RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/04/06/vladimir-putins-encirclement-of-europe/#slide-1

‘Strategic autonomy’ will be insufficient to the challenge

Russian propaganda, going back to czarist and Soviet times, often claims that Western powers are encircling Russia, forcing Moscow to be belligerent against its wishes. Russia is the perennial victim of aggressive foreign powers trying to keep Moscow locked in the steppes and, in the worst case, to install themselves in the Kremlin. Undoubtedly, Russia has been invaded repeatedly in the past: Mongol hordes, Napoleon, and Hitler all tried to extend their power over it. But now claims of a potential repetition of such invasions by Russia’s Western neighbors ring hollow. Neither Europe nor the United States has any interest in controlling Russian lands. On the contrary, it is Russia that has managed to extend its reach along a front from the Baltic to the Mediterranean and is projecting power to the Arctic and the Atlantic. Europe is being encircled by Russia — not the other way around.

Russia asserts that it is under siege by the West. Western antagonism, the argument goes, is evident in NATO’s addition of new members, including the latest one, Montenegro, which joined in 2017; in the U.S. and EU support for various “color revolutions” that erupted across a belt of countries from Ukraine to North Africa and the Middle East; and in the U.S.-led wars in the Middle East. In a 2019 speech, General Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the Russian general staff, accused the United States of conducting a “policy of expanding the system of military presence directly at Russia’s borders.” Such a Western policy of encirclement supposedly forces Moscow to lash out to defeat the “Trojan horse” of “color revolutions” and the various military offensives allegedly targeting Russia.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/chinese-authorities-underreporting-new-infections-in-epicenter-of-wuhan-leaked-documents_3280343.html

The Chinese regime has maintained that there have been no new domestic infections of the CCP virus in the entire country since March 18.

Local authorities say that the epidemic has leveled off, as they ease travel restrictions and allow people to return to work.

But the situation in the ground zero of China’s epidemic, the city of Wuhan, is much worse than what has been officially reported, according to a series of internal government documents obtained by The Epoch Times.

The Epoch Times refers to the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19, as the CCP virus because the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) coverup and mismanagement allowed the virus to spread throughout China and create a global pandemic.

The documents include four reports from the Wuhan health commission, which were statistical data sheets about diagnostic test results in the city on March 14.

The data showed that there were 91 newly diagnosed patients in Wuhan on March 14. China’s National Health Commission only reported 4 cases for that date. That is 22.75 times less than the internal data.

Meanwhile, two residential compounds in Wuhan posted notices to alert their residents that there were people living there who were diagnosed with the CCP virus on March 19—another indication that the Chinese regime is concealing the epidemic’s true scale.

https://jamieglazov.com/2020/03/21/glazov-denmarks-prison-jihad/

In this new Jamie Glazov Moment, Jamie discusses Denmark’s Prison Jihad, unveiling how Muslim prisoners force kafir prisoners to participate in Islamic prayer.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15738/china-catholic-church

“A totalitarian regime doesn’t compromise. They want complete surrender.” — Cardinal Joseph Zen, retired Bishop of Hong Kong, thetablet.org, February 19, 2020.

“They’re giving the flock into the mouths of the wolves. It’s an incredible betrayal”. — Cardinal Joseph Zen, Reuters, September 20, 2018.

“The pope doesn’t know much about China. And he may have some sympathy for the Communists, because in South America, the Communists are good guys, they suffer for social justice. But not the [Chinese] Communists. They are persecutors. So the situation is, humanly speaking, hopeless for the Catholic Church: Because we can always expect the Communists to persecute the Church, but now [faithful Catholics] don’t get any help from the Vatican. The Vatican is helping the government, surrendering, giving everything into their hands”. — Cardinal Joseph Zen, catholiccitizens.org, February 16, 2020.

The Soviet Union collapsed partly because the Vatican challenged it. Pope Benedict XVI saw the danger of China. “I believe that the fundamental ideological tendencies of Marxism have survived the fall of the political form they have had to date…. First of all, we must not forget that important countries are governed by Marxist parties: China, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba”. — Pope Benedict XVI, Humanitas.ci, May 5, 2005.

The Vatican can still support dissidents such as Cardinal Zen and reject a dangerous appeasement with Beijing. If not, the Chinese regime will be able to obliterate and further enslave Christianity to consolidate the country’s cruel dictatorship.

“Before anyone had heard of COVID-19, however, there was mounting concern about the intentions and brutality of the Chinese communist regime,” wrote George Weigel, the distinguished US Catholic commentator.

“… about its herding Uighurs into concentration camps; about its assaults on religious communities, including the defacing and demolition of Catholic churches after the accord with the Holy See was signed; about its aggressive military moves in the South China Sea; about its creation of an Orwellian internal security apparatus through facial-recognition technology; about its ranking the Chinese citizenry according to their political reliability (meaning their acquiescence to what the Chinese Communist Party dictates); about its international espionage, often conducted behind the cover of putatively independent technology companies like Huawei; about its relentless digital attacks on Taiwan; and about the global Chinese ‘Belt-and-Road’ initiative, which financially shackles Third World countries to the Beijing regime.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15776/coronavirus-china-propaganda

What remains unclear is if European publics, which are bearing the brunt of the suffering caused by the epidemic, will be as easily willing to overlook the malfeasance of Chinese officials.

“This is a propaganda operation that hides various truths. The first and most important is that the culprit for this pandemic is the Chinese regime. It does not take any conspiracy theory to point it out.” — Emilio Campmany, Libertad Digital, March 3, 2020.

“China wants to take advantage of this calamity to wrest global leadership from the United States. It will be the communist country that makes us the most energetic medicines to fight the virus. It will discover the vaccine before anyone else and distribute it worldwide in record time. It will buy our assets and invest in our countries to rescue our economies. Ultimately, it will claim to be our savior.” — Emilio Campmany, Libertad Digital, March 3, 2020.

The Chinese government has been fast-tracking shipments of medical aid to Europe, which has become the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic that first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The largesse appears to be part of a public relations effort by Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Communist Party to deflect criticism over their responsibility for the deadly outbreak.

Beijing’s campaign as a global benefactor may deliver results in Europe, where pandering political leaders have long been notoriously fearful of antagonizing the European Union’s second-largest trading partner. What remains unclear is if European publics, which are bearing the brunt of the suffering caused by the epidemic, will be as easily willing to overlook the malfeasance of Chinese officials.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15774/european-union-the-end

When an entire continent is in the midst of a highly contagious virus epidemic, solidarity becomes a more complex issue. Every state inevitably considers whether it can afford to send facemasks and protective equipment that might be needed for its own citizens. In other words, every state considers its own national interest first. In the case of Italy’s appeal for help, EU member states made their own interests their highest priority. This is classic state behavior and would not have caused any outrage prior to the establishment of the European Union.

While such revelations may not spell the immediate end of the European Union, they certainly raise questions about the point of an organization that pledges solidarity as a founding principle, but abandons that principle the moment it is most called for.

The current crisis on the Greek-Turkish border has shown the EU not only as unhelpful, but an actual liability: The EU has left an already overwhelmed Greece to deal with the migrant crisis — manufactured by Turkish President Erdogan for political gain — on its own… On top of Europe’s attempts to deal with the coronavirus outbreak, the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, ordered that Greece must allow the migrants that Erdogan transported to the border to apply for asylum.

If the EU were to approve visa-free travel for Turks – or anyone who had the means to buy a Turkish passport – millions of Turks would be able to enter the EU legally and potentially “disappear” there. Already at breaking point, the EU would arguably become a very different kind of “European” Union with Turkey, a country of 80 million people, literally invited to enter Europe.

All Erdogan needs to do now it sit back and wait for the EU, with Merkel at the helm, to meet his demands.

Since the outbreak of coronavirus in Italy, Italians have learned that other European Union member states do not always practice the beautiful words that they like to preach — especially solidarity.

Solidarity is supposedly a fundamental principle of the European Union. It is enshrined in the EU treaties and the EU refers to it as one of its goals. According to article 222 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, one of the two principal treaties of the European Union:

“The Union and its Member States shall act jointly in a spirit of solidarity if a Member State is… the victim of a natural or man-made disaster. The Union shall mobilise all the instruments at its disposal… to assist a Member State in its territory, at the request of its political authorities, in the event of a natural or man-made disaster”.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/03/justin_trudeaus_canada_is_obamas_dream_for_america.html

To adapt a phrase from Matt Margolis, Justin Trudeau is the worst Prime Minister in Canadian history. Like his American counterpart Barack Obama, he is both a know-nothing and a do-nothing leader, and an unmitigated disaster to the well-being of his country. For example, Trudeau’s unconscionably late and incomplete response to the COVID-19 pandemic — the “19” tells us it has been known for quite some time — much like Obama’s delayed response to the H1N1 pandemic of 2009, and his determination to keep an illegal border crossing open, are only the latest of his ill-gotten political escapades.                                                                 

Indeed, like the Obama of 57 states and the Austrian language, Justin Trudeau is a full-blown ignoramus masking as an intellectual prodigy. Former National Post and Walrus editor Jonathan Kay, who acted as an “editorial assistant” for Trudeau’s memoir Common Ground, swooned over his book-lined shelves. “Trudeau probably reads more than any other politician I know,” Kay fawned, even if his “boyish, eager-to-please personality leads him to project publicly in a way that can seem intellectually unsophisticated.” Trudeau is indeed intellectually unsophisticated — not that there is anything wrong with that, but there is something wrong with pretending to know more than one does.

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2020/03/how-freedom-dies/

Islamic terrorism is a tunnel with no way out. It’s Wednesday, January 7, again. A door opens, again. Two black-clothed figures holding weapons enter, again. The balaclavas they hide behind have owl-shaped eye slits: popular knitting with motorbike riders. One hundred and nine seconds later they have fired sixty bullets into the Charlie Hebdo offices and, from religious motives, have murdered eleven people—on the floor their broken bodies lie over, on and between the wounded. Later, it will be widely accepted on the French Left that the dead and mutilated brought their fate upon themselves because the magazine had published a cartoon of Mohammed.

Line drawings are displayed on a wall in the cramped office, proposals for the current edition of the magazine. Among them is Charb’s last picture, a sketch of author Michel Houellebecq. His novel Soumission is published the morning his caricaturist is murdered. Months later the office, most of the blood stains cleaned away, is briefly unsealed to allow Riss (above), an artist and magazine editor, back into the room to collect his belongings. He notices that Houellebecq is still pinned to the wall, and then the portrait disappears. When Riss has file copies of the publication transferred to their new office some copies are seen to have been ripped by a bullet, and in an unused wooden box, one side punctuated with a clean round hole, a bullet is found resting peacefully inside.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/italys-coronavirus-death-toll-surpasses-that-of-china/

The death toll from Wuhan coronavirus in Italy has surpassed the number of reported deaths in China, marking a new milestone in the coronavirus pandemic.

Italy reported 427 new deaths from the coronavirus on Thursday, with a total of 3,405 to China’s 3,245, according to Reuters.

Italy now has 41,035 confirmed cases of coronavirus. The country remains on lockdown with travel restrictions between provinces as authorities struggle to contain the spread of the illness.

Most of Italy’s cases are centered in the country’s northern Lombardy region, home to the city of Milan. Videos shot by townspeople in Bergamo, near Milan, showed Italian soldiers arriving in a column of military vehicles to remove the bodies of coronavirus victims. Bergamo’s cemeteries did not have the capacity for all the bodies.

Italy’s government is considering further measures to reduce the amount of time spent outside their homes.