RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-coronavirus-rebounds-europe-rejects-new-lockdo

As a second wave of coronavirus infections gathers momentum across Europe, the Continent’s governments are determined to avoid large-scale lockdowns and instead seek less disruptive ways to live with the new disease.

France and Spain are on the leading edge of a resurgence in Covid-19 cases across Europe in the wake of the summer travel season, in some cases reaching levels of incidence on par with those in the U.S.

In response, authorities are enacting tailored, localized measures to combat outbreaks, while exhorting citizens to protect themselves and others by behaving prudently.

That marks a contrast with the broad shutdowns imposed when Covid-19 first hit Europe earlier this year. Those moves eventually contained the spread of the virus, but sent the region’s economies into their sharpest economic contraction since World War II.

The new wave of infections is concentrated among younger people. Most of those testing positive in recent weeks have no or only mild symptoms. Health experts caution that the pandemic could turn more dangerous in the winter, as people spend more time indoors.

Still, politicians are largely ruling out new lockdowns.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/video-osamas-post-911-safe-haven-iran-frontpagemagcom/

With the 19th anniversary of 9/11 having just passed, Frontpage Mag editors have deemed it vital to run the special Glazov Gang episode in which Clare Lopez discusses Osama’s Post-9/11 Safe Haven in Iran, revealing who knew the whole time.

Don’t miss it!

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/video-helping-saudis-slip-away-frontpagemagcom/

With the 19th anniversary of 9/11 having just passed, Frontpage Mag editors have deemed it vital to run the special Glazov Gang episode in which Clare Lopez discusses Helping Saudis Slip Away, unveiling the highly disturbing facts about an eerie evacuation right after 9/11. 

Don’t miss it!

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16515/the-new-middle-east

In 2015, the UAE passed a law against religious discrimination by creating ministries of tolerance, happiness and youth to develop an enlightened community — everyone included.

A year later, schools in the UAE started teaching students peace and tolerance.

When the UAE prioritized national belonging over extremist obsessions, the decision immediately led to making peace with Israel.

My one hope as an Emirati is that we become a light for the world. It could make the entire region — the lives of everyone, including the Palestinians — so unimaginably great.

The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have taken a serious step in moving out of the draconian shackles of mindless and mumbling caliphate fantasies that some extremists mention as wiping out the Jewish people in a final conquest for the globe.

The UAE’s groundwork to weed out this hogwash began five years ago. In 2015, the UAE passed a law against religious discrimination by creating ministries of tolerance, happiness and youth to develop an enlightened community — everyone included. A year later, schools in the UAE started teaching students peace and tolerance.

By 2019, we were open and receptive to a memorable year in our national history — it was named the Year of Tolerance. It was then that the construction of the Abrahamic Family House was announced. It will include in one place a synagogue, a church and a mosque. That same year, Pope Francis made an epic visit to the UAE where, in the capital’s sports stadium, the first Papal Mass in Abu Dhabi was held, attended by close to 180,000 people.

When the UAE prioritized national belonging over extremist obsessions, the decision immediately led to making peace with Israel.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/japans-new-prime-minister-11600195666?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

Yoshihide Suga becomes Japan’s prime minister this week, having been elected leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party on Monday. His elevation comes at an important moment for the world’s third-largest economy, and presents new opportunities.

Mr. Suga succeeds Shinzo Abe, who resigned for ill health. He inherits an economy that contracted nearly 28% on an annual basis in the second quarter due to the pandemic. The 2020 Summer Olympics, intended to mark a national renaissance, were postponed. Tokyo has rolled out fiscal stimulus worth some $2.2 trillion, or 40% of gross domestic product—despite a debt-to-GDP ratio already at 230% before the crisis.

Mr. Suga seems set to respond by extending his predecessor’s reform program. Mr. Abe promised to revive the Japanese economy by firing “three arrows” of fiscal and monetary stimulus and policy liberalization. Only the first two arrows launched as hoped, although Mr. Abe did make progress on labor-law and corporate-governance reform and more open immigration. He also tried to negotiate high-quality trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership to spur domestic competitiveness.

Mr. Suga played a leading role in the development and implementation of this agenda as Mr. Abe’s long-serving cabinet secretary. Now he’s coming with ideas of his own, including an emphasis on reforming inefficient regional banks. Japan has too many and they earn too little profit. Mr. Abe’s monetary explosion hasn’t helped, and Mr. Suga has long believed that consolidation would boost their ability to lend to smaller companies. He also appears to want to remove policy hurdles to consolidation and mergers among smaller firms in the hope that this might stimulate productivity gains.

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/09/14/son-of-murdered-french-holocaust-survivor-mireille-knoll-blasts-french-judiciary-for-unconscionable-treatment-of-jews/

The eldest son of the Holocaust survivor who was brutally murdered during an antisemitic assault in her Paris apartment castigated France’s judiciary for its alleged indifference to violence against Jews in an emotional speech in the French capital this past weekend.

Allan Knoll — whose 85-year-old mother, Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll, was stabbed and then burned to death in March 2018 by two intruders who believed that because she was Jewish, she would be hiding large amounts of cash — addressed a small rally on Sunday in the Place de la Republique in Paris.

The demonstration was organized by “The Group Against Silence,” a collective of activists that is campaigning for justice in the case of Sarah Halimi — a 65-year-old Jewish widow who was slain in her Paris apartment by an antisemitic assailant eleven months before Mireille Knoll suffered a similar fate.

But while Knoll’s accused killers will face trial, the individual charged with Halimi’s murder — 29-year-old Kobili Traore — was excused from a criminal trial last December after a court in Paris deemed that his ingestion of cannabis on the night of the killing had rendered him temporarily insane.

China’s arrest of 12 Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, nabbed as they tried to flee the city by boat in the face of an intensifying crackdown on dissent, is fueling a new war of words between Washington and Beijing.

On Sunday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Twitter that the people detained weren’t seeking democratic freedoms but “elements attempting to separate Hong Kong from China.” Other Chinese officials this weekend accused the U.S. of meddling in China’s internal affairs.

U.S. State Department officials on Friday called on China to ensure that the activists receive due process of law. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the group had been denied access to lawyers and said China had yet to say what charges they face or to provide information about their welfare.

The detentions have rattled nerves in Hong Kong, where many were already on edge after China imposed a new national security law on June 30, leading to more than a dozen arrests, many opposition voices to fall silent and some to flee abroad.

China’s handling of the case has rekindled fears about the mainland’s opaque legal system—one of the main drivers of mass protests in Hong Kong last year that ultimately led to China’s crackdown.