RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16739/austria-hate-speech-law

Austria’s proposed law is modelled on Germany’s much criticized NetzDG law, also known as the censorship law, which came into effect in January 2018 and requires social media companies to delete or block any online unlawful content within 24 hours or 7 days at the most, or face fines of up to 50 million euros.

If the proposed law is passed, the freedom of speech of Austrians online will be subject to the arbitrary decisions of corporate entities, such as Twitter, Goggle and Facebook.

With Austria’s draft online hate speech law, yet another European country is taking another step towards making online censorship an institutionalized feature of European hate speech laws.

“We too often make bad laws with good intentions. Online platforms should not censor the freedom of expression,” said Chairman of the Senate Law Commission Philippe Bas after the decision of France’s Constitutional Council. It can only be hoped that European lawmakers eager to censor free speech online will heed the ruling of the French constitutional court.

The Austrian government has presented a draft online hate speech law, the Communication Platforms Act, which, if passed, will limit free speech in the country. The Austrian government writes in the introduction to its proposed law:

“The main reason for the development of this draft Act is the worrying development that the Internet and social media, in addition to the advantages that these new technologies and communication channels provide, have also established a new form of violence, and hate on the Internet is increasing in the form of insults, humiliation, false information and even threats of violence and death. The attacks are predominantly based on racist, xenophobic, misogynistic and homophobic motives. A comprehensive strategy and a set of measures are required that range from prevention to sanctions. This strategy is based on the two pillars of platform responsibility and victim protection, with the present draft Act relating to ensuring platform responsibility”.

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/and-now-brino-brexit-in-alas-name-only/91336/

News from Downing Street tonight — that prime ministerial chief adviser Dominic Cummings has left Downing Street — alarms friends of British liberty.

Mr. Cummings was the dynamo behind the “Vote Leave” campaign that saw Brexit triumph at the 2016 referendum. His indispensability is right up there with that of Nigel Farage of the United Kingdom Independence Party.

When he joined Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s team at No 10, Brexiteers took heart that not only was a friend of independence advising the premier, but an avowed enemy of the bureaucratic “deep state.” Expectations were high.

Then coronavirus struck Britain. Mr. Cummings, far from being a courageous voice of common sense, was instead credited with Mr. Johnson’s credulous concessions to a scientific community only too willing to assume responsibility for shuttering Britain’s economy.

Reports are that with Mr. Cummings’s departure go the “Vote Leave” coterie he brought with him into Downing Street. Their duties are to be assumed by allies of the prime minister’s left-liberal fiancée, Carrie Symonds, who has had tense relations with the tattered remnant of right-leaning policy wonks.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/london-mayor-its-never-been-harder-be-muslim-last-robert-spencer/

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has never had it this bad, and he wants you to know that it is all the fault of one Donald J. Trump, lately of Washington, D.C. You may find it hard to believe that a President of the United States – any President of the United States – could so haunt the nightmares of the chief executive of a large and venerable city in another country, but that’s just because even after these past four years, you still haven’t fully grasped just how Bad this Orange Man really is. But you may be able to get a note excusing you from the next Truth and Reconciliation Commission meeting if you take some time now to understand how Sadiq Khan has suffered.

The UK’s LBC revealed Monday that “London Mayor Sadiq Khan has told LBC he was singled out by the now-outgoing US President Donald Trump ‘for no other reason’ than being Muslim.” How had the sinister Trump singled out Khan, you ask? Did he spy upon him? Did he try to frame him for crimes that would get him impeached and removed from office? No, none of that. Khan complained that Trump had put him under an “astonishingly ugly spotlight.”

This spotlight just added to Khan’s troubles: despite being Mayor of London and one of the most prominent politicians in Britain, he still suffered for his religious faith. “Being a Muslim ain’t easy, it isn’t easy,” Khan lamented, adding “it’s never been harder to be a Muslim than the last four years.”

Never, in 1,400 years of Islam! Wow! Not when the Muslims were expelled from Spain! Not when the State of Israel was founded, which supporters of the Palestinian jihad will tell you was the worst day in human history! No, for Khan it has never been worse than it is now, not because of China’s persecution of the Uighurs, but because of the evil Mr. Trump. For now, Khan said, the world had “for the first time the leader of the free world, a mainstream politician perpetuating a view that Islam and the West are incompatible.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16734/westerners-appeasing-islamists

“Political Islamic organizations are the reason for perpetuating terrorism and hatred. These organizations are banned in most of the Islamic countries, while Europe, especially Britain, embraces them and allows them to operate freely. Europeans can only blame themselves.” — Mohammed al-Sheikh, Saudi writer, Twitter, October 29, 2020.

“There is no doubt that France’s previous policies, lenient with [Muslim] extremists, contributed to the current wave of terrorism, as well as legislation that guarantees the right to asylum and immigration to every expatriate on its soil.” — Hailah al-Mashouh, Saudi columnist and political analyst, Elaph, November 5, 2020.

The group [Muslim World League] warned that Islamists have succeeded in implementing their political projects in non-Muslim countries under the umbrella of training mosque preachers and funding Islamic charities.

We are now seeing a large number of Arabs and Muslims warning about the clear and present danger Islamism poses to many different societies. These individuals are demonstrating courage and conviction in taking this public stance. Their advice, that Western states must eradicate Islamist organizations in Europe, is vitally important.

The recent terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims in France and Austria should serve as a warning to Europeans who have long been appeasing and endorsing extremist Muslim politicians and organizations.

This warning was sounded in the past few weeks by a growing number of writers, political analysts and politicians in Arab and Islamic countries. The main message they are sending to the Europeans: Political Islam is a threat not only to non-Muslims, but to Muslims and Arabs as well. Europeans need to wake up and start confronting the Muslim extremists.

“Political Islam organizations are the reason for spreading hatred and terrorism in the world,” said Saudi writer Mohammed al-Sheikh.

“Political Islamic organizations are the reason for perpetuating terrorism and hatred. These organizations are banned in most of the Islamic countries, while Europe, especially Britain, embraces them and allows them to operate freely. Europeans can only blame themselves.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/democracy-dies-in-the-open-11605136283?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” form of government autonomy died this summer, and the Chinese Communist Party is now moving fast to crush its remnants. Beijing’s latest target is the Legislative Council and its pro-democracy lawmakers.

On Wednesday China’s legislature passed a resolution allowing Hong Kong authorities to remove lawmakers without judicial oversight. Hong Kong authorities quickly booted four pro-democracy legislators, including Dennis Kwok and Alvin Yeung, two brave defenders of an independent judiciary.

Hong Kong’s remaining pro-democracy lawmakers responded by resigning en masse. “Sooner or later we would all have been disqualified,” Democratic Party chairman Wu Chi-wai said. Unconditional allegiance to Beijing is now a requirement for office. At a news conference Wednesday, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam said it is disqualifying for lawmakers to oppose the new national security law or to plan on “indiscriminately voting down” Beijing’s legislative agenda. Ms. Lam will go down in history for betraying her city.

The Communist Party long ago rigged LegCo, as the legislature is known, so democrats could never gain a majority. Pro-democracy lawmakers have nonetheless served their constituents by working to prevent or delay some of the worst legislation and appointees. This new resolution completes LegCo’s transformation into a rubber-stamp body. It represents “Beijing’s rule by decree in its ultimate form,” said Claudia Mo, one of the lawmakers who resigned in protest.

ttps://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2020/11/remdesivir-hydroxychloroquine-and-covid-19/

Has there ever been a worse public policy disaster than the response of almost all governments to COVID-19?

It is now clear that COVID-19, while very infectious, is no more lethal that various influenza epidemics, with an Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) of around 0.1 per cent. As I pointed out in Quadrant in March (“Logic, the First Casualty”), Stanford Professor of Epidemiology John Ioannidis correctly estimated the IFR for Covid as 0.125 per cent, this being the rate at which those infected perish. He also estimated the Case Fatality Rate (CFR) as about 1 per cent, this being the fatality rate of the cases being treated.

These estimates have proven to be accurate and comparable to those for seasonal influenza—and less than the 2 to 3 per cent CFR of the H1N1 influenza virus that caused the 2009 swine flu pandemic and less than the rate initially estimated by the WHO, which has not accepted the lower figure. While swine flu was not as infectious as Covid, governments did not close down societies and economies and trample civil liberties in response to the swine flu pandemic. Why have they with Covid?

There are several factors that help explain why. Media, both social and conventional, have inflated the perception of risk. Bad news sells, and the madness of crowds can now spread electronically.

The fact that the grim statistics, reported in a daily ritual, have been unreliable has not helped, with increased numbers often simply reflecting increased testing. The reporting of deaths has bordered on negligent, with those positive for Covid being registered as dying from Covid, despite (as the US Centers for Disease Control recently reported) 94 per cent of those dying with Covid having significant comorbidities (an average of 2.6 comorbidities each). Greater funding was made available for a Covid death, so there was an incentive to so record deaths. George Floyd, who died in police custody in Minneapolis, was positive for Covid and would have otherwise been counted as dying from Covid, had other causes not be assigned.

https://www.jns.org/iaea-says-iran-continues-to-violate-2015-nuclear-deal/?utm_sour

Tehran has also been enriching uranium up to a 4.5 percent purity, higher than the 3.67 percent allowed under the 2015 nuclear deal.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Wednesday that Iran is still in violation of the 2015 nuclear deal by continuing to increase its low-enriched uranium stockpile.

As of Nov. 2, Iran had a stockpile of 5,385.7 pounds of low-enriched uranium, up from 4,641.6 pounds reported on Aug. 25, reported AP, which obtained a confidential document distributed to IAEA member countries.

Iran has also been continuing to enrich uranium up to a 4.5 percent purity, higher than the 3.67 percent allowed under the deal, according to the IAEA report.

In March, the IAEA warned that Iran was tripling its production of enriched uranium and dramatically increased the number of machines used to enrich uranium and make more nuclear fuel at a faster pace.

Also in the new IAEA report, according to Reuters, Iran has installed advanced centrifuges in the underground Natanz uranium-enrichment facility. The 2015 deal stated that the centrifuges can only be used for first-generation IR-1 machines.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16751/china-ant-group-financial-system

Beijing has cast doubt on the soundness of China’s equity markets and, more broadly, on the long-term viability of the country’s private sector.

China is not big enough for two big personalities. Xi is building a personality cult, and so is Ma Yun, better known as Jack Ma to the international financial and business communities.

Ant’s lending volumes grew fast because the company was largely unregulated.

“The message is that no big private businessman will be tolerated on the mainland.” — Chen Zhiwu of Hong Kong University, Financial Times, November 6, 2020.

Xi demands absolute obedience, something incompatible with a modern financial system.

Investors in Hong Kong this week dumped more than $250 billion in Chinese tech stocks. Particularly hard hit were Alibaba Group, JD.com, Tencent, and Meituan Dianping.

The rout followed the stunning postponement of what would have been the largest initial public offering in history. Ant Group Co., Ltd., an Alibaba Group affiliate, was set, with the overallotment option, to raise $39.5 billion.

Investors were valuing the six-year-old company at $359 billion, making it worth more than American-based behemoth J.P. Morgan and the world’s largest bank by assets, the state-backed Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

On November 3, Shanghai’s Nasdaq-like STAR Market and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange announced the suspension about 36 hours before the scheduled start of trading in Hong Kong. The unprecedented actions shocked domestic and international investors.