RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/an-allied-plan-to-depend-less-on-china-11588288513?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

The Covid-19 pandemic is prompting reconsideration of issues that were thought to be settled. One is the wisdom of China as a hub in vital supply chains, a reality driven by cost considerations and the belief that integrating China into the global economy would moderate Beijing’s behavior. Unfortunately, China hasn’t moderated. Beijing has been an unreliable supplier that pressures trading partners.

Roughly three-quarters of American companies report supply-chain disruptions in China, according to a spring survey conducted by the Institute for Supply Management. The Japanese and Australian economies have been severely hurt by China’s lockdown of Hubei province and other supply interruptions. China’s official Xinhua News Agency has threatened to exploit Beijing’s control over medical supply chains as retaliation against U.S. efforts to hold China accountable for its actions during the pandemic.

A re-examination is overdue. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has set aside $2.2 billion of Tokyo’s stimulus package to assist Japanese companies in relocating production from China to Southeast Asia. The White House’s Larry Kudlow has suggested that the U.S. government could pay moving costs for U.S. companies that leave China. South Korea appears to be planning to shift several important factories from China to India.

Washington and its partners in Asia should set up new supply chains, restructure trade relations, and start to create an international economic order that is less dependent on China. A multilateral “coalition of the willing” approach would better align trading ties with political and security relationships. It would also help India and nations in Southeast Asia develop more rapidly, becoming stronger U.S. partners.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/seeing-the-invisible/a-critique-of-neil-fergusons-the-imperial-college-pandemic-model/

A critique of Neil Ferguson’s (the Imperial College) covid19 pandemic model: “much less intrusive, but targeted interventions could have led to similar results to what we are seeing now, with lockdowns”

A few weeks ago our party assembled a team to audit pandemic models that are being used to inform public policy. Team members have a mathematics and programming background, enabling them to examine whether these models’ assumptions are valid.

As part of this independent work, our team has provided input to University College London’s Tim Colbourn on his draft paper on mass-testing in the UK. We also contacted Neil Ferguson of Imperial College and asked him whether he had looked at the option of isolating the elderly as part of his model. I have alluded to his response in an earlier article.

Neil Ferguson has provided his model and source code to a few independent experts. We understand from news reports that he expects to publish it soon on Github, which will enable our team to more thoroughly examine his model.

In the meanwhile, Nirmesh Mehta from our team has made a few observations about the Imperial College model that I believe are wroth sharing at this stage to inform public debate.

Introduction

The 16 March 2020 Imperial College paper, entitled, Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce Covid-19 mortality and healthcare demand, has been one of the most influential papers in shaping policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. More than 40 days after it was published, we are in a better position to judge the accuracy of its predictions.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/29/its-time-to-boycott-china/

President Trump says he expects China will pay a “substantial” amount of money for damages caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

You can’t help but suspect the Chinese Communist Party deliberately withheld crucial information and hoarded protective supplies needed to prepare for the virus in order to wreak maximum damage both mortal and material on the West.

When asked if he will submit a bill as Germany has done, Trump demurred, saying “We have ways of doing things much easier than that.”

You bet we do.

Consider: Every dollar the CCP would possibly pay us in damages would be a dollar we gave them in the first place.

We can save ourselves the trouble of trying to collect the bill by not sending them the money in the first place.

Let’s say it out loud: Boycott China.

China’s Communist dictators have been waging economic warfare against us for decades, launching missiles from their mines, mills, and factories in an attack that has destroyed our industries as effectively as any precision-guided munitions.

Now the pandemic has wrought further destruction.

They have succeeded in effectively stopping our way of life. We can’t let them do that again.

How?

Just as the CCP has waged economic warfare against the United States, we can do the same.

The Chinese Communist Party lives off the money we send them, and we send them a lot.

We should stop sending them our money. Americans should boycott China.

Our government should boycott the CCP.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15937/who-taiwan-support

With a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, China has so far been able to impose its will and deny Taiwan entry into the WHO. Perhaps China should no longer be on the UN Security Council?

Thankfully, the U.S. administration of President Donald J. Trump recently enacted the Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative Act, aimed at supporting Taiwan’s international presence.

As a member of the WHO, China had an obligation to provide accurate data to help the world learn more about the virus. China, however, still refuses to be transparent.

It would also undoubtedly be better for the world if all 184 countries afflicted with Covid-19 and its ruinous economic aftermath would stop doing business with China: it has proven that it is not friend.

Recently, 127 European parliamentarians backed a bid by Taiwan (The Republic of China) to join the Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO). All democratic governments — in fact, every government: 184 have been ravaged by Covid-19 and its economic ravages — need to make Taiwan’s WHO membership a reality.

The WHO was founded in 1948 with a mandate to ensure that all peoples of the world attain the highest possible level of health. Ironically, the WHO excludes Taiwan and its more than 23.8 million people from its care. WHO shares little of its biomedical and health research information with Taiwan, which is not invited even to its emergency meetings.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15956/china-expansion-asia

The incident prompted a furious response from the Vietnamese government, which accused Beijing of violating its sovereignty and threatening the lives of its fishermen. The US State Department said it was “seriously concerned”….

The dispute concerns China’s recent announcement that it intends to administer two disputed groups of islands and reefs in the waterway. One district covers the Paracel Islands, and the other has jurisdiction over the Spratlys, where China has built a network of fortified man-made islands. The Philippines has a presence of its own on at least nine islands and islets in the area, and bitterly opposes Chinese attempts to extend its influence.

Despite the Trump administration’s preoccupation with tackling the coronavirus pandemic, Washington is not prepared to tolerate China’s aggressive actions. Three ships from the US Seventh Fleet, together with an Australian frigate, have responded by sailing through the disputed waters in a show of force.

China’s communist leadership may believe that they can take advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to bully their Asian neighbours. But this show of force by the US Navy should send a timely reminder to Beijing as to which country is the real military power in the region.

While the rest of the world is preoccupied with tackling the coronavirus pandemic, China is intensifying its efforts to extend its influence in the South China Sea by intimidating its Asian neighbours.

The arrival of China’s Liaoning aircraft carrier, together with five accompanying warships, in the South China Sea earlier this month has resulted in a significant increase in tensions in the Asia-Pacific region as Beijing seeks to take advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to flex its muscles.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/04/china_committed_an_act_of_war.html

Xi and the CCP thugs running China committed a deliberate act of war the moment they banned air travel from Wuhan to all other Chinese cities while allowing international flights to proceed unmolested to the far corners of the globe.  They did this despite knowing those flights out of China comprised desperate souls escaping a homegrown pandemic and a communist regime willing to let them die to save face.  It was an artificial diaspora intended to seed humanity with the Xi Plague.

It has been shown that ChiVid-19 came from a “wolf” bat, a particular type of bat not sold in the Wuhan “wet” market located mere feet from China’s only level 4 research lab — a lab that, coincidentally, was studying various strains of coronavirus.

Did China deliberately unleash COVID-19?  I doubt it.  Hanlon’s Razor dictates that one should never put off to malice what can be explained more easily by incompetence.  No, COVID-19 is not a deliberately created biological weapon.  While the infectious nature is perfect, its kill rate is minimal, rendering it marginal as a weapon of war.  The actual weapons being worked on in China’s labs are likely much more deadly.

The WuFlu was a viral study gone awry — an accident that escaped the lab because although China is a first-world manufacturer, it is a third-world country with a per capita income not much greater than Botswana’s.  China is a nation where tens of millions of people still live in caves and half the population still does not have indoor plumbing or toilets.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/scotland-blasphemy-law-repeal-new-speech-restrictions-replace-old-ones/

Out with the old and in with the new.

On Friday, reports emerged that the Scottish Parliament had introduced a bill decriminalizing blasphemy. No one has been prosecuted under the blasphemy law in question for 175 years, but still, the law “no longer reflects the kind of society in which we live,” the government said.

Fair enough, one might think. But look closer: The new bill does not simply repeal the dormant blasphemy law, as reports suggest. Instead, it replaces the law with a new one, designed for actual use in the 21st century. Reflecting “the kind of society in which we live,” the new bill is neither freer nor more liberal than the old one; it merely enshrines the policing of a different kind of speech.

The single sentence abolishing “the offence of blasphemy,” does not appear until part four of the Hate Crimes and Public Order (Scotland) Act. In part one, the drafters make the bill more palatable by creating enhanced penalties for existing crimes that are “aggravated by prejudice.” In explaining how this could be applied, Lord Bracadale, who conducted an independent review of the legislation, gave ministers two hypothetical scenarios:

A man who was annoyed at the noise his gay neighbor made putting out the bins in the early morning engaged in abusive shouting, in the course of which he made comments about the neighbor’s sexual orientation including hoping that “people like you die of AIDS. . . .”

A man shouts at a disabled person in a wheelchair on a street saying, “get out of my way you cripple” and proceeds to tip them out of their wheelchair . . .

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/europes-moment-of-truth/

The COVID-19 crisis has pushed the euro zone to its breaking point.

O n April 16, responding to the COVID-19 crisis, French president Emmanuel Macron said Europe had arrived at its “moment of truth.” Economics is a “moral science,” he insisted. The euro zone’s financially stronger nations, therefore, have an obligation to look after their weakest partners by establishing a fund that “could issue common debt backed by a common guarantee.” It was the expected high-minded call for a technocratic solution, and it dodged the fundamental underlying political question. In a euro zone still based on nation-states, the strong, broadly speaking, ‘northern’ members have always asked why they should aid their weaker southern counterparts. Today, leaders of those northern states are being called to help the southern members on a scale never before contemplated. Not surprisingly, when they all met in a videoconference on April 23, they ignored Macron.

Europe is indeed at a moment of truth, but European politicians have yet to grasp how bleak that truth really is. All economic forecasts today are too optimistic. Even the strongest European countries will have their hands full coping with domestic economic distress. In such conditions, everyone is on his own. Cooperation is hard enough within federal states, as recent tensions in Germany and even more so the U.S. demonstrate. Cooperation on the scale required within the euro zone, based as it is on the E.U.’s confederation of nation-states, would require a remarkable political revolution.

All economic forecasts are optimistic

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15944/afghanistan-china-moving-in

Both the United Kingdom and the U.S. State Department have complained to China about the free flow of Chinese weapons to Iran, which then wind up with the Taliban. These include surface-to-air missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, artillery shells, and land mines.

China’s $3 billion copper mine investment… in Afghanistan’s Logar Province remains under the Taliban’s protection. Other Chinese corporations that have initiated investment projects in Afghanistan include the Zinjin Mining Company, the Jiangxi Copper Corporation, and China National Petroleum Corporation.

Beijing and Washington are driving different bargains with the Taliban. China, supported by pro-Taliban elements in Pakistan, apparently hopes to enlist the Taliban to prevent Uighur and Eastern Turkistan Independence Movement (ETIM) fighters from using Afghanistan to launch attacks on the Chinese Province of Xinjiang. The U.S., for its part, wants the Taliban’s assurance that it will oppose Al-Qaeda and Islamic State operations on Afghan soil as a prerequisite for a near total troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. The question is, just what is the likelihood of that?

The Trump administration has made clear that it wants to end the forward-positioning of U.S. troops on what it regards as a seemingly endless war in Afghanistan, and the Taliban wholeheartedly agrees. China, in the meantime, has continued to profit from its bilateral commerce and investment in the region, and now appears willing to play a future military role in the area. China has already established a military base in Tajikistan near the Chinese border with Afghanistan….

During the tumultuous two decades of American military presence in Afghanistan, China has been quietly increasing its influence there.

While the Trump Administration is distracted by the coronavirus and its economic fallout, China is now poised to inherit the great power role once played by Britain, Russia and the U.S.

Beijing has deftly maintained low-key but friendly relations with the Taliban since the Islamic movement assumed power in Kabul in 1996. Only China and Pakistan kept their ties with the Taliban when American and Northern Alliance forces drove the terrorist group from power in the autumn of 2001.