RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

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

China has been working overtime to deflect responsibility for the Wuhan virus’s leap from a Chines bio lab into a worldwide pandemic that’s caused death and economic destruction around the globe. While Democrats want to blame Trump more than China, in England, people know that China is at fault and, in Germany, one newspaper has directly challenged China. 

In America, a media in thrall to Trump Derangement Syndrome is promoting Chinese propaganda to derail Trump’s reelection campaign. (See, e.g., “CNN accused of ‘literally publishing Chinese propaganda.’”) This joint Chinese and mainstream media propaganda effort has worked, up to a point. According to a Rasmussen poll, 60% of Democrats believe that Trump is more responsible than China for the Wuhan virus in America. 

Outside of the Democrat swamp, though, people have taken note of the fact that the Wuhan virus is a Chinese phenomenon. They understand that, while China may not have released the virus deliberately, its subsequent cover-up and lies turned the virus into a devastating worldwide pandemic.

Thus, the same Rasmussen poll reveals that 69% of voters overall believe that China is at fault, a view held by 83% of Republicans and 65% of Independents.

In England, a Henry Jackson Society poll also revealed a real hardening in attitudes towards China:

74% of British adults believe “the Chinese Government is to blame for allowing COVID-19 to spread”. Just 19% believe it is not to blame;
71% of the public would support the British Government suing China in international court “if it became evident that the Chinese government breached international law in responding to the initial outbreak and spread of COVID-19”. Just 6% would oppose such action;
More British adults now oppose Huawei’s role in the UK’s 5G network than support it.
40% of British adults oppose allowing the firm to build the UK’s network, just 27% support it.
 The proportion who oppose allowing Huawei a role rises to 51% amongst Conservative voters in the 2019 election;
69% of the British public believe that the virus began in a wet market in Wuhan, China;
83% of the public believe that the British Government should demand an international inquiry into the response of the Chinese Government to the COVID-19 crisis;
45% of the public believe that the Chinese Government is mainly to blame for the damage caused in the UK by Coronavirus. 15% believe the UK government is mainly to blame and 31% believe that the UK and Chinese Government’s are equally to blame.

Meanwhile, in Germany, one major publication is attacking China directly for its responsibility vis-à-vis the Wuhan virus. Bild, a daily broadsheet with a circulation of over 2 million, wrote an article asking “whether China should pay for the massive economic damage the coronavirus is inflicting worldwide.” It held that China owed Germany almost $162 billion.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-coronavirus-hits-the-global-south-11587422555?mod=hp_opin_pos_3

The pandemic may have peaked in many countries, but for much of the world the worst is yet to come. Despite hopes that warmer temperatures would slow Covid-19’s spread in the Global South, the disease is spreading with relentless speed in countries like Kenya and Brazil. The strategies that have limited and slowed the virus in the Global North won’t work for the most part in the South. Without a vaccine or treatments, the people living there will be almost as powerless before the disease as humanity once was against smallpox.

Take the “lockdown” strategy. The purpose of this extremely costly policy is to “flatten the curve,” by shutting down much of the economy to ensure that health systems aren’t overwhelmed by waves of desperately ill patients.

In much of the world, this strategy is impossible. Only rich countries and rich peoples can afford lockdowns. In much of the Global South a substantial percentage of the population lives from hand to mouth. Many people make money selling things on the street or in crowded informal markets. They draw their water from communal taps; they use community latrines, if they have sanitation at all. Hundreds of millions do not have reliable access to clean water, much less to soap or hand sanitizer. After a few days without work, hunger will drive people back out onto the streets.

Even if lockdowns could be sustained, they would do little good. There are five ventilators in the Democratic Republic of Congo, one for about 20 million people. Ten African countries have no ventilators at all. Even if the disease’s spread could be slowed, medical capacity in the Global South is so lacking that there’s no chance it could be built up in time to help. The most stringent lockdown could not prevent a massive public-health crisis in many countries, and no such lockdown can endure.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8239261/North-Korean-leader-Kim-Jong-grave-danger-heart-surgery.html?ito=push-notification&ci=13500&si=6335533

Fears were growing for Kim Jong-un’s health today after a US official said the dictator could be in ‘grave danger’ after heart surgery – although South Korea has played down the reports. 

Washington is monitoring intelligence that Kim is in a critical condition after his operation, CNN quoted an unnamed US official as saying.  

Kim, 36, was last seen at a government meeting on April 11, and was mysteriously absent from the celebration of his late grandfather Kim Il-Sung’s birthday on April 15.

Daily NK, an outlet run mostly by North Korean defectors, said Kim had undergone a cardiovascular procedure and was recovering at a villa in North Phyongan province.  

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/18/china-might-try-to-take-taiwan/

Even though it was the source of the novel coronavirus pandemic, China appears to be the only country benefiting geopolitically from its knock-on effects. China’s No. 1 strategic goal has been to reclaim Taiwan, an island it has long considered merely to be a “breakaway province.” It seems poised to accomplish this task.

Many analysts, such as Ian Easton of Project 2049, have argued that China would try to reclaim Taiwan at some point in the next decade. Yet, reality often presents opportunities. And the pandemic is the strategic opportunity of a lifetime.

The warning indicators are flashing—or they should be in Washington. Not only has the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) been conducting ongoing, aggressive flights into Taiwanese airspace, but last Thursday, the PLAAF performed a detailed reconnaissance mission over southern Taiwan.

Then, on Saturday evening, China’s only aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, sailed from China through the Japanese-controlled Strait of Miyako, escorted by two guided-missile destroyers and two additional guided-missile frigates. That move prompted Taiwan to scramble its navy. The Liaoning and its escorts sailed beyond Okinawa, turned south, and kept going—its ultimate destination unknown to all except Beijing.

Of course, we can guess where the carrier is headed. In all likelihood, the carrier is sailing south of Taiwan. It is following a pattern that the Chinese military employed last year during what was, at that time, China’s largest wargame since the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-life-in-budapest-hungary-under-lockdown/#slide-1

Ghost trains,’ Hungary’s emergency law, face masks and social distancing, restaurants’ pivot to takeout and delivery.

‘Ghost trains” and ghost buses are the most visible and oddly comforting expression of Budapest’s lockdown. Because “essential workers” still have to get to and from work, and the other city-dwellers may have good reasons to move around the city, the regular train and subway services are running as before, and even keeping to their regular schedules. In the case of the Number Two train, which runs alongside the Danube past such city sights as the “Whale” gallery and cultural center and Hungary’s magnificent 19th-century Parliament building, this means that between six and eight trains pass by every hour. At the same time, because Hungarians have been faithfully observing the lockdown rules, which firmly instruct social distancing, almost no one travels on them.

Many trains have no passengers at all; few have more than six or seven. They arrive at a train stop, halt, pause while their doors open for passengers to alight and board them, ring a warning bell before the doors close, and then depart again. On most occasions during this routine, no one gets on and no one gets off. And when essential workers do board them, they punctiliously take seats as far away from each other as they can manage.

Mark Higgie, a former Australian ambassador to Hungary who has stayed on to live in Budapest, has spent the lockdown walking around the city and posting photographs of its old and beautifully restored buildings on Twitter. He’s also been waging an Internet campaign against the decision of Mayor Sadiq Khan and London transport authorities to reduce the number of train services in the U.K. capital.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/gunman-in-canadas-deadliest-mass-shooting-identified-16-dead_3318461.html

TORONTO—A man disguised as a police officer went on a shooting rampage in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, killing 16 people Sunday, in the deadliest such attack in the country’s history. Officials said the suspected shooter was also dead.

A police officer was among those killed. Several bodies were found inside and outside one home in the small, rural town of Portapique, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of Halifax—what police called the first scene. Bodies were also found at other locations.

Overnight, police began advising residents of the town—already on lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic—to lock their doors and stay in their basements. Several homes in the area were set on fire as well.

Police identified the man believed to be the shooter as Gabriel Wortman, 51, who was thought to live part-time in Portapique. Authorities said he wore a police uniform at one point and made his car look like a Royal Canadian Mounted Police cruiser. Authorities believe he may have targeted his first victims but then began attacking randomly.

Police first announced that they had arrested Wortman at a gas station in Enfield, outside Halifax, but later said he had died. It was not clear how, and they did not explain further.

“This is one of the most senseless acts of violence in our province’s history,” said Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-visit-to-europes-front-with-russia-11587166080?mod=opinion_major_pos4

Mariupol, Ukraine

The huge troop-transport helicopter dates from the Soviet era. It flies just above the tree line, nose down, to avoid Russian radar. After two hours of flying over smooth ground, frozen lakes and ruined villages in the dark winter night, we arrive here at the headquarters of the Navy Guard, where we meet the officers who for six years have led the fight against pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass region.

I didn’t wait for the briefing. The nearly deserted fish market in the center of town told the story. So did the empty shops on Lenin Avenue and the enormous blast furnaces of the Azovstal factory, running at half power and emitting thin clouds of dirty black smoke. This shutdown of a key industrial city wasn’t caused by a pandemic. The separatists, unable to take control of the city, imposed a blockade.

In Shyrokyne, a seaside resort half an hour’s drive east, all that remains of its 2,000 residents are a couple, Maxime and Tatiana, former innkeepers who’ve come in under the protection of a national guard unit to lay flowers at his father’s grave. The elegant houses that lined Shapotika and Pushkin streets are reduced to piles of rubble. Lt. Martha Shturma, our interpreter, says this was an ordinary resort with no strategic importance. Its remains to tell a story of gratuitous destruction: the church with the collapsed roof; the clinic reduced to concrete pillars and mined; the school pulverized by heavy artillery, where we find a section of blackboard, half-burned notebooks and a backpack, miraculously spared.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15908/iran-coronavirus-trap

How on earth it is in the US “national interest” to allow a regime that is kidnapping and killing Americans and their allies, and planning to attack US diplomatic facilities, to receive billions of dollars in aid?

An additional problem, based on a pattern for which Iran has only itself to blame, is that there is no evidence that Iran has the slightest intention of using these funds to mitigate the coronavirus pandemic or to help Iran’s people. The Trump administration already offered to send medical help to Iran, but Iran has continued to turn it down. “Possibly,” Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei said, “your medicine is a way to spread the virus more.”

Moreover, there have also been suggestions that a secret Iranian fund of reportedly $200 billion, controlled by Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei, could perfectly well help Iran to fund its crisis.

While the Iranian regime has been killing Americans during the coronavirus crisis and planning to kill more, a group of American politicians are urging US President Donald J. Trump to loosen sanctions on Tehran regime and refrain from blocking the mullahs’ request for $5 billion in aid.

The former vice president and the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, for instance, recently called on the Trump administration to loosen sanctions on Iran.

He pointed out that it is “bad enough that the Trump administration abandoned the Iran nuclear deal in favor of a strategy of ‘maximum pressure;” he added that “it makes no sense, in a global health crisis, to compound that failure with cruelty by inhibiting access to needed humanitarian assistance. Whatever our profound differences with the Iranian government, we should support the Iranian people.”