RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15916/coronavirus-belgium-carnage

There were no masks, so the government decided to announce that no masks were needed. This supreme culmination of the ineptitude of the Belgian government still can be found online on the personal website of Health Minister Maggie De Block: “Wearing masks to protect yourself from the coronavirus makes little sense”.

No masks, no screening, almost no tests and people left to die in nursing homes — that has been Belgium’s situation in the middle of the worst pandemic since the Spanish Influenza of 1918. This Belgian carnage is entirely due to the tragic incompetence of the Belgian governing “elites” — and was completely avoidable.

It is too soon to make a final assessment on the management of COVID-19 by the countries of the world, but one thing is sure: Belgium is in the middle of a great carnage.

It all began in 2015, when the government of Prime Minister Charles Michel (today’s European Council president) decided to destroy Belgium’s entire “strategic stock” of 63 million protective face-masks, including the precious FFP2 type — 1,200 pallets carefully stored and guarded by the army in the Belgrade Barracks, in Namur. Because they were “out of date,” said Minister of Health Maggie De Block, who is still on the job today. “Not at all,” said the main union of the Belgian army, “these masks were incinerated… to ‘make room’ for housing refugees.” In 2015, Belgium and Europe were overwhelmed by migrants at the invitation of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the laws of the EU and the European Convention on Human Rights made it effectively impossible to reject them.

The entire strategic stock was thus incinerated, and never replaced — another decision of De Block, which, given the regularity of epidemics and pandemics, amounts to a crime. “To govern is to foresee”, said Emile de Girardin.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/un_shocked_shocked_that_iran_would_execute_a_17yearold.html

Taking a break from blaming Little Satan (Israel) and Big Satan (USA) from all the world’s problems, now the Wuhan, China coronavirus pandemic, the U.N. did something shocking.  Yes, just when you thought you couldn’t be shocked by the U.N.’s incompetent, bizarre behavior, the U.N. fools you and shocks once again.  What did it do that was so shocking?  The U.N. was shocked, shocked, shocked to learn:

UN experts ‘shocked’ as Iran executes young offender

GENEVA, Switzerland — United Nations rights experts accused Iran of violating international law on Tuesday for executing a prisoner who was just 17 years old when he committed a crime.

Shayan Saeedpour, alleged to have committed murder in August 2015, was hanged on Tuesday, United Nations special rapporteurs Javaid Rehman and Agnes Callamard in a statement. (snip)

“We are shocked that the Iranian authorities have once again defied their international obligations by executing a child offender,” the UN experts said.

“We have repeatedly reminded the Iranian government and judiciary that international human rights law is clear: the application of the death penalty to child offenders is strictly prohibited and its practice is an egregious violation of the right to life.”

What?  The U.N. is shocked to learn that Iran has “once again defied [its] international obligations” and expects the Iranians to obey “international human rights law”?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-and-the-laboratories-in-wuhan-11587486996?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Mr. Cotton, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from Arkansas.

The U.S. government is investigating whether the Covid-19 virus came from a government laboratory in Wuhan, China. The Chinese Communist Party denies the possibility. “There is no way this virus came from us,” claimed Yuan Zhiming over the weekend. Mr. Yuan is a top researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which studies some of the world’s deadliest pathogens. He is also secretary of the lab’s Communist Party committee. He accuses me of “deliberately trying to mislead people” for suggesting his laboratory as a possible origin for the pandemic.

Beijing has claimed that the virus originated in a Wuhan “wet market,” where wild animals were sold. But evidence to counter this theory emerged in January. Chinese researchers reported in the Lancet Jan. 24 that the first known cases had no contact with the market, and Chinese state media acknowledged the finding. There’s no evidence the market sold bats or pangolins, the animals from which the virus is thought to have jumped to humans. And the bat species that carries it isn’t found within 100 miles of Wuhan.

Wuhan has two labs where we know bats and humans interacted. One is the Institute of Virology, eight miles from the wet market; the other is the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, barely 300 yards from the market.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us-officials-keeping-close-watch-on-north-korea-amid-reports-on-kim_3320989.html?utm_source=pushengage&utm_medium=pushnotification&utm_campaign=pushengage

U.S. officials are tracking what’s happening in North Korea but don’t know the current situation with Chairman Kim Jong Un, a top official said Tuesday.

American officials are “watching the reports closely” about Kim, who is rumored to be struggling after undergoing surgery, national security adviser Robert O’Brien told reporters outside the White House.

“It’s too early to talk about because we just don’t know what condition chairman Kim is in and we’ll have to see how it plays out,” he said, responding to a question about who would succeed North Korea’s leader.

The “basic assumption” is it would kin, given Kim is the third member of his family to control North Korea.

Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, is considered the most likely successor.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/apr/21/russian-planes-probing-us-airspace-vulnerabilities/?utm_source=onesignal&utm_campaign=pushnotify&utm_medium=push

The Air Force general charged with protecting the U.S. from an invasion said he expects additional incidents of Russian probing of American airspace as a result of the nation’s focus on the coronavirus pandemic.

Gen. Terrence J. O’Shaughnessy, who leads both U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said the Russian military has always been interested in gauging the U.S. response to their provocations.

“We expect to see continued activity. That’s why we’re always ready to respond,” Gen. O’Shaughnessy told reporters on Tuesday at the Pentagon.

On April 8, F-22 fighter jets assigned to NORAD intercepted a pair of Russian Ilyushin-38 patrol aircraft when they entered an area known as the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone. They were first spotted flying over the Bering Sea north of the Aleutian Islands. The U.S. fighters escorted them out of the area.

“We wanted to make it very clear – which we did by the way we intercepted them – that there are no vulnerabilities as a result of COVID-19,” Gen. O’Shaughnessy said. “We are postured and maintain the ability to respond at a moment’s notice.”

https://www.jns.org/opinion/let-us-remember-what-the-survivors-are-unable-to-forget/

Yom Hashoah is a day when aging survivors—many of whom are widowed or have no offspring—have the opportunity to be honored and, above all, heard.

Holocaust survivors do not need annual ceremonies to remind them of the Nazi atrocities that they endured or of the family members that Adolf Hitler’s henchmen slaughtered during World War II. No, those memories are just as inked in their hearts and minds as the numbers tattooed on their forearms.

Indeed, it is not those people who require the admonition “Never Forget,” but rather the rest of the world. It is also a mantra for subsequent generations of Jews to repeat and forge a collective memory of events that we did not experience firsthand, but which require our ongoing attention. If, that is, we are to recognize and combat anti-Semitism in all its ideological—and military—manifestations.

The Knesset thus ruled in 1951 that Holocaust Remembrance Day would be marked on the 27th of the Hebrew month of Nissan, which falls between Passover and Israel Independence Day—two celebrations of freedom, victory and a return to the Jewish homeland.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15907/britain-coronavirus-hate-crimes

Asking the public for more complaints — specifically on hate crime — especially regarding incidents that are not even obviously criminal, seems a bizarre priority, to say the least.

In 2014, the UK introduced the Hate Crime Operational Guidelines, which state that any non-crime incident that is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice based on a person’s race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity must be recorded, even if there is no evidence of the hate element…

Since the introduction of the Hate Crime Operational Guidelines, police in the UK have recorded nearly 120,000 “non-crime hate incidents”…. The non-crime incidents are logged in a system and can even show up in a so-called DBS check, when employers ask for a copy of a prospective employee’s criminal record.

The Hate Crime Operational Guidelines came under scrutiny in February… The police showed up at [Miller’s] place of work. They told him that his tweet was not a crime, but that it was nevertheless being recorded as a hate incident. In police reports, Miller was described as a “suspect”.

The Hate Crime Operational Guidelines… are still in use.

The Metropolitan Police (the Met, London’s police force) recently asked the public to report, “hate crime related to the Covid-19 pandemic”.

“Are you a victim or witness of hate crime related to the COVID-19 pandemic? We do not tolerate hatred or abuse directed at communities because of their race, religion, disability, sexual orientation or gender identity. If you experience hate crime, please tell us & we will act” the Met tweeted on March 28.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15913/europe-conservatives

Civilizationists’ top concern is not battling climate change, building the European Union, or staving off Russian and Chinese aggression; rather, they focus on preserving Europe’s historic civilization of the past two millennia. They worry about Europe becoming an extension of the Middle East or Africa.

That anxiety contains four elements: demography, immigration, multiculturalism, and Islamization (or DIMI, recalling the Arabic word dhimmi, the status of Jews and Christians who submit to the rule of Muslims).

Civilizationists… are already a powerful force, having advanced from a marginal position twenty years ago to a central role in many countries. They are the key opposition force in Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden. They have been or are part of the government in Austria, Estonia, Italy, Norway, and Switzerland. They govern in a coalition in Poland and on their own in Hungary.

Does Europe have any conservatives? That is, believers in individual responsibility, national independence, free markets, a single law for all, the traditional family, and maximum freedom of speech and religion.

Seemingly not. Politicians called conservative — such as Angela Merkel of Germany, Jacques Chirac of France, and Fredrik Reinfeldt of Sweden — are often in reality mild leftists, as are their parties. One might conclude that conservatism is defunct in its homeland.

One would be wrong. A substantial conservative movement exists and is growing in Europe. It is hiding in plain sight, obscured by being tarred as populists, nationalists, extreme-right, or even neo-Nazis. I call this group by another name: civilizationists, acknowledging that (1) they focus on preserving Western civilization and (2) they forward some distinctly un-conservative policies (such as increased welfare and pension payments).

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/italy-is-fighting-covid-19-and-capitalism/?utm_source=recircdesktop&utm_medium=article&utm_

Alberto Mingardi is the director general of Istituto Bruno Leoni, Italy’s free-market think tank, and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.

A scheme ostensibly meant to deal with economic effects of the virus could well end up as a massive expansion of the state’s power to run business and finance.

In the 1920s, the three major Italian banks had a substantial stake in the largest Italian listed companies. Roughly two years after Wall Street’s crash, Italy also experienced a great crash, with stock valuations dropping an average of 30 percent. Those banks found themselves in dire straits: If they sold assets at market prices, their capital would be swept away.

For this reason, in 1933 the Italian Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (IRI) was established by the fascist regime. The government nationalized the banks and placed the shares of businesses it owned in a dedicated holding, to be managed by a few capable technocrats. Mussolini himself thought it was a “convalescent home” for Italian businesses, aimed at a quick recovery. IRI would later be held by Franklin Roosevelt as a model for his NRA. It was not until the 1990s that IRI was dismantled and its controlled companies privatized; the holding was liquidated in 2000. In other words, it took nearly 70 years for Italy to get its state-controlled businesses out of the convalescent home.

It is generally agreed that COVID-19 could be as serious a crisis as 1929. It is possible that this predicament will yield an even greater state ownership of formerly private companies. In most countries this would be an unintended consequence of prolonged lockdowns, but in Italy, it may well happen by design.