RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/canada-some-toronto-area-mosques-remaining-open-christine-douglass-williams/

According to a CBC report in Canada: “A group of Ontario imams and Islamic scholars is fighting an uphill battle to convince management at a handful of Toronto-area mosques to completely shutter their doors. They say that while a majority of mosques are closed….a few insist on remaining open. The imams believe the refusal to close the mosques exposes an allegiance to certain foreign scholars not heeding the calls.” This issue is beyond the Muslim community and there is no indication that it is being treated as such. 

On a global scale, the battle continues within Islam on whether to heed the orders and warnings about the coronavirus and practice social distancing, or to listen to Islamic clerics who insist on continuing prayers amid the coronavirus outbreak, and die a martyr if that is Allah’s will. Case in point: in a video that went viral, devoted Muslim Jafar Ghafouri was shown licking the metal gating of a shrine, saying  “I am eating the virus to reassure you and keep you coming to the mausoleum”. Another worhipper said: “Stop playing with people’s beliefs, coronavirus is nothing in the Shia shrines,” while yet another declared “I am licking this and I don’t care what happens.”  

The risky behavior does not stop in Iran. Pakistan was reported to be the coronavirus super-spreader to the entire Muslim world, precisely because of the influence of determined Muslim clerics and an increasingly popular Islamic revival group called Tablighi Jamaat, which Pew Research Center describes as one of the largest faith-based movements in the world. According to an article in Haaretz:

The Tableeghi Jamaat’s reluctance to cite an infectious virus as cause for the disbandment is rooted in its regressive ideology, whose exponents have ranged from militant jihadists to radical preachers to Islamic televangelists unleashing a perilous blend of unscientific fantasies and bigoted fallacies. For these ideologues, cancelling congregational prayers owing to an infectious disease is synonymous with repudiating Allah’s command.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15835/austria-coronavirus-chronicles

Borders matter. For many years, Europeans have been told by their leaders that borders could not be closed to curb illegal migration due to the Schengen Agreement…. In the 14th century, Poland was less affected by the plague because King Casimir isolated his country, closed borders and quarantined the border regions.

Freedom of speech matters. The Austrian government has installed a “ministry of truth” in the office of the chancellor….

“[W]henever a government got its hands on truth control, it has massively abused it within a very short time to gag and ban critical and oppositional voices. Once they have the power to control opinion, it is a massive temptation for those in power to use it in the self-interest of a government.” — Andreas Unterberger, blogger, March 22, 2020.

Week 1 in a country in complete shutdown. Austria has been at the forefront of forcing its citizens to “shelter in place” by enacting measures so severe that even the country’s elderly cannot remember anything similar.

To snuff out a virus that originated in China in November and has since made its way around the world, roughly a month ago, the Austrian government, led by Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, thankfully heeded a dire warning by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, took hard a look at Austria’s neighboring country, Italy, and immediately enacted a first set of measures, followed by the drastic rules mentioned above, that were first extended until April 13 and stepped up on March 30.

The new measures include wearing compulsory masks when grocery shopping, which, in due course, will be extended to the wearing masks when outdoors at any time. In addition, vulnerable men and women, that is, those whose immune systems are compromised, are required to stay home, with their salaries covered by the government. The chancellor warned the population that “what we are witnessing right now is the quiet before the storm” and added that if measures are loosened, they will start with the opening of shops and some restaurants; universities and schools will follow at the very end of this process. Schools in Austria are therefore unlikely to reopen before the fall, although there are already extensive course online.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15836/coronavirus-iran-sanctions

The Iranian regime’s failure to grasp the significance of the outbreak in its own country has led 16 other countries in the region to claim that their own outbreaks originated in Iran. These include Iraq, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates.

The European aid package, which is said to be worth $548,000, is the first transaction conducted under a trade mechanism known as the Instrument In Support Of Trade Exchanges, or Instex, which has been set up by the Europeans to enable them to barter humanitarian goods and food with Tehran after the US withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal.

Tehran would be well-advised, though, not to regard the aid delivery as raising the prospect of the sanctions being eased. The new trading arrangements set up by Europe have been designed not to breach the Trump administration’s policy of applying “maximum pressure” against Iran, so that Instex can only be used for the delivery of humanitarian aid and food.

This means that, while the aid delivery might help to fight the coronavirus pandemic, it will do little to alleviate the pressure on Iran’s incompetent, and increasingly unpopular, leadership.

The Iranian regime’s disastrous handling of the coronavirus pandemic could ultimately pose a greater threat to the survival of the ayatollahs than the impact of Washington’s uncompromising sanctions regime.

Up until the coronavirus outbreak, the main challenge facing the clerical regime was the devastating impact the Trump administration’s hard-hitting sanctions were having on the Iranian economy.

With the economy shrinking at the rate of 10 percent a year, and unemployment hovering around the 20 percent mark, the regime was under increasing pressure from anti-government protesters angry at the regime’s mishandling of the economy.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/31/as-long-as-communist-china-controls-the-world

While the WHO gives China its imprimatur, evidence continues to mount of China’s malign role in every aspect of this pandemic.

With each passing day, it becomes clear that the world’s most prominent global health institution, the United Nations’ World Health Organization (WHO), has been capturedby communist China. This is particularly disastrous because in matters of life and limb, politicization of any kind can kill.

The WHO’s peddling of narratives from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as the pandemic mushroomed — including denying human-to-human transmission and calling it racist to focus on the Chinese origin of the virus — undoubtedly contributed to the spread of the virus. It’s been mimicked by health officials, the media, and politicians.Yet this toxic relationship continues unabated.

WHO China Mission Leader Kowtows to the CCP

For the latest indicator of WHO fealty to the CCP, look no further than this breathtaking clip from an interview between Radio Television Hong Kong journalist Yvonne Tong and Dr. Bruce Aylward, leader of the WHO’s February 2020 joint international mission to China regarding coronavirus:

http://www.jeffjacoby.com/24003/excluding-taiwan-from-the-who-is-a-political

SECRETARY OF STATE Mike Pompeo on Monday endorsed observer status for Taiwan at the World Health Organization, pledging that he and the State Department will “do our best” to advocate Taiwan’s participation in WHO meetings. With the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic approaching 40,000 and climbing steeply, Taiwanese involvement in the world’s foremost public health agency ought to be a no-brainer — not just because the island is home to 24 million people, but also because it was one of the first to confront the new disease, and has been highly successful in fighting it.

But Taiwan doesn’t participate in the WHO. Virtually every country on earth is a member — some, like Nauru and Tuvalu, so tiny that their entire population wouldn’t fill half the seats in Fenway Park. Yet one of Asia’s most important population centers, a vibrant trading hub with a world-class health care system, is excluded, blackballed by China. The regime in Beijing insists that Taiwan is not a true country but merely a renegade Chinese province not entitled to membership in any international organization. In recent years, Beijing has demanded that Taiwan be denied even nonvoting status in the WHO.

The claim that Taiwan is part of China is ridiculous on its face. Taiwan has never been ruled by the communist government in Beijing. Its political and economic systems are utterly unlike those on the mainland. By every meaningful yardstick, Taiwan is an authentic, sovereign, independent, nation. Yet so aggressive is Beijing in asserting that Taiwan not be treated as a legitimate nation that most of the world’s governments choose not to press the issue. International bodies go along with the “one China” fiction, treating Taiwan and its people with profound disrespect. It’s a shameful situation in the best of times. Amid a global pandemic, it’s reckless.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/sweden-defies-lockdown-trend-bets-citizens-acting-responsibly-n1172781

STOCKHOLM — As the temperature passed 50 degrees in Stockholm last week, people congregated in parks unable to resist socializing during the first signs of spring in the Swedish capital.

This country of 10 million has bucked the trend in Europe, where many countries have locked down their residents in an attempt to slow the coronavirus that has spread throughout the world at breakneck speed.

The Swedish government has left it up to individuals to act responsibly and decide whether to stay home or not. Restrictions that are in place are far more liberal compared with those of the nation’s neighbors.

Public gatherings of more than 50 people are prohibited but there are no restrictions on private meetings, meaning parties and corporate events can still go ahead. Libraries and swimming pools remain open.

Standing at bars has been prohibited but restaurants are still able to offer table service. Students over 16 have been asked to study from home but kindergartens and elementary schools are still open.

Rather than wide-ranging restrictions, the authorities have instead advised the public to practice social distancing and to work from home, where possible, and urged those over the age of 70 to self-isolate as a precaution. In other words, the country has staked its bets on people acting responsibly.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/lying-china-joseph-klein/

If we are to believe China’s figures, the number of Covid-19 coronavirus cases in China as of March 31 was 82,240, with 3,309 deaths. The United States has now just under 165,000 cases and has surpassed 3000 deaths attributed to the virus – about double the official number of China’s cases and fast approaching China’s official death total. China claims that it has largely defeated the coronavirus and is opening public transportation, schools, and factories. The Chinese Communist Party has promoted itself as the global role model for how to lead a “people’s war” against COVID-19 and save many lives. “Party officials have tried to spin the crisis as a testament to the strength of China’s authoritarian system and its hard-line leader, Xi Jinping,” the New York Times reported, “even announcing plans to publish a book in six languages about the outbreak that portrays him as a ‘major power leader’ with ‘care for the people.’”

China’s officially reported case and death totals to date just happen to be remarkably close to a prediction last February by Stanford University biology professor Michael Levitt. Dr. Levitt, who won the 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry, predicted that China would peak with around 80,000 cases and 3,250 deaths. Dr. Levitt  has spent a couple of months a year in China. “I became much more interested in China, and seeing the country through the eyes of somebody who has lived there made it very different,” he said. Dr. Levitt was appalled by the travel restrictions imposed by the United States. “It’s crazy,” he said, as quoted by China Daily. “Travel bans don’t help at all. I think all this punishment just leads to under-reporting, and it’s not a good idea.” Although he is not an epidemiologist, the Chinese government featured him with appearances on the Chinese State broadcaster China Global Television Network.

Dr. Levitt is now claiming that the growth of new cases worldwide should slow much faster than many health experts predict, just as he claims happened in China. We hope Dr. Levitt is right but have good reason to be skeptical regarding the validity of China’s official data. Dr. Levitt’s predictions more likely were used by Chinese authorities to lend credibility to the range of numbers that China is willing to report as the peak, rather than constituting validated forecasts of what actually happened.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/jew-hate-france-stephen-brown/

Last December, vandals desecrated 107 Jewish graves with anti-Semitic inscriptions in Westerhoffen in eastern France. Anti-Jewish graffiti was also found in the nearby town of Schafhouse-sur-Zorn. No suspects were arrested. Earlier in 2019, in February in Alsace, also in eastern France, 100 Jewish graves were desecrated with Nazi symbols.

The desecration occurred just hours before the French government’s lower legislative house was to adopt a motion modeled on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism which states that denying Jews their right to self-determination is anti-Semitic.

In the same month, an Israeli student was attacked by two strangers on the subway for speaking Hebrew into a cell phone. His nose was broken. A 17-year-old, arrested with a stolen phone and known to police, was taken into custody. His ethnic origin was not given.

And perhaps most frightening, U.K.’s leading freedom fighter Katie Hopkins stated in a recent Glazov Gang video that 18 Jewish families in Paris had received letters telling them to “get out” or be killed.

Perhaps to indicate the senders of these poisonous letters meant business, Hopkins also cited the case of the 82-year-old Jewish woman last year who lived in one of the poorer suburbs surrounding Paris. She was stabbed to death and thrown off her balcony by her Muslim neighbor.

Anti-Semitic attacks are on the increase in France. According to Wikepedia, in 2018, they rose by 69 per cent amounting to about 500 assaults. Anti-Semitism surged during the Second Intifada from 2002-2004 to disturbing levels.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15826/china-coronavirus-deceit

Any hope that the West may have harbored in the past about China evolving into a member of the liberal-democratic international order, should by now be considered dead, expired, extinct.

Worse, the wet markets, which were to have been closed, have apparently been reopening.

China is a threat to all of us. That is why it is more important than ever for the U.S. and the rest of the West to be aware of the risks involved in developing further alliances — technological or otherwise — with a country that has served up nothing but duplicity to its own people as well as to the rest of the planet.

The coronavirus may be strengthening the determination of China’s government. So far, it has been trying to guarantee absolute loyalty from its populace through surveillance technology and turning China into a spookily Orwellian society. Any hope that the West may have harbored in the past about China evolving into a member of the liberal-democratic international order, should by now be considered dead, expired, extinct.

China has not only been stealing intellectual property from the West for years, as US President Donald J. Trump has long observed; it has also behaved abysmally during the coronavirus crisis in Wuhan — and maybe also before. It is still not known if this coronavirus originated in one of China’s “wet markets”, which have probably caused other diseases, or in a bio-weapons laboratory — and we may never know. What we do know is that when the World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control offered to help, China ignored them.