weeks, indicating they still intended to be less than transparent with the WHO team of investigators. The Wall Street Journal reported that the WHO team intended to build on previous reports by Chinese officials rather than mount its own independent investigation, and would not focus on the possibility that the virus escaped from a lab:

‘Given that Chinese authorities have been slow to release information, penalized scientists and doctors who shared clinical and genomic details of the novel coronavirus, and have since demonstrated a keen interest in controlling the narrative of how the virus emerged, this is not a promising foundation for WHO’s investigation.’

China has most recently been pushing the claim that new COVID-19 outbreaks in the country are tied to the import of frozen food products.