RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2020/04/robbed-of-reputation-and-achievement/

The classic definition of a libel is the consigning of an individual to ridicule and disrepute. Cardinal George Pell endured that in spades and for years before the grotesque exercise in character assassination culminated in 405 days behind bars. Someone, many if there is any justice, has to pay.

Much has been, and will be, written about the Pell case, most of it by commentators much more qualified than I, but indulge me to offer, humbly, a few thoughts. If we go back to basics, we can ask ourselves the simple question, how probable is it that a middle-aged man, clever and ambitious enough to rise to the very top ranks of his profession, would risk everything by molesting two boys in circumstances where he could be discovered at any minute? Most people would say ‘not impossible but very improbable’, I would venture to guess.

That premise would, or should, inform a healthy scepticism from the get-go on the part of any competent and disinterested investigator.  It should demand that evidence against the subject be compelling.  That ‘guilt beyond reasonable doubt’ should be as apparent to the prosecution team as it would be to the jury.

Except, it seems, if the subject were Cardinal George Pell.

Another aspect the astute investigator might consider is if this alleged perpetrator, this highly intelligent achiever, is also something of a risk-taker?  As far as I am aware, most paedophiles, at least those within the clergy, are not opportunistic predators.  They carefully groom their victims over time.  The investigator might ask himself, how probable is it that the past life of this self-indulgent middle-aged risk-taker with so little self-control as to take this immense risk for just a moment’s fleeting pleasure would not be littered with similar instances?

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/08/rumors-of-the-death-of-hungarian-democracy-are-vastly-overstated/

Since COVID-19 affects the entire globe, from China through the Ivory Coast to Argentina, governments all over the world have implemented emergency rules to save as many lives as possible. No one, not even members of parliaments, governments, royal families, football teams, or celebrities are immune to the spread of the Chinese coronavirus. News about new infections and quarantining public figures pop up frequently on the internet. This is the first pandemic for a considerable period of time and it is certainly the cause of the biggest change in our way of life our generation can recall. 

The coronavirus crisis an enormous challenge—physically, mentally, emotionally, and economically. Fortunately, constitutions include clauses for such crises—and it should no surprise that those clauses should be invoked.

The United States, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom—and several other EU member states—just to mention a few democratic countries, all passed emergency decrees and legislation. Hungary followed in line with a number of these measures: or, to be clear, Hungary was one of the few countries that introduced countermeasures at the right time, fast and effective enough to slow down the spread of the virus.

In Great Britain, legislation will see parliament close for four weeks this month. It also guarantees extraordinary competences to the British government’s cabinet ministers, bypassing parliament, deviating from normal procedure. The government has never passed such measures during peacetime before, and they could be in effect for up to two years.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-pandemic-world-health-organization-failed/

Since its inception 112 years ago almost to the day, the World Health Organization (WHO)  has been credited with the eradication of smallpox and the near eradication of other devastating illnesses, including leprosy and river blindness.

This record of success makes the current corruption of the organization all the more shameful.

On December 30, Chinese doctor Li Wenliang warned colleagues about the outbreak of an illness resembling severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which sparked a pandemic in 2003. Public-health officials rely on the acuity of doctors like Li, whose early warnings prevent the spread of deadly diseases. But Chinese authorities didn’t reward Li; they summoned him to the Public Security Bureau in Wuhan on accusations that he had made false statements and disrupted the public order.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) followed up with numerous other arrests, and publicly warned that it would punish anyone spreading “rumors” on social media. By mid January, Chinese doctors knew that COVID-19 was spreading between humans, but on January 14, the WHO stated that there was “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus.” Two weeks later, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus flew to Beijing for a meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping, who so impressed Tedros that he lauded Chinese authorities for “setting a new standard for outbreak control,” praising their “openness for sharing information.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15855/coronavirus-turkey-doctors

“We see images coming from all over country. Mass graves are being excavated. They deny these images, but until when will they deny them? Why have all hospitals in Izmir been declared coronavirus hospitals?” — Dr. Barbaros Çetin, Professor, Department of Biology, Dokuz Eylül University, Izmir; Gündeme Bakış, March 30, 2020.

“This has nothing to do with creating panic. The truth must be told. Let people be afraid; it is okay to be afraid. Look at what’s happening; people get too relaxed. The same thing happened in Iran.” — Dr. Barbaros Çetin, Professor, Department of Biology, Dokuz Eylül University, Izmir; Gündeme Bakış, March 30, 2020.

“Physicians are afraid to make a diagnosis.” — Dr. Osman Sağlam, co-chair of the Mardin Medical Chamber, Mardin; Tigris Haber, March 18. On March 28, he was called to the police station to testify.

Since the first coronavirus case in Turkey was officially confirmed on March 11, the number of cases has climbed to 30,217 and Turkey’s death toll to 649, Turkey’s health minister announced on April 6.

Many medical experts, however, who have called on people in Turkey to take more precautions or who have criticized the government for mishandling the virus crisis have been silenced by authorities.

Two physicians have been made to apologize after giving information to their colleagues or the public about the threat of coronavirus in the country, and two others have been summoned to appear at police headquarters for statements they made to the media. The doctors, now officially under investigation, are accused of allegedly “creating fear and panic among the people”.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/opinion-post/justice-at-last-george-pell-cleared/

Finally, despite the worst efforts of Victoria Police, Victoria’s legal system, and the media’s smear factory, Cardinal George Pell has had his conviction overturned by the High Court.

The full judgment can be read here. “A” refers to the choirboy and “B” to his deceased fellow chorister. Below some key elements of that unanimous ruling:

57. In this Court, the respondent correctly noted that a number of the claimed improbabilities raise the same point. It remains that acceptance of A’s account of the first incident requires finding that: (i) contrary to the applicant’s practice, he did not stand on the steps of the Cathedral greeting congregants for ten minutes or longer; (ii) contrary to long-standing church practice, the applicant returned unaccompanied to the priests’ sacristy in his ceremonial vestments; (iii) from the time A and B re-entered the Cathedral, to the conclusion of the assaults, an interval of some five to six minutes, no other person entered the priests’ sacristy; and (iv) no persons observed, and took action to stop, two robed choristers leaving the procession and going back into the Cathedral.

58. It suffices to refer to the evidence concerning (i), (ii) and (iii) to demonstrate that, notwithstanding that the jury found A to be a credible and reliable witness, the evidence as a whole was not capable of excluding a reasonable doubt as to the applicant’s guilt.

And there is this:

124. The assumption that a group of choristers, including adults, might have been so preoccupied with making their way to the robing room as to fail to notice the extraordinary sight of the Archbishop of Melbourne dressed “in his full regalia” advancing through the procession and pinning a 13 year old boy to the wall, is a large one. The failure to make any formal report of such an incident, had it occurred, may be another matter.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/queens-words-comfort-and-thanks-katie-hopkins/

It takes a lot to make a nation sit up and take notice.

But on Sunday evening at 8 p.m., Her Majesty the Queen did exactly that, addressing the whole of Britain for only the fifth time in her 64-year reign, to deliver a message of comfort and thanks.

It was brilliant, in that word’s truest sense, splendid with light. A tonic for the nation in testing times, changing not only what we were thinking but how we were feeling, reminding us of how fundamental our Queen is to our lives.

She gave thanks to our front-line medical workers and those working so hard to support us all, and to those staying at home to try to stop this virus, assuring us that long after this pandemic has passed we will take pride in the way we came together as a nation to deal with it:

“And those who come after us will say the Britons of this generation were as strong as any. That the attributes of self-discipline, of quiet, good-humored resolve and of fellow-feeling still characterise this country. The pride in who we are is not a part of our past; it defines our present and our future.”

She seemed to ask us to dig deep into something much bigger than ourselves and the trifling piffles of our everyday existence. To connect with our place in history and see that we are part of something much greater that comes from deep in our past and stretches far into our future. We are a moment in time.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/04/07/stop-comparing-u-s-to-south-korea-on-coronavirus/

Democrats looking to blame President Donald Trump for every single coronavirus death in the U.S. — as well as the economic wreckage caused by the shutdown — keep pointing to South Korea as proof of his guilt. 

In his statement on the coronavirus, Joe Biden had this to say: “South Korea detected their first case of coronavirus on the same day we did, but they had tests and sophisticated tracing programs to stop the spread of the virus, so they didn’t have to put the entire country on lockdown.”

At a press conference last week, PBS White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor hit Trump with a question about testing rates in the U.S. versus South Korea.

“You’ve said several times that the United States has ramped up testing. But the United States is still not testing per capita as many people as other countries like South Korea. Why is that and when do you think that that number will be on par with other countries?”

The media eagerly jumped on Trump’s goof about there being 38 million people living in the capital of Seoul, which has a population of 10 million.

But they’ve all missed the bigger problem with this fixation on South Korea. The comparisons are utterly pointless. 

Yes, South Korea has had just over 10,000 confirmed cases and only 186 deaths. Whereas the U.S. has more than 363,000 cases and nearly 11,000 deaths.

But South Korea could hardly be more unlike the United States in almost every way. Its population is 16% of the U.S. population to start with. There are 16 million more people living in California and Texas alone than all of South Korea.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-coronavirus-threat-south-of-the-border-11586214286?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

The Covid-19 pandemic has yet to strike Latin America and the Caribbean at full force, but the region’s fragile societies are already groaning under the stress. In Guayaquil, Ecuador, with hospitals and morgues overwhelmed, relatives have been storing the bodies of the deceased in their homes; some bodies lay unattended in the streets. That could be a sign of things to come; Latin America is almost completely unprepared for the multifaceted catastrophe now headed its way.

After decades of underinvestment in health systems, most of Latin America and the Caribbean are nowhere near ready for a pandemic. The region’s average annual health-care spending per capita is $949: less than one-fourth of average spending across the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and only two-thirds of the level in the Middle East and North Africa. The region’s health systems are already stretched beyond capacity to meet the needs of a “normal” year; going into the crisis, Mexico had fewer than 6,000 ventilators for a population of almost 130 million, and even relatively well-developed Costa Rica has less than half as many hospital beds per 1,000 people as the U.S.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/australias-high-court-overturns-cardinal-george-pells-convictions-for-child-sexual-abuse_3301141.html

Cardinal George Pell is to be released from prison after he won his appeal, and Australia’s highest court on Tuesday overturned his convictions for child sexual abuse.

A full bench of seven judges ruled that Pell’s conviction for child sex abuse should be overturned and he should walk free immediately. They unanimously determined that the jury should have had reasonable doubts as to Pell’s guilt and that the jury had not properly considered all the evidence at his trial.

Pell, 78, became the highest-ranking Catholic clergyman worldwide to be imprisoned for child sex offenses after he was arrested in 2018 for five counts of sexual assault.

Pell, who has always maintained his innocence, went to the High Court after having lost in the lower Court of Appeal in Victoria in August 2019, when a two to one majority dismissed his appeal.

Over two days in March, Pell’s latest and final appeal to the High Court was heard by seven justices. Many questions about the prosecution’s case were raised during the hearing.

Pell will leave Barwon Prison, near Victoria’s city of Geelong, after having spent more than 400 days there as part of a six-year prison sentence.