RUTHFULLY YOURS

The old book arrived in a white envelope with the blue stamp of a Berlin antiquariat, like a leftover from hell’s rummage sale. I half expected its acidic paper and flimsy cardboard cover to reek of brimstone; they recalled the privation of 1942, when the Berlin publishing house of Hans von Hugo published a German translation of a novel by the minor Hungarian writer József Nyírő. Originally titled, Az en népem,” or My People, the German translator rendered it as Denn niemand trägt das Leben allein, a line from the 19th-century poet Friedrich Hölderlin: “For no-one bears life alone.” Hungary was Germany’s wartime ally, and its Second Army that year had suffered 84% casualties at the Battle of Stalingrad. And because my name has come up in l’affaire Nyírő, I consider it necessary to respond, but wanted some acquaintance with the man’s writing first.

If you’re new to the controversy currently surrounding Nyírő, here’s a very short summary: Along with Ferenc Herczeg and Albert Wass, Nyírő now appears on the required reading list for Hungarian high school students. His inclusion occasioned outrage among some Jewish observers, including professor Susan Rubin Suleiman, a longtime critic of Hungarian President Viktor Órban, who argued that Nyírő’s support of the fascist Arrow Cross party during the Second World War should disqualify him from ever appearing on the state curriculum. Hungarian State Secretary Zoltán Kovács responded to professor Suleiman, citing, among other things, my 2018 report from Budapest that named Hungary “the safest country for European Jew.” Secretary Kovács is entirely correct, and I stand by my article. For a better understanding of how Órban’s decision to refuse to accept a quota of Middle Eastern immigrants made life much safer for Hungarian Jews, just read Marc Weitzmann’s reports from France and see what price the Jewish community there paid for their nation’s decision to welcome in a torrent of Muslim migrants. Unlike Paris, Budapest is a fun and sometimes inspiring city for Jews. Órban meets weekly with his nation’s Orthodox rabbis, who hold him in high esteem.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/amid-the-pandemic-anti-semitism-flares-up-11586991224

The world’s newest disease has unleashed another wave of the world’s oldest hate. Difficult as it might be for the uninstructed mind to make a connection between a global pandemic originating in China and the Elders of Zion, the world’s anti-Semites have risen to the challenge.

Coşkun Başbuğ, a retired colonel who appears frequently on Turkish state television, shared his views about the coronavirus in an appearance on the A Haber television network. Apparently, the Jews who engineered this virus were following up on their earlier work with avian flu. The goal was the usual: global domination. Also in Turkey, Fatih Erbakan, head of a small Islamist party in Turkey and son of a former prime minister, declaimed that “this virus serves Zionism’s goals to decrease the number of people in the world and prevent it from increasing. Important investigations confirm this fact.”

It is not always clear how the plot is supposed to unfold. Some think reducing the world population ranks high on the “Jewish” agenda; others focus on the opportunities for insider trading that a shock like the coronavirus develops. A Jewish member of the Brazilian delegation that accompanied President Jair Bolsonaro to visit President Trump later tested positive for Covid-19. For some conspiracy theorists, this was enough to demonstrate a Jewish plot against Messrs. Bolsonaro and Trump.

Rasem Abidat, a columnist for the East Jerusalem-based Al-Quds newspaper, has a slightly contrasting view. Mr. Abidat, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, sees the virus as a joint U.S.-Israel strategy to attack China and Iran. “Faced with these dangers—an American loss of global military and economic hegemony and a threat to Israel’s existence,” he gravely opined, “Israel and the U.S. had no choice . . . but to resort to biological weapons, for the economic solutions and military options were unable to halt China’s advance and its economic takeover of the world.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15706/turkey-hamas

If the reports about Erdogan’s readiness to invite Hamas leaders to live in Turkey are true, that would also turn Erdogan into the spiritual father of a terrorist group that seeks to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamic state.

It now remains to be seen whether the international community, including some Arab countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, demand that Turkey distances itself from Hamas.

A Hamas move to Turkey would mean the terrorist group would continue masterminding and carrying out terrorist attacks against Israel — but this time, under the protective eyes of the Erdogan administration.

The leaders of Hamas living outside the Gaza Strip are desperately searching for a country that will agree to have them. According to a recent report, one country seems prepared to play host to the Hamas leaders: Turkey.

Two senior Hamas officials, Ismail Haniyeh and Saleh Arouri, have already decided to settle in Turkey, apparently after getting the green light to do so from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Three other Hamas officials, Zaher Jabareen, Musa Abu Marzouk and Nizar Awadallah, have also relocated to Turkey, from Qatar and Lebanon respectively.

Haniyeh’s wife and children, who are based in the Gaza Strip, are expected to join him in Turkey in the near future.

Haniyeh, who left the Gaza Strip in December 2019, has reportedly been banned by the Egyptians from returning to the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave, home to some two million Palestinians. Reports in the Arab media have suggested that Haniyeh fell from Egypt’s good graces when he broke a promise not to visit Iran after Egypt allowed him to leave the Gaza Strip through the Egyptian-Gazan Rafah border crossing.

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

It’s becoming more and more difficult to defend the WHO and now the UN.  In other words, don’t expect the UN to stand up to China anytime soon.  

This is from FOX:   

President Trump ignited a firestorm on Tuesday after announcing that the U.S. would temporarily cease funding the World Health Organization (WHO) after accusing the agency of dangerous “political correctness” in embracing China’s cover-up, thus paving the way for the coronavirus pandemic.   

But WHO is only one patch of an increasingly fragile fabric that is the United Nations.

“China is in a position to veto and stub out any effort by the U.S. to pass a resolution against it in the Security Council,” Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, an Israel-based attorney who specializes in suing terrorist regimes and state sponsors who orchestrate human rights abuses on behalf of victims, told Fox News.

“As an economic powerhouse with the ability to punish smaller countries that rely on its trade and markets, most of the 190 countries that are part of the General Assembly would be loath to join in a U.S.-sponsored resolution that would condemn China for its role in the pandemic.

https://pjmedia.com/blog/german-police-arrest-4-in-foiled-isis-plot-to-attack-u-s-military-base/

It’s useful to remember that there are other problems in the world besides the coronavirus and one of them is Islamic terrorism.

The fanatics apparently don’t pay much attention to the news and I doubt whether they’re following WHO guidelines on how to stop the spread of the virus. Instead, terrorists are going to do what terrorists do and to hell with the rest of the world.

In Germany, four terrorists were arrested after plotting to attack a U.S. military installation and assassinate a critic of Islam.

https://www.economist.com/china/2020/04/16/chinas-post-covid-propaganda-push?utm_campaign=the-economist-today&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=salesforce-marketing-cloud&utm_term=2020-04-16&utm_content=article-link-1

China calls it the biggest emergency-aid operation that it has mounted abroad since 1949, when the Communist Party seized power. Hardly a day goes by without news of Chinese medical supplies, from masks to ventilators, reaching grateful recipients; and of Chinese medical teams flying to foreign countries to help them fight covid-19. Just a few weeks ago China was by far the biggest victim of the new coronavirus, and its government was widely chided for covering up the initial outbreak. Now China is trying to paint a new picture—of itself as a model for taming the disease, and as the world’s saviour.

State media are on hand to trumpet each donation, no matter how small. On March 21st a freight train set off from the eastern Chinese city of Yiwu bound for Madrid, more than 13,000km away. In addition to its cargo of commercial goods were 110,000 masks and nearly 800 protective suits donated by a state-owned firm (they arrived more than two weeks later). The aid was worth less than $50,000. But a state-media website called it a “new turning-point” in the building of a “health silk road”. Among slogans reportedly affixed to the train was one saying: “Come on, matadors!”

It is hardly surprising that China is turning its attention to the plight of other countries. Its covid-related data are of dubious quality, but it has clearly achieved a dramatic reduction in infections at home. Almost all of its newly reported cases involve travellers from abroad. As the world’s biggest producer of much of the medical kit that is most urgently needed globally, and with its own demand for it much reduced, China is well placed to assist. Indeed, in a pandemic, “to help others is also to help oneself”, as a Chinese spokeswoman put it.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15806/germany-ecri-free-speech

Europe has a large web of hate speech laws and policies, thanks in part to the efforts of ECRI — an unelected body — and the Council of Europe.

Finally, ECRI “strongly welcomes the German government’s implementation of its recommendation [in ECRI’s fifth report on Germany] to introduce into the law an obligation to discontinue the public financing of political parties and other organisations that promote racism” and recommends that such a procedure against the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party be examined.

Since 1994, ECRI has been dispensing its highly politicized recommendations to European governments in confidential government consultations removed from public scrutiny. Only the final reports are published.

As this kind of arguably undemocratic governance, where an unelected body of “experts” tells national governments how to govern on fundamental issues such as freedom of speech, has been ongoing for several decades now, one can only assume that either Europeans approve of these measures or are entirely ignorant of them.

The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) recently published its sixth monitoring report on Germany. Even though Germany has some of the most repressive hate speech laws in Europe, ECRI decided that, according to it, Germany is still not doing enough.

Never heard of ECRI? Here are a few words by way of introduction:

ECRI, which describes itself as “independent” is the human rights monitoring body of the Council of Europe — not to be confused with the European Union. The Council of Europe is composed of 47 member states, including all of the 27 European Union member states. Its decision and policy making body is the Committee of Ministers, made up of the foreign ministers of each of the member states. Its most famous body is the European Court of Human Rights. The Council of Europe, unlike the EU, cannot make binding rules on its member states. Last year it celebrated its 70th anniversary. The Council of Europe calls itself the “continent’s leading human rights organization… All 830 million people living in this common legal space have an ultimate right of appeal to the European Court of Human Rights”.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15892/eu-failure-coronavirus

All the evidence suggests that the majority of European governments are ignoring the EU’s advice, and acting unilaterally to tackle the impact of the pandemic on their citizens.
The divergence in approach among various member states indicates that European leaders are — as they have been from the outset — acting selfishly in their own national interest rather than for the good of the EU as a whole.
It also means they are in breach of some of the EU’s fundamental principles, such as the single market which requires all member states to conduct business on an equal footing. The fact that several countries are allowing various businesses, such as construction, to return to work, whereas in other nations they have been banned from operating during the lockdown, means that disparities will inevitably develop in the economies of member states, a fact that is likely to increase tensions between European leaders in the months to come.
The problem for the EU is that, now that so many European countries have already taken matters into their own hands, any attempt by Brussels to impose a unified approach to ending the lockdown will surely be a case of too little, too late.

The deepening divisions among European nations over their response to the coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the inability of the European Union to provide strong and effective leadership in times of crisis.

Faced with arguably the greatest challenge Europe has faced since the end of the Second World War, the EU’s failure to help coordinate the actions of the 27-nation bloc in tackling Covid-19 has once again brought the organisation’s institutional failings into sharp focus.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/happy-birthday-margrethe-bruce-bawer/

Queen Margrethe of Denmark turns 80 today, and to commemorate the occasion she gave an interview that appeared in the newspaper Politiken on Saturday. The conversation was wide-ranging, but the part that made headlines throughout Scandinavia was her admission that while she considers climate change an important issue, she’s not personally panicked about it, and that while she’s aware that climate does change – “it has changed and is changing all the time” – she’s not certain whether humans directly influence those changes. Let it be emphasized here that this is one queen who actually knows something about these matters: she studied prehistoric archeology at Cambridge and hence has an extremely long-term perspective.

(This isn’t the first time, by the way, that Margrethe has failed to strike the approved tone on climate change: in more than one New Year’s address, for example, she’s celebrated the melting of Greenland ice because it opens up the possibility of exploiting the island’s rich natural resources.)

The reactions to the queen’s birthday interview came swiftly. Søren Jakobsen, a commentator on Danish royal affairs, expressed surprise and dismay that she’d waded into such “controversial” waters. Danish scientists lamented what they considered Her Majesty’s unfortunate ignorance. And Uffe Elbæk, a member of the Danish parliament, responded in the strongest terms he could come up with: he compared the queen to Donald Trump. But the critic who seems to have gotten the most attention is Sikandar Siddique, another parliament member. Describing the interview in a tweet as a “coarse, irresponsible, and decidedly misleading intrusion into the political debate,” Siddique called on the Royal Palace to retract the whole thing. For good measure, he told the newspaper BT that the queen was ignoring an “existential crisis.” And in a letter to the daily Ekstra Bladet he went full Greta Thunberg: “Are 250 million refugees not a catastrophe? What about the lack of food? The extreme weather that is killing millions? What about the lack of clean water, which will have disastrous consequences for billions of people?” Siddique demanded that Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen “put the queen in her place.”

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

The new, trailblazing party governing the French-Canadian province of Quebec deserves more attention than they’ve received this side of the border.

Although being a quite young party as well as an openly nationalist one (a deep oddity for globalist Canada), the Coalition for Quebec’s Future — or ‘CAQ’ as it’s known by its French acronym — trounced the Justin Trudeau-affiliated Quebec Liberal Party in elections in late 2018 and currently commands a huge majority in that province’s parliament. Roughly one year on, the party’s showing conservative nationalists everywhere that if it can do it, you can to.

CAQ, which similar to Trump blends socially conservative policies with economically protectionist ones, has taken advantage of Quebec’s unique jurisdictional position in Canada like few parties before it — among other things, Quebec’s allowed to a large extent to shape its own immigration and multicultural policies.

In its first year as the province’s governing party, it’s unrepentantly asserted French-Canadian cultural hegemony in Quebec and has barreled over critics in the broader Anglo-Canadian media. This has made them wildly popular in la belle province and should make them a big source of inspiration for President Trump and his supporters this election year.

Millionaire entrepreneur and current Quebec premier Francois Legault created the CAQ party in 2011. Formally a cabinet minister with the pro-independence Parti Quebecois (PQ) party, Legault managed to peel away a wing of the party that wished to forgo outright separatism (which has been on the wane in Quebec since its heyday in the 1990s) and seek instead greater autonomy within Canada’s existing federalist structure.