RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16006/india-china-coronavirus

In true Orwellian fashion, top Chinese diplomats are still demanding that foreign governments rewrite the history of the coronavirus outbreak.

While India had shown restraint, Communist China has shown little. The Chinese air force has continued its incursions into Taiwanese air space. China has also tightened its grip on artificial islands it created in the South China Sea by setting up fictitious local governments on them. These weaponized islands… trample on the sovereignty of many of its maritime neighbors, including the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan.

The United States and rest of the Western world would do well to see the pandemic as a wake-up call and decouple their crucial and strategic sectors from dependence on China in any way. As US General Jack Keane has repeatedly warned the US, China a not a friend; “it is a predator economically, geopolitically and militarily.”

The world is looking to India and its Asian Pacific allies, in a strong alliance with the West, to take a stand and face China’s increasing military, geopolitical and economic intimidation.

As coronavirus leaves behind a trail of human suffering and economic devastation, nations across the world have begun asking critical questions about the global pandemic. Countries are enquiring into Communist China’s handling of the pandemic, which first appeared late last year in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

As early as January 14, China had used the World Health Organization (WHO), a United Nations agency, to spread disinformation about the human-to-human transmissibility of Covid-19, a remark that led US National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien later to call the WHO a “tool of Chinese propaganda.”

While U.S. President Donald J. Trump faced mostly undeserved, politicized criticism for questioning China’s culpability in the spread of the worldwide pandemic and his calls for an international probe into it, more and more capitals across the Western world are making similar demands.

On March 20, The Washington Post attacked President Trump for even mentioning China in context of the pandemic. “Trump has no qualms about calling coronavirus the ‘Chinese Virus.’ That’s a dangerous attitude, experts say.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/katie-hopkins-video-britain-boris-and-lethal-frontpagemagcom/

This video is brought to you by a Freedom Center-Glazov Gang collaboration on a new exclusive webinar series, Teach-Ins for the Twenty-First Century. Join us as some of the leading thinkers and pundits on the scene today discuss key issues related to the coronavirus pandemic and its ongoing implications, confronting the Left, the jihad terror threat, and much, much more. And make sure to ask your own questions of our experts.

Hosted by Anni Cyrus, producer of The Glazov Gang and Founder of Live Up To Freedom.

This new webinar features U.K.’s valiant freedom fighter Katie Hopkins, who focuses on Britain, Boris and Lethal Socialized Healthcare, unveiling the disturbing reality of Life under lockdown in the U.K.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16031/germany-sovereignty-eu

The seemingly obscure ruling… has called into question the legitimacy of the EU’s supranational legal and political order…. The German court’s ruling marks a new phase in the debate over the balance between national and supranational sovereignty.

The European Union is now engaged in a power struggle with its largest member state, Germany. The legal feud threatens to unravel not only Europe’s single currency, the euro, but the EU itself.

“What amazes me is the one-sidedness and the zealous tone that is struck by some here. It is clear that the European Court of Justice has been claiming an unlimited precedence for European law for 50 years, but almost all national constitutional and supreme courts have objected to this for just as long. As long as we don’t live in a European superstate, a country’s membership is governed by its constitutional law.” — Judge Peter Michael Huber, a member of the German Constitutional Court who helped write the ruling.

“One thing should never be forgotten: Europe is not a federal state, but a legal community developed from the founding core of an economic community in clearly limited areas of national sovereignty. Any sovereignty of the European Union is only derived from the sovereignty of the constituent member states.” — Klaus-Peter Willsch, a member of the German parliament.

Germany’s Constitutional Court has issued an unprecedented ruling that directly challenges the authority of both the European Central Bank and the European Court of Justice.

The seemingly obscure ruling, which seeks to reassert national sovereignty over bond purchases by the European Central Bank, has called into question the legitimacy of the EU’s supranational legal and political order.

The European Union is now engaged in a power struggle with its largest member state, Germany. The legal feud threatens to unravel not only Europe’s single currency, the euro, but the EU itself.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16014/ramadan-coronavirus

Ramadan in war-torn Afghanistan is especially hard on the poor who suffer from malnutrition. Lockdown means no work: “If we can’t work, we can’t buy food and we will be fasting for 24 hours.”

It is this year’s Ramadan. More than 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide are currently refraining each day from water and food from sunrise to sunset. The day of fasting is usually concluded by “Iftar”, a communal breaking of the fasting by eating three dates, followed by a meal. The main focus of the daily Ramadan festivities is on the community, the gathering of family and friends. In recent years, Muslim societies in non-Muslim countries have extended their frequently grand Iftar-festivities to include politicians and other stakeholders. For instance, in 2019, the Islamic Faith Community of Austria organized an interfaith Iftar which included a speech by the mayor of Vienna.

This year’s Ramadan is impacted by the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic. As Islam does not have a central authority akin to the Pope in the Catholic faith, there are no central rules for the celebration of Ramadan in 2020. Each community, each Muslim denomination, provides its own interpretation of what faithful are generally to do during the annual month of fasting.

Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, in order to curb the spread of the virus, has banned the country’s annual “exodus” called “mudik” which commonly occurs at the end of Ramadan, when people return to their villages across the island country. While mosques in Indonesia’s deeply conservative autonomous province of Aceh are packed despite the Covid-19 pandemic, due to a ruling by clerics claiming that Aceh has not been affected by the virus, in other parts of the country, most people are banned from leaving their cities.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/05/chinas_happy_harmony_hell.html

David Alan Brat is the dean of the Liberty University School of Business. He served as the U.S. Representative for Virginia’s 7th congressional district from 2014 to 2019. He defeated smug Eric Cantor in the GOP primary and won the general election…..

Dear World: Are you happy yet? This is not a story about coronavirus; it’s worse. It is a story about War, Unrestricted War. The Chinese have promised the world Happiness and Harmony, but have instead lost the “Mandate of Heaven” and delivered Hell. A few courageous experts have been right all along and this is a letter of thanks to them — and a note to the Americans who may want to follow. After you see the scale of deception unleashed upon our country and after your emotions calm, please take economic action! China is at war. Are we?

General Robert Spalding, in his book, “Stealth War: How China Took Over While America’s Elite Slept” gives it away in the title. But the stories of deception will send chills up your spine. Up front, the damage from the war is real. “Simply put, 3.4 million US jobs vanished between 2001 and 2017 due to our trade relationship with China….with 75% of the jobs lost in manufacturing.” All of this occurred under the false assumption that this is just “normal free market competition.” How do you adhere to free markets when your competition is communist and does not respect the price system, private property, or the rule of law? Economic elites have no answer. Everyone should know by now that “China welcomes investment, but it won’t let investors take their profits out of the country (China). Chinese companies set up shop all around the world, but the totalitarian CCP (Chinese Communist Party) puts all kinds of limits on foreign companies (USA) growing in China.” Is this the free market system the elites have in mind? Adam Smith knew better.

How has the language and economic logic been so tortured and twisted in China’s favor?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-it-safe-to-reopen-schools-europe-is-about-to-find-out-11589278169?mod=world_major_1_pos6

Governments in the U.S. and across the world are trying to figure out how to reopen schools during a coronavirus pandemic. In Europe, millions of children are returning to classrooms, turning the continent into a giant lab for what works and what doesn’t.

Here is what we know and don’t know about children and Covid-19, what measures schools in Europe are taking, and what we might find out.

What does science tell us about how children can become infected?

Anyone with children knows that the younger they are, the more likely they are to catch whatever pathogen they come into contact with. But the new coronavirus is different. Most doctors agree that children who catch Covid-19 rarely become seriously ill. How broadly they can spread the virus—and whether they are less susceptible to infections than adults—are still contested issues among scientists.

The World Health Organization has said early research suggests children don’t appear to be spreading the new coronavirus as often as adults, perhaps because younger patients rarely display severe symptoms and so tend to cough and sneeze less than older ones.

French Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer told The Wall Street Journal that the latest studies indicate that children below 10 are less contagious than those who are older.

However, Christian Drosten, head of the virology department at Berlin’s Charité clinic, last week warned about reopening schools after finding that a sample of infected children treated at his hospital carried the same viral load as adults.

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/05/14/the-european-union-is-having-a-bad-

Editor’s note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. To receive it, register here. For our coronavirus tracker and more coverage, see our hub

Seventy years ago this month Robert Schuman, the French foreign minister, proposed a European “coal and steel community”. With that humble agreement governing two commodities, six war-ravaged countries created a common market that evolved into the European Union.

The journey towards integration since then has been bumpy, but it has had a sense of direction. National leaders came and went, the Berlin Wall rose and fell, economic hurricanes struck and blew themselves out. Somehow, the eu muddled through. It deepened, building the world’s largest single market, letting its people move freely across borders and creating a common currency. It broadened, as 22 states joined the original six, including 11 that had suffered for decades under communism. It cemented peace and spread prosperity. Today, Europe is a beacon of liberal values and an exemplar of a gentler type of capitalism.

Yet the eu has also lost its way. The pandemic in Europe is not just an economic crisis, as elsewhere in the world, but is fast becoming a political and constitutional crisis, too. This is solvable in principle, but the eu’s members cannot agree on what is needed to make their union more resilient, nor on how to bring about reform. Now of all times, when America and China are at loggerheads, that is a tragic missed opportunity.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15972/china-coronavirus-dissidents-arrests

These intrepid dissidents showed how fragile, vacuous and dangerous is the edifice of the Chinese regime.
The Chinese Communist Party “is the biggest and most serious virus of all… It is time to recognize the threat the Chinese Communist Party poses to all humanity. The CCP represses and manipulates information to strengthen its hold on power.” — Chen Guangcheng, blind Chinese dissident, now a refugee in the US. Asianews.it, April 27, 2020.
Today…if we know something about China we owe it to China’s vanished heroes. We have, horribly, chosen to abandon them. Very few in the very free West call out the Chinese authorities and ask these great men and women to be released.
The Australian University of Queensland, with close links to China is actually trying to take disciplinary action, including possible expulsion, against a student, Drew Pavlou, known for his criticism of Beijing. We are playing Beijing’s game of repression of dissent.
Bloomberg News is said to censor articles that might anger China and expose Xi’s personal wealth. And the European Union just softened criticism of China in a report on disinformation about the pandemic… It looks as though free thought is more valued among China’s daring dissidents than in many corners of the West.
To paraphrase Leon Trotsky: You may not be interested in China, but China is interested in you.

Three Chinese internet activists have disappeared and are believed to have been detained by police. They have reportedly been charged with preserving articles that were removed by China’s online censors. Chen Mei, Cai Wei and Cai’s girlfriend went missing on April 19.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16030/iran-missiles

That leaves the third angle, missiles, to thrive. Missiles are the weapon of the poor, especially when copied from foreign models courtesy of North Korea, China and, to a lesser extent, Russia.

One more problem is Iran’s continued dependence on North Korean and Chinese partners for spare parts, technology, maintenance and training-for-use of virtually all its missiles. There is no guarantee that either Beijing or Pyongyang would want to be dragged into a war that the Islamic Republic might trigger to prolong its existence as an exporter of revolution.

More importantly, perhaps, there is no evidence that as many Iranians today would be “volunteers for martyrdom” as the time the ayatollah developed his nightmarish dream.

Last Monday’s tragedy in the Gulf of Oman in which 19 Iranian naval officers were killed and 15 others injured in a “friendly fire” incident has focused attention on the Islamic Republic’s failure to develop a realistic defense doctrine that reflects Iran’s interests as a nation rather than as a vehicle for an ideology.