RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16063/poll-support-for-china

A soon to be released international survey finds that when the COVID-19 virus finally burns itself out its biggest victim may be the very country that launched the pandemic —China.

Bluster, bullying, and propaganda launched by China’s leadership to subdue international criticism of their handling of COVID-19 is only stoking the anger among nations as diverse as the U.K., Germany and India, according to data revealed during a comprehensive poll conducted by the firm McLaughlin & Associates.

They may not embrace the White House on any given issue but when it comes to China, a large and significant number of those polled in this global COVID-19 survey would now support economic sanctions, confronting China’s strategy to achieve global dominance by controlling worldwide access to technology, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, and more.

What can only be described as a diplomatic earthquake is the emerging political fault line along China’s southern border with India.

The McLaughlin poll found that a majority of voters in the world’s largest democracy, some 54%, believe China hid key COVID-19 details, resulting in more damage by the pandemic, and 78% believe China knowingly kept data from the international community.

And it gets worse for Beijing. As many as 85% of Indian voters believe China should be held accountable with 88% approving of an investigation of not just China but the World Health Organization (WHO) regarding what did they know and when did they know it.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/coronavirus-pandemic-china-united-states-west-must-end-dangerous-dependence-on-beijing/

As the pandemic has made clear, the U.S., and the West as a whole, cannot continue to depend on an authoritarian rival state for strategically important goods.

 I t is not necessary to agree with all of President Donald Trump’s foreign policies in order to agree with one of his foreign policies. His approach to China is a case in point.

Since it emerged late last year, the coronavirus has brought into sharp focus the outlines of the international system and amplified long-standing tensions between Washington and Beijing. Many of Trump’s critics have identified him as part of the problem, arguing that an “America first” foreign policy — which was written into the official National Security Strategy that his administration published in 2017 — at best undermines international cooperation in the fight against the coronavirus and at worse obstructs it. A divided West, the argument goes, is ceding global leadership to China.

Yet the pandemic has highlighted something that Trump’s National Security Strategy identified three years ago. Instead of becoming a “responsible stakeholder” in the international system — a term coined by Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick in 2005 to describe the role that the Bush administration hoped China would play following its 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) — China has instead “expanded its power at the expense of others.”

https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/25/beijing-effectively-ends-hong-kongs-historic-freedoms/

If the United States doesn’t follow through to revoke Hong Kong’s special treatment, Beijing may be emboldened to take aggressive actions against Taiwan.

May 22, 2020 will go down in history as an important milestone. On this day, Beijing announced it will impose a new national security law on Hong Kong, which will effectively end the “One Country, Two Systems” era.

Beijing made the move at this week’s “Two Sessions,” annual legislative meetings of two organizations: the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). In the past, more than 5,000 delegates, representing the elites in China, from Communist Party members to business executives to movie stars, played their part in this annual political theater. They have no real legislative power, merely rubber stamping whatever the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) presents with 100 percent approval.

In truth, the Two Sessions serve as fig leaves that barely cover the regime’s dictatorial nature. Still, analysts pay a great deal of attention to these meetings because the CCP has historically used them to unveil important national policies, such as the annual economic target and budget, and any leadership changes.

Since 1998, the “Two Sessions” have been usually held in the first week of March. This year the meetings were delayed due to the coronavirus outbreak. They have drawn even more international attention this year to what Beijing plans to do with Hong Kong.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16057/france-free-speech

Private companies will now be obliged to act as thought police on behalf of the French state or face heavy fines.

“Under the pretext of fighting ‘hateful’ content on the Internet, it [the Avia law] is setting up a system of censorship that is as effective as it is dangerous… ‘hate’ is the pretext systematically used by those who want to silence dissenting opinions…. A democracy worthy of its name should accept freedom of expression.” — Guillaume Roquette, editorial director of Le Figaro Magazine, May 22, 2020.

“What is hate? You have the right not to love… you have the right to love, you have the right to hate. It’s a feeling… It cannot be judicialized, legislated.” — Éric Zemmour, CNews, May 13, 2020.

Asking private companies — or the government — to act as thought police does not belong in a state that claims to follow a democratic rule of law. Unfortunately, the question is not whether France will be the last European country to introduce such censorship laws, but what other countries are next in line.

On May 13, the French parliament adopted a law that requires online platforms such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat[1] to remove reported “hateful content” within 24 hours and “terrorist content” within one hour. Failure to do so could result in exorbitant fines of up to €1.25 million or 4% of the platform’s global revenue in cases of repeated failure to remove the content.

The scope of online content deemed “hateful” under what is known as the “Avia law” (after the lawmaker who proposed it) is, as is common in European hate speech laws, very broadly demarcated and includes “incitement to hatred, or discriminatory insult, on the grounds of race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or disability”.

The French law was directly inspired by Germany’s controversial NetzDG law, adopted in in October 2017, and it is explicitly mentioned in the introduction to the Avia law.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16062/iran-khamenei-jihad-israel

It is mystifying that Twitter, which wantonly censors so much, continues to allow… Iranian leaders to spread Nazi-inspired language and anti-Semitic sentiments on its platform. In general, “Big Tech” — Google, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter — have long since ceased being “neutral” transmitters of information as if they were “utilities”. Instead, they have become America’s Thought Police. They urgently need to be regulated the same way media is.

The ruling mullahs of Iran need to be held accountable by the international community for threatening to annihilate a fellow- member of the United Nations, the Jewish state. Not only are these threats unacceptable according to Chapter I: Article 2(1)-(5) of the Charter of the United Nations… They are also unacceptable as part of a double-standard in which the United Nations and the international community continue to be silent about Iran’s threats against Israeli citizens — not to mention Iran’s malign actions against its own citizens. Perhaps the time… is long overdue… for the U.S. to cease funding the UN, which seems only to conserve injustice and war.

Under no circumstances should the US, the UN or any other entity — read: Europe — in any way be assisting the malign mullahs of Iran.

Instead of concentrating on assisting and improving the living standards of its citizens, the ruling mullahs of Iran seem to be prioritizing the advancement of their anti-Semitic agenda.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei recently called Israel a “cancerous tumor to be destroyed,” promised “to support any nation or group that fights Israel,” and urged the Palestinian militant groups to cooperate more closely with each other and “expand the field of jihad in all Palestinian lands.”

https://jamieglazov.com/2020/05/25/hopkins-video-another-zombie-hospital-for-invis

This new Glazov Gang edition features U.K.’s valiant freedom fighter Katie Hopkins, who discusses Another Zombie Hospital for Invisible Patients, unveiling how The morbid charade ensues.

Don’t miss it!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-marks-memorial-day-weekend-as-coronavirus-death-toll-nears-100-000-11590312043?mod=hp_lead_pos1

More than 5.3 million people have been infected world-wide; U.S. adds travel restrictions on hard-hit Brazil

The U.S. government said it is imposing new travel restrictions on Brazil as Covid-19 cases there have risen sharply, while the coronavirus-related death toll at home was approaching 100,000 over the Memorial Day holiday weekend.

The number of confirmed deaths in the U.S. caused by the new coronavirus was 97,599 as of Sunday evening, the highest national tally globally, data from Johns Hopkins University showed. More than 5.3 million people have been infected world-wide, with over 1.6 million of those cases in the U.S., the data showed.

Under the new Brazil travel ban, foreign nationals who have been in Brazil within 14 days before trying to enter the U.S. would be suspended, with some exceptions. The rules for Brazil go into effect on May 28, according to the White House. The move follows other U.S. bans on some travel from parts of Asia and Europe.

The U.S. is enduring a subdued Memorial Day holiday weekend. Many public events have been canceled as states deployed measures to discourage crowds amid the continuing attempts to balance an easing of emergency measures with the risk of fresh outbreaks.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-5-23-europe-is-firmly-committed-to-economic-suicide

In various posts over the years, I have argued that the long-term economic prospects for the likes of China and Russia are not very good. Among other reasons, the dictator-for-life governance model leads to inherent instability that undermines incentives for investment and growth. And then there’s the inevitability of state-directed capital allocation leading to massive investment in boondoggle projects that fail spectacularly. See as a couple of examples, from March 2018, “Is It Possible For A Dictatorship To Be A Top World Power?”, or, from July 2015, “In Case You Thought The Chinese Knew What They Were Doing.”

Therefore, Europe should have a huge leg up on these successors to Stalin and Mao. After all, the European countries basically have market economies, although overlain with bloated and unaccountable regulatory bureaucracies. They have a solid base of creative entrepreneurship. Really, how badly could they go wrong?

But the big problem for Europe is that most of their governments are firmly committed to economic suicide. This is particularly true for the countries with the largest economies, Germany and France. Among data points from just this week, here are a few:

From Deutsche Welle, we learn (May 20) that the European Commission is circulating a draft plan for massive support of the auto industry — 100 billion euros or more — that has been very hard hit by the virus crisis (sales down as much as 97% in April). However, the Commission intends to use the money to subsidize, in its words, “clean” modes of transport:  “[T]he paper proposes that €40 to €60 billion of the package come in the form of investments dedicated to “clean cars” such as electric vehicles, and other new technologies that do not rely on fossil fuels. The Commission is also seeking to have 2 million public charging ports across the EU by 2025. However, the plan does not touch on the fact that there is still massive debate on how clean small occupancy private vehicles can really be, electric or not.” The rest of the industry will be out of luck.

‘Islamist separatism is incompatible with freedom and equality, incompatible with the indivisibility of the republic and the necessary unity of the nation.’

“In the republic, it is not acceptable to refuse to shake hands with a woman because she is a woman. In the republic, we cannot accept that someone refuses to be cared for or educated by someone because she is a woman. In the republic, it is not acceptable to drop out of school for reasons of religion or belief. In the republic, one cannot demand virginity certificates to get married. In the republic, we must never accept that the laws of religion can be superior to the laws of the Republic. . . .

And now that I have said all this, this isn’t a question of stigmatizing any religion. And what we have to do is not, as I have sometimes heard from some people, a program against Islam. That would be a profound mistake. There are millions of fellow citizens, French citizens, who . . . believe in Islam and who live according to the laws of the republic and who want to live as French citizens. What we must fight is the separatism I have just mentioned and all the practices I have just mentioned with great calm, with great determination, with great respect. . . . The risk is that the whole society will say “the problem is our Muslim fellow citizens,” which would be a huge mistake. But this Islamist separatism is incompatible with freedom and equality, incompatible with the indivisibility of the republic and the necessary unity of the nation.