RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15938/iran-coronavirus-anti-americanism

Iran’s covert disinformation operations concerning COVID-19 are not only aimed at inciting hatred toward the US; they are also, it seems, aimed at negatively impacting the international community’s efforts to fight the virus.

Whenever social media accounts or websites linked to the Iranian regime’s disinformation campaigns are exposed and removed, the Islamic Republic seems to find other outlets or else creates new accounts to continue spreading its propaganda.

Even amid the coronavirus outbreak and public health crisis, the Iranian regime seems to still prioritize its revolutionary ideals and its anti-American agenda. Unfortunately, the United Nations and the EU remain silent on the Iranian regime’s efforts to spread disinformation as well as on its other malign behavior.

While the US has offered medical assistance to Iran, the regime in Tehran appears to be exploiting the coronavirus pandemic to spread disinformation. It includes pro-China and anti-US narratives, most likely to ratchet up anti-Americanism.

Recently, the social media analyst Graphika revealed that a pro-Iranian influencing operation, known as the International Union of Virtual Media (IUVM), had begun a social media disinformation campaign about the coronavirus outbreak around end of February.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/taiwans-coronavirus-example-11588026299?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

Since 1971 China has prevented Taiwan, which Beijing insists is a rogue province, from fully participating in the World Health Organization (WHO). Now the Covid-19 pandemic has put in sharp relief the deadly consequences of placing East Asia’s regional politics before global health.

As the Trump Administration reviews the WHO’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak, it also should work with Congress to make better treatment of Taipei a condition for continued financial support.

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Taiwan has been a model for handling the outbreak. Its transparent and competent approach has left the island nation of 24 million with 429 confirmed cases and only six deaths. On Monday the country announced zero new cases, and officials believe the local epidemic could be over by June. China’s penchant for secrecy and political control, on the other hand, helped to make the local outbreak a global pandemic. Yet WHO has treated the two as if the opposite were true.

The coronavirus emerged in China late last year, with the first confirmed cases reported in December. On New Year’s Eve, public health officials in Wuhan, China, told WHO about a pneumonia virus but doubted it could spread easily. On the same day, Taiwanese officials say they asked the agency for more information about the virus and the risk of human-to-human transmission. WHO officials reportedly confirmed receipt of the note but didn’t respond.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-century-of-bioweapons-11588025901?mod=hp_opin_pos_2

Covid-19 does not appear to be a genetically engineered plague unleashed on the world by supervillains—but its massive global impact shows how effective such a weapon could be. That will have consequences.

The current pandemic, we may hope, won’t live up to its full hype. It may be less destructive and even less costly than many feared. Reliable treatments may soon become available, and societies will figure out ways to protect the most vulnerable while allowing the normal business of life to resume. Covid-19 will presumably at some point become through antiviral therapies a manageable hazard, like HIV/AIDS before it, or be conquered by a vaccine.

Yet less than three months after the first known Covid-19 death in the U.S., more Americans have died of this disease than fell in battle during the Vietnam War. It has disrupted more lives, thrown more people out of work, and at least temporarily closed more businesses than the Great Depression.

And of course the U.S. is not alone. Much of the world has been shut down; global trade has been upended in ways not seen since World War II, and the spreading economic and geopolitical fallout from the pandemic is already on course to dwarf the consequences of the 2008-09 financial crisis.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/china-says-it-is-victim-of-coronavirus-disinformation-accuses-u-s-of-hiding-something/

The Chinese government went on the attack Monday against U.S. criticism of the Beijing’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak, claiming it is a “victim” of disinformation surrounding the pandemic and accusing the U.S. of “hiding something.”

“China always stands against disinformation campaign. We are victim rather than producer of disinformation,” the Chinese foreign ministry wrote on its Twitter account. “Peddling disinformation and recrimination are by no means prescription for international anti-pandemic cooperation and should be rejected by all.”

Moments later, the foreign ministry added a tweet hammering the U.S. response to the coronavirus and suggesting that the U.S. government has been dishonest about the pandemic with the American public.

“Growing doubts over the US government’s handling of the #COVID19, e.g. When did the first infection occur in the US? Is the US government hiding something? Why they opt to blame others? American people and the international community need an answer from the US government,” the foreign ministry tweeted.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/lee-smith-china-coronavirus-2

The novel coronavirus that swept out of the Chinese city of Wuhan in midwinter to infect millions around the globe has now forced world leaders to reassess their relationship with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The superpower conflict between the United States and Soviet Union helped push China onto center stage nearly 50 years ago. Over the past three decades, Beijing has come to dominate the international system, thanks not only to the world’s largest pool of cheap, unregulated labor and a burgeoning consumer marketplace, but also the craven delusions and greed of Western political and business elites, especially in the United States. COVID-19 has now compelled the most significant geostrategic rethink since the end of the Cold War.

Donald Trump was elected president of the United States in 2016 in part because large sections of the American public, especially in former industrial states, believed that Trump was the only candidate willing to protect them from the devastation wrought on the U.S. economy and social fabric by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and their partners in Congress. “China is not our friend,” Trump tweeted in 2013. “They are not our ally. They want to overtake us, and if we don’t get smart and tough soon, they will.”

Trump promised he’d take American manufacturing jobs back from China. He said he’d be tough with the Chinese on trade, and as president he imposed tariffs that brought Beijing to the negotiating table. In mid-January, as PRC officials were in Washington signing phase one of the deal, Beijing was lying about the nature of the coronavirus, saying there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission. There was. Perhaps as many as 5 million Wuhan residents left the city after the virus erupted and before the Jan. 23 quarantine. China’s mendacity prevented cautionary measures that might have been taken earlier to prevent the respiratory disease from spreading to the four corners of the world. Worse, according to historian Niall Ferguson, China had closed down domestic flights from Hubei province, of which Wuhan is the capital, but continued to let international flights leave the country—including to the United States.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/04/27/a_china-us_cold_war_143042.h

China’s problems are mounting. As Beijing works frantically to cover up its responsibility for the global pandemic, Western intelligence is trying to find out exactly how the outbreak began and how much China’s leaders knew. It is already clear that China’s secrecy and deception imposed huge costs in lives and livelihoods around the world. Their regime will pay a heavy price as world politics is reshaped to see China as a dangerous adversary, not a benign partner.

U.S. intelligence agencies, working with epidemiologists, believe that the new virus first detected in Wuhan was a natural strain, not a man-made bioweapon. What they still don’t know is whether it spread from a wild bat or, as they increasingly believe, from poor containment at a virology lab. They still don’t know the identity of “patient zero.” They still haven’t been able to visit the region, the lab, or its researchers. They still haven’t been able to review essential medical data, much of it now deliberately destroyed. Chinese researchers and early patients have disappeared and may be dead. Official tallies of the dead and infected are obvious fakes. It’s a grim picture. The orchestrated coverup by the Chinese Communist Party cannot obscure it.

Despite this bodyguard of lies, Western intelligence agencies are confident the CCP’s top officials knew in December that the virus was highly contagious. Internal communications reveal party officials discussing the problem in mid-January, even as they told the world the opposite.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-kim-jong-un-disappears-north-korea-watchers-advise-caution-11587918517?mod=hp_lead_pos5

One question swirled among North Korea watchers this weekend—where is Kim Jong Un?—as the dictator’s unexplained absence stretched past two weeks and Twitter lighted up with speculation about his incapacitation or death.

As of late Sunday, there was little information about the third-generation leader’s health. The guessing game began when Mr. Kim missed the country’s most important holiday on April 15, then ratcheted higher after a South Korean publication reported he had had heart surgery. On Saturday, a Japanese magazine took it a step further, writing that he had been left in a vegetative state after the procedure was botched.

The rumors illustrate North Korea’s outsize dependence on a single person for its political stability. The answer to the question of his health holds significant implications for the future of high-stakes nuclear negotiations with the U.S. and the stability of a country on China’s border.

“These persistent rumors suggest that there are concerns that his health could impact his ability to lead the country,” said Jean Lee, a public-policy fellow at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center. “And those concerns are always worth paying attention to with a country like North Korea where the system has been built around the rule of one family.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15931/coronavirus-china-cuba-venezuela

China and its Latin American allies are aggressively attempting to convince the world that the U.S. is secretly the original source of the virus and that China is the only country that can save us. This state propaganda is enforced through a digital army of upwards of two million state-backed internet trolls dubbed the “Wu Mao” or “50 cent” army, named after how much the PRC reportedly pays per pro-China post.

China and Cuba have been complementing their propaganda with “medical diplomacy”, which appears to serve as a gateway to enhance their strategic positioning in Latin America. Efforts include aggressive propaganda, such as the fake news that Cuba has the cure for the coronavirus. The message is then spread in Spanish through social media and messaging platforms. Meanwhile, Cuba has been sending medical missions, manned by physicians who are evidently victims of human trafficking, to Panama, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Belize, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, and Brazil.

The Cuban and Chinese medical diplomacy also stretched to Spain, where, on March 30, shortly after Spain’s Health Minister Salvador Illa announced the purchase of $467 million in medical supplies from China, 39 Cuban doctors were dispatched to neighboring Andorra. The shipment from a Chinese manufacturer included “quick result” COVID-19 tests that were faulty and had to be sent back.

Cuba has been touting its Alfa 2B drug as a potential cure to COVID-19 in state media platforms, which are parroted by China. This claim…. prompted a South African spokesman to warn that “there is still no cure for the killer virus.”

Cuban state media loves to boast that the export of Alfa 2B is in demand in more than 15 countries and has been used to cure 1,500 cases of the coronavirus in China. What it is actually exporting is the propaganda around the drug. Several fabricated “news” clippings have surfaced in recent weeks on Spanish social media saying that Cuba has a cure for COVID-19. This propaganda is being spread by Cuba’s allies in the “Bolivarian network” led by Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro.

The increasing evidence that SARS-CoV-2 might have originated in a Wuhan laboratory is sparking an intense global battle of credibility between Washington and Beijing. The People’s Republic of China (PRC), however, has already been fighting this war through an aggressive disinformation campaign against the U.S. in various parts of the world, including in Latin America.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/pope-francis-calls-relaxation-sanctions-against-robert-spencer/

Throughout his papacy, Pope Francis has again and again shown himself to be an enemy of the West and the Judeo-Christian tradition, and a friend of those who oppose and would destroy them. And so it came as no surprise when the Islamic Republic of Iran’s state-controlled Mehr News Agency reported this week that after receiving an appeal from a senior member of the Academy of Sciences of Iran, Ayatollah Mostafa Mohaghegh Damad, Pope Francis has called for the relaxation of international sanctions against Iran.

The Pope issued his call in the course of his solemn Urbi et Orbi blessing on Easter Sunday, saying: “In light of the present circumstances, may international sanctions be relaxed, since these make it difficult for countries on which they have been imposed to provide adequate support to their citizens.” The Pontiff didn’t say anything about the fact that the Iranian mullahs used the bulk of the billions Barack Obama showered upon them not to improve the economic plight of their people, but to support jihad terror groups worldwide. He was likewise silent about the likelihood that if sanctions were relaxed, the mullahs would probably spend the money on jihad terrorism yet again.

Why is the Pope siding with those who routinely chant “Death to America,” and who likely don’t look kindly upon the Catholic Church, either? One clue may be in the fact that the Pope has given numerous indications that he really does hate the West and the Christian tradition. Some time ago, used the French epic The Song of Roland to issue yet another mea culpa to Muslims, saying: “A scene from The Song of Roland comes to me as a symbol, when the Christians defeat the Muslims and line them up in front of the baptismal font, with one holding a sword. And the Muslims had to choose between baptism or the sword. That is what we Christians did.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/lessons-unlearned-have-come-back-haunt-us-david-horowitz-0/

As I write this, there are over a quarter of a million recorded deaths from the corona virus and many many more to come. We know now that the virus originated in Wuhan China, probably in its virology lab, and that the Chinese concealed the fact that it was contagious between humans and deadly for weeks. They allowed a Lunar New Year celebration in Wuhan that involved tens of thousands of people, and also permitted 5 million inhabitants of Wuhan to leave the city and spread the virus. Moreover, they permitted hundreds of thousands of Chinese to travel abroad to celebrate the Lunar New Year and infect people in more than 200 countries across the globe.

Whatever one may say about the origin of the virus – it could have been the result of an accident – what cannot be denied is that the cover-up by the Chinese Communist dictatorship was deliberate and calculated, as most likely was its failure to close its borders until the virus was contained. In other words, this was a hostile attack on an innocent world, justified most probably as an effort to protect the Chinese Communist regime. So ferocious is this self-preservation imperative that the regime has launched a global campaign accusing the United States military of creating the virus, a lie so monstrous it is reminiscent of the lies promulgated by the totalitarian regimes of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia.

For almost twenty years since China was admitted to the World Trade Organization in 2001, the Chinese regime has been mistakenly regarded by western leaders as a worthy member of the international community of nations. American leaders have regarded it as worthy of being entrusted with the supply lines of medicines and other health supports vital for survival during a pandemic like this one. Prior to 2001, China was treated as a pariah state, a policy that took root when the Communist Party seized power in Beijing in 1949, and proceeded to murder more than 100 million Chinese in the process of transforming China into a socialist state. China’s 1950 decision to go to war with the United States and prop up another totalitarian regime in North Korea was also a warning to the West to treat China as the hostile power it most self-evidently still is.