RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/denmarks-race-bottom-lars-hedegaard/

During a discussion in May 2004, Amir Taheri noted that Islam is incompatible with democracy for the simple reason that democracy is based on one fundamental principle, namely equality. This is unacceptable to Islam, according to which a non-believer cannot be the equal of a believer. To be sure, Jews and Christians, labeled “people of the Book”, are accorded human status and some protection by their Muslim masters (at least in principle) provided they agree to submit to a form of apartheid known as dhimmitude, which has been exhaustibly chronicled by writers such as Bat Ye’or and Andrew Bostom.

The very concept of democracy is anathema in Islam, according to which power belongs only to God. The man exercising that authority on Earth is known as the khalif and holds all religious, political and military power.

In Islam the people cannot have any say over legislation because Allah revealed his eternal law to his prophet 1400 years ago, wherefore it would be blasphemous for men to change a single word.

Almost all Muslim states have man-made laws, but the true believers regard these laws as an affront to their religion and the regimes upholding them as illegitimate imposters. Which goes a long way towards explaining the constant instability and occasional bloodshed throughout the Muslim world.

But surely, such medieval ideas cannot long survive a confrontation with the enlightened West? Regrettably they can.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/british-stasi-rising-katie-hopkins/

Neighbors spying on neighbors, people encouraged to report each other, curtains twitching as you walk by. Sound familiar?

The tactics used by the Stasi in East Germany in 1950, creating a secret police organization through a vast network of informants, are now being encouraged by British police in the UK in 2020. And the Chinese Virus was all it took for people to willingly comply.

Humberside Police (in the east midlands of England) has created an online portal where people can report those they suspect of not following social distancing rules, such as exercising only once a day or leaving the house only to buy food or for medical emergencies.

They say:

‘Reports will be assessed based on the information provided and we would ask people to please consider the circumstance before making their report.’

Another force – Derbyshire Police (central midlands) – sent drones to a remote walking spot in the Peak District, an area known for its beautiful views, and captured actual footage of … dog walkers. There is something very disconcerting about police filming innocent people without their permission.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15815/iran-coronavirus-nuclear-program

The Iranian regime now has enough enriched uranium to refine and build a nuclear bomb if it desires to do so. Approximately 1000 kg of uranium enriched at just 5% can be refined to create one nuclear bomb…. Moreover, “the agency identified a number of questions related to possible undeclared nuclear material and nuclear-related activities at three locations in Iran,” according to a recently published second report by the IAEA.

It is important to point out that the three undeclared nuclear locations to which the IAEA is referring are in addition to another, fourth, clandestine nuclear site in Iran that was first revealed by Israel.

The Director General of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, admitted , as reported on March 3, 2020, “The fact that we found traces (of uranium) is very important. That means there is the possibility of nuclear activities and material that are not under international supervision and about which we know not the origin or the intent. That worries me.” … Iran is also breaching several UN resolutions by not allowing the IAEA to inspect its nuclear sites.

If the Iranian government is advancing its nuclear program for peaceful purposes, why has Tehran repeatedly failed to report its nuclear facilities, including those at Natanz and Arak, to the IAEA? Also, why does the Iranian government keep refusing to answer the IAEA’s questions regarding its secret nuclear facilities?

The United Nations needs to break its silence and, before it is too late, take seriously Iran’s latest rapid nuclear escalation.

While many governments around the world are focusing on how to halt the spread of the COVID-19 virus, the Iranian regime appears to be concentrating on another issue: rapidly advancing its nuclear program.

Amid the coronavirus, Iran has crossed a major threshold concerning its nuclear plans. The United Nations’ atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), reported that Tehran has increased its enriched uranium stockpile, which now stands at the equivalent of 1,510 kg. Iran is allowed to possess 300 kg of low enriched uranium — a substantial increase in Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile in a short period of time.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-new-path-to-venezuelan-democracy-11585645210?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

As the coronavirus spreads around the world, it’s easy to forget the Venezuelan people’s suffering at the hands of Nicolás Maduro’s regime. The Trump administration hasn’t. Today we are announcing a Democratic Transition Framework to help Venezuelans escape from the national crisis that falling oil prices and the coronavirus have now deepened.

We present this framework as a path for Venezuela to emerge from years of repression and political conflict. It proposes that both Mr. Maduro, the former president who has clung to power, and Juan Guaidó, the interim president, step aside so that the elected members of the National Assembly from both sides can create a Council of State to serve as the transitional government, which would hold free and fair presidential elections. In last year’s negotiations, the team representing Mr. Guaidó and the National Assembly proposed this path forward toward the restoration of democracy.

Democracy isn’t only about elections. A new, balanced and independent National Electoral Council is also critical, and an independent Supreme Court must replace the current one, which is but an arm of the Maduro regime. A vibrant democracy also demands a free and independent media with an end to the regime’s pervasive censorship.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/03/coronavirus-pandemic-common-sense-dictates-prudence/#slide-1

Uncertainty still reigns, so prepare for the worst. A lockdown would be prudent, not the end of the world.

As of today, half of mankind is confined at home because of the coronavirus pandemic, although the severity of the confinement varies greatly depending on countries and regions. This situation must be all the more disconcerting given that, less than a month ago, many government officials and public-health experts were still claiming that Western countries would be able to weather the storm without any difficulty and encouraging people not to change their behavior because of the virus. On that point, Trump’s handling of this crisis has been atrocious, but as Zeynep Tufekci recently pointed out, he’s hardly the only one to have underestimated the seriousness of the threat.

Although I think people underestimated the seriousness of the threat until recently, many now seem to underestimate how much uncertainty there is about what is going to happen. To be clear: No matter where we are headed exactly, this is no flu. As of March 29 in France, 2,606 people who tested positive for COVID-19 had died in hospitals alone. Perhaps even more worrisome, there were already 4,632 people in intensive-care units, up from approximately 1,500 one week earlier. Between the number of people who left intensive care because they had died and those who left because their condition had improved, it means that probably almost twice as many people have already required admission to intensive care since the beginning of the outbreak in France. By comparison, during the entire 2018–19 season, 490 people who had the flu died in hospitals, and 2,915 people required admission to intensive care. Not only are we already way past that with the COVID-19 pandemic, but, even in the most optimistic scenario that I consider plausible, those figures will be at least 15 times higher.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/29/pandemic-plague-and-protests-will-chile-join-the-sh-hole-country-club/

Lower-case, doctrinaire democrats in America doggedly conflate the “will of the people” across the world with liberty. This Disneyfied view of democracy ignores that, in a democracy, the right to vote gives one man control over another’s life and livelihood.

Before the coronavirus pandemic and the plague of locusts came the protesters.

From the affluent locales—Chile, France, Britain, Hong Kong, Catalonia—to the impoverished ones—Algeria, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Lebanon and more the world was on fire (to borrow from Amy Chua’s brilliant book).

The reasons cited for a worldwide conflagration ranged from the evils of free-market capitalism (says the Left) to the “socialist regimes in Cuba and Venezuela” (says the Right), to “economics, demography, a sense of powerlessness . . . and social media.”

Some experts spoke of a “youth bulge” of overeducated young people chasing too few jobs. In truth, this was more like ill-educated youngsters with useless degrees who thought it chic to don a balaclava and lob hard objects at the police and the property they were protecting.

Chile is the jewel of Latin America. In 2014, it even surpassed the United States on the Index of Economic Freedom, ranking seventh to America’s 12th. Since 1990, economic growth in Chile has been as steady as the stability of its institutions. Poverty rates had plummeted and social services had been extended to the needy.

On the Right, Pat Buchanan has described Chile as “the country with the highest per capita income and least inequality in all of Latin America.”

On the Left—yet still on the side of a competitive market economy—the Economist agrees. Chile “is the second-richest country in Latin America, thanks in part to its healthy public finances and robust private sector.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/corona-riot-china-lloyd-billingsley/

“Thousands of residents of the central Chinese province of Hubei gathered in angry protest on Friday,” Wong Siu-san and Lau Siu-fun of Radio Free Asia reported Friday, “amid a physical melee between their police force and that of neighboring Jiangxi province at a checkpoint on a bridge between the two.”

As Athan Vanderklippe of Canada’s Globe and Mail reported, “Violent clashes erupted on a bridge between China’s virus-stricken Hubei province and neighboring Jiangxi province, days after authorities relaxed an epidemic lockdown.” The confrontation came after “authorities in Jiangxi blocked entry to people from Hubei,” and according to the Communist Party’s People’s Daily, “the risk of sporadic cases and local outbreaks still exists.”

The next morning, March 28, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post were dodging a story they should have seen coming.

“Large-scale protests could break out in Wuhan, the epicenter of China’s coronavirus epidemic,” Yuichiro Okuma of KYODO News reported on March 25, “when a lockdown on the city ends next month, as residents unhappy with unprecedented restrictions on their movements vent their pent-up frustrations.” Wuhan had been on lockdown since January 23 and “the authorities have been lambasted for having tried to deliberately conceal information about infections at the beginning of the outbreak of the new coronavirus, first detected in Wuhan late last year.”

The riots exploded the line that China’s Communist Party has the coronavirus whipped, as proclaimed by World Health Organization boss Tedros Adhanom Ghegreyesus. On Friday he tweeted, “For the first time, #China has reported no domestic #COVID19 cases yesterday. This is an amazing achievement, which gives us all reassurance that the #coronavirus can be beaten.” In reality, the virus isn’t beaten in China, and the RFA report outlined the back story.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15741/sweden-culture-of-silence

“The interviewee realized that the conclusions would be politically unpopular, but had nevertheless written them… Other former employees have pointed out that it was clear that there were political reasons why they were pressured to change content in reports…” — Report by Linköping University about the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brå), “Can Brå be trusted?”

“One employee reported, among other things, that a director-general expressed that ‘there is a reality and a political reality’ when the director-general demanded that an employee change a report…” — Report by Linköping University, “Can Brå be trusted?”

“If results were not liked then censorship was used, correction of results, toning down results and highlighting other parts of [the] study that were not so sensitive or that could show positive results”. — Report by Linköping University, “Can Brå be trusted?”

“After I was hired at Brå, it took me a short time to understand that working at Brå is a big challenge. As an employee of Brå, you should write and think in a certain way. Brå is extremely controlled from the top. There are some people at Brå who control with an iron hand. If one were to be a little harsh then one could liken it to a sect. I don’t think they really understand what kind of culture they have created” — Another employee, from the report by Linköping University, “Can Brå be trusted?”

The report also found that Brå appears to strive to hire employees that will “act as obedient bureaucrats at an authority, rather than people who have accepted a researcher’s role”.

Meanwhile, Sweden continues its downward spiral.

A recent report published by Linköping University about the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brå), “Can Brå be trusted?” has claimed that Brå’s reports are politically biased.

According to Brå’s own website, “Brå is an agency under the auspices of the Ministry of Justice and a knowledge centre for the criminal justice system. The agency’s mandate is to contribute to the development of knowledge within the criminal justice system and the criminal policy area, as well as to promote crime prevention work. Brå is responsible for the official criminal statistics and other statistics, which includes producing, following, analysing, and reporting on criminality and the criminal justice system’s responses to crime”.

It is therefore crucial that Brå fulfill its obligations in a factual and objective manner, not least in the current environment, when Sweden is experiencing a veritable crime wave, including shootings, bombings and other gang-inspired violence that some commentators have likened to “war”.

According to the Linköping University report, the results of which were based primarily on interviews with former and current employees and managers of Brå, in addition to a number of former police chiefs and ministers of justice, Brå’s work is politically biased due to political pressure from the Ministry of Justice as well as the management of Brå. The report states:

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15821/coronavirus-how-progressive-ideology-led-to

A class action lawsuit filed on March 19 accuses the Spanish government — highly ideological by any standard, as the Communist coalition partner, Podemos, was founded with seed money from the Venezuelan government — of knowingly endangering public safety by encouraging the public to participate in more than 75 feminist marches, held across Spain on March 8, to mark International Women’s Day.

The Spanish government’s main point man for the coronavirus, Fernando Simón, claimed in a nationwide press conference that there was no risk of attending the rallies on March 8. “If my son asks me if he can go, I will tell him to do whatever he wants,” he said.

“Honestly, it seems to me a joke that the government has waited until today, clearly for political reasons, to make this announcement. The Socialist-Communist government has once again put its political interests above the common good. This gross negligence should lead to resignations. — Elentir, Contando Estrelas, March 9, 2020

The Spanish government, comprised of a coalition of Socialists and Communists, is facing legal action for alleged negligence in its handling of the coronavirus pandemic. The government is accused of putting its narrow ideological interests ahead of the safety and wellbeing of the public, and, in so doing, unnecessarily worsening the humanitarian crisis now gripping Spain, currently the second-worst afflicted country in Europe after Italy.

A class action lawsuit filed on March 19 accuses the Spanish government — highly ideological by any standard, as the Communist coalition partner, Podemos, was founded with seed money from the Venezuelan government — of knowingly endangering public safety by encouraging the public to participate in more than 75 feminist marches, held across Spain on March 8, to mark International Women’s Day. The nationwide rallies were aimed at protesting the government’s perennial bugbear: the alleged patriarchy of Western civilization.

Hundreds of thousands of people participated in those marches, and several high-profile attendees — including Spain’s deputy prime minister, as well as the prime minister’s wife and mother, and also the wife of the leader of Podemos — have since tested positive for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). It is unknown how many people were infected by the coronavirus as a result of the rallies.