RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15813/uncertainty-bleak-moment

Uncertainty may also be affecting politics in Iran, where the “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei may have slowed down his bid for exclusive hold on power, in the hope that Hassan Rouhani, the hapless president, will end up carrying the can for the disaster caused by the pandemic.

On positive note, the pandemic may have slowed down India’s tragic rush towards a major Hindu-Muslim civil war that threatened to tear its democracy apart.

If the best we hoped for a few months ago didn’t happen, there is no reason why the worst that we now fear may come to pass. The beauty of uncertainty is that it works both ways.

Regardless of its denouement, the current coronavirus crisis may end up affecting the authority of the political, economic, media and scientific elites who shape world public opinion. The function of the elites, and their claim to legitimacy, has been linked to their ability to create certainty, in defiance of all and sundry Cassandras.

However, the current crisis, which struck like thunder out of the blue, has reasserted the evanescence, even the uncertainty, of human affairs. Just a few weeks ago the received wisdom was that stock exchanges will continue to move upwards while US President Donald J. Trump would sail to a second term and the post-Brexit European Union would settle for a period of anemic growth on the edge of recession. Globally, the elites peddled the certainty of business as usual.

And, yet, what we now have is uncertainty on a degree not seen in recent memory. Already the Brexit agenda in Europe is delayed, if not actually derailed, as British Premier Boris Johnson’s stiff upper lip is less impressive under a surgical mask. With French airplanes ferrying abandoned Brits back home from the four corners of the globe and British aircraft providing the same service to European tourists, the old union, cursed by the Brexiters, does not look as dead as Boris hoped.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15789/turkey-christians-attacks-discrimination

When Protestants introduce themselves to the authorities as a church, they receive warnings that they are not legal and may be closed down.

In 2019, however, many members of the foreign clergy, as well as church members, were deported, refused residence permits, or denied entry visas into Turkey — as in previous years.

Some textbooks also target Christian communities. “Missionary Activity” continues to be a heading under the section related to “National Threats” in the eighth grade elementary school textbook entitled, Revolutionary History and Kemalism. This teaching continues to be referenced in supplementary textbooks and tests related to missionary activity being considered a “national threat”.

Turkey’s Association of Protestant Churches has released its 2019 “Human Rights Violations Report” detailing the state of religious freedom in the country.

The report sheds light on problems Protestant Christians faced in Turkey in 2019. These included barring foreign Protestants from entering Turkey for no other reason than their faith, as well as the inability of Christians to train their own religious workers.

One major difficulty for Protestant Christians in Turkey is that the Protestant community is not recognized as a legal entity.

According to the report, the Protestant community has mostly tried to solve this problem by establishing associations or becoming a representative of an already existing association. Associations and foundations, however, are not accepted as a “church” or a “place of worship.” The Protestants, therefore, cannot benefit from the advantages given to officially recognized places of worship. When Protestants introduce themselves to the authorities as a church, they receive warnings that they are not legal and may be closed down. On March 21, in Bolu, for example, a house church used by Iranian refugees was sealed off by the Bolu Governorate.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15814/persecution-of-christians-january

Boko Haram… released another execution video. In it, a masked Muslim child holding a pistol appears standing behind a bound and kneeling hostage, later identified as Ropvil Daciya Dalep, a 22-year-old Christian… kidnapped on January 9 while traveling to his university, where he majored in biology. After chanting in Arabic and launching into an anti-Christian diatribe, the Muslim child proceeds to shoot Ropvil several times in the back of the head. — Independent Catholic News, January 23, 2020; Nigeria.

On January 2, Islamic gunmen abducted Reverend Lawan Andimi, a pastor … in Nigeria. After the terrorists demanded an exorbitant ransom for his release—two million euros, which his church and family simply could not raise—they beheaded the married father-of-nine…. — Morning Star News, January 21, 2020; Nigeria.

“Since the government and its apologists are claiming the killings have no religious undertones, why are the terrorists and herdsmen targeting the predominantly Christian communities and Christian leaders?” — The International Center for Investigative Reporting, January 21, 2020; Nigeria.

After Muhammad ‘Awad, 32, was arrested and questioned as to why he tried to murder Rafiq Karam, 56, he confessed that he did not know him, but that he simply “hates Christians.” — Coptic Solidarity, January 21, 2020; Egypt.

The Slaughter of Christians in Nigeria

During several separate incidents, militant Muslims—whether Fulani herdsmen, Boko Haram, or generic terrorists—continued to attack and massacre several Christians.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/03/29/iranians-die-by-the-thousand-of-covid-19-amidst-ayatollahs-greed/

Within days of requesting $5 billion from the Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF), Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei turned down and mocked America’s offer to send medical assistance to fight the spiraling Coronavirus crisis.

At present, restricted information coming from the Iranian government places the Coronavirus death toll at 2,234.  Meanwhile, the government’s primary political opposition organization, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MeK), is reporting the number of deaths in Iran as having passed 11,500. It was the MeK which exposed the Iranian government’s covert nuclear weapons program. This organization’s ability to extract accurate intelligence out of Iran is always impressive. Furthermore, the 11,500 number is supported by satellite images which reveal extensive expansions of multiple cemeteries throughout Iran.   

In the city of Qom, 60-70 people are dying every day. Being unable to keep up with the burials, clerics asked Tehran officials to accept some of the bodies for interment. The request was denied as Tehran cemeteries are also overwhelmed.

Iran continues to cover-up the fact that it has replaced China as the epicenter of Coronavirus. In early February, Tehran started downplaying the growing medical threat. The ruling fundamentalists did not want interruptions to two interconnected activities: on February 11th the government conducted country-wide anniversary celebrations of the 1979 fall of the monarchy; these celebrations were preludes to local legislative elections conducted ten days later.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2020/03/emperor-xi-has-no-clothes/

China’s celebrated billionaire property-developer Ren Chiqiang did not hold back in his response the teleconferenced speech by President-for-life Xi Jinping’s on February 23, 2020, about the status of COVID-19:

I saw not an emperor standing there exhibiting his ‘new clothes’ but a clown prince who stripped naked and insisted on being emperor.

This is part of a diabolical pattern. The late Dr Li Wenliang was arrested in Wuhan in December last year after alerting people on his microblog to the danger of the novel coronavirus. Dr Li’s crime, according to Communist Party of China (CCP), was spreading rumours to fellow medical practitioners. In reality, of course, Li was being truthful, not only about a new viral respiratory illness, but also the People’s Republic of China: “I think a healthy society should not just have one voice.”

How we respond to the pandemic of 2020 tell us a lot about our long-held biases. The subject of our fury turns out to be, more often than not, what we already believed is wrong with the world. Gail Collins, an opinion columnist for the New York Times, decided on February 26 that her readers should call Covid-19 “the Trump virus”. A more helpful suggestion, perhaps, might be to rename Collins’s four-year case of Trump Derangement Virus (TDV). Elizabeth Lopatto, also suffering from TDV, had this to say in The Verge on March 12: “The best thing he can do for the country, to speed its response to the novel coronavirus, is to resign and let someone capable take over.” Peter Wehner, a day later in The Atlantic, announced the potential good news about the COVID-19 that those who have contracted TDV are so desperate to hear: “The Trump Presidency Is Over.”

For the rest of us, though, potential good news would be more along the lines of a medical cure. Various solutions have already been mooted, although the general availability of a single-purpose vaccine might be as much as 18 months away. That said, at his March 19 White House briefing, President Trump touted a promising, if not scientifically verified, medicine usually used in the treatment of malaria and strong cases of arthritis: “Now, a drug called chloroquine…Hydroxychloroquine. So chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine. Now, this is a common malaria drug…But the nice part is, it’s been around for a long time, so we know that if it – if things don’t go as planned, it’s not going to kill anybody.” Scientists and scientific journals were quick to note that hydroxychloroquine has not been subjected to “thorough rigorous clinical trials” with regards to COVID-19, even if anecdotal evidence points to its effectiveness as a cure and, conceivably, a preventive measure. Trump, pointedly, made his comment in the context of his support for the Right to Try Act, passed into law in May 2018. This law empowers patients in desperate straits and “unable to participate in a clinical trial” the right to “access certain unapproved treatments”. The widespread distribution of hydroxychloroquine, if properly monitored, is actually “beyond” – Trump’s word – the Right to Try Act, because chloroquine has been available for almost eighty years. There is the added factor that the supervised distribution of hydroxychloroquine, or a comparable undocumented treatment for COVID-19 such as HIV medication Kaletra, could in itself serve as a clinical trial.

https://epochtimes.today/editorial-where-ties-with-communist-china-are-

EXCERPTS FROM MARCH 3, EDITORIAL

In the United States, one of the earliest- and worst-hit places was the Seattle area in Wash-ington state. By March 20, the state had seen 74 deaths from the virus, around a third of the national total.

In the late 1970s, in the early days of the CCP’s deceptive economic reforms, it was the port of Seattle that welcomed the first Chinese cargo ships. In the years since, with increasing enthusiasm from local politicians and businesses, Seattle has hosted all four of the PRC’s heads of state, from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping.

The decades since saw the CCP wage a secret Cold War against the United States, funneling America’s technology and jobs to mainland China in an onslaught abetted by oppor-tunistic profit-seekers, who compromised America’s conscience. Recently, the CCP has attempted to portray its draconian handling of the epidemic as a triumph for the Party’s authoritarian system, going so far as to pin the blame for a disaster of its own making on the United States.

Misled by the CCP’s propaganda machine and a left-leaning domestic media environment fixated on the failures—whether real or imagined—of the U.S. system, many Chinese residing overseas have made the decision to return home.

But the Chinese historical record is more sobering. Throughout the centuries, plagues and other calamities signaled the downfall of imperial dynasties. And at present—with growing numbers of whistleblowers standing up to contradict official figures that downplay the mainland epidemic—the CCP’s claim that it has curbed the virus rings as false as the lies it deployed last year to cover up the initial outbreak in Wuhan.

Taking history as a mirror, as ancient Chinese scholars did, it is apparent that the pandemic is a calamity linked with the CCP and its 70 years of brutal rule. And today, the world is an interconnected community. Any country, community, or organization that keeps too close to the CCP and falls for its deception will taste the bitter fruits of that involvement.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/03/coronavirus-pandemic-europe-wasnt-ready-it-may-never-fully-recover/#slide-1

Coronavirus has already weakened the idea of Europe acting in concert to confront challenges.

On November 28th, 2019, the European Union officially and solemnly declared the “climate emergency,” in a ceremony presided over by the would-be 17-year-old prophet Greta Thunberg. Today, almost four months later, in the midst of a real emergency, the only thing that remains official and solemn in that declaration is its ridiculousness. That, and the no-holds-barred death match between the Union’s partners to seize containers of respirators and face masks destined for other countries in order to save their own. “The European Union either gets this health crisis right, or it will be dead,” I heard the former president of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, say the day before yesterday. At the moment, the European Union seems to be MIA, along with the “climate emergency.” Each day that passes, the hope of finding it alive diminishes.

A month ago, while the coronavirus was invading the Old Continent, we Europeans were busy with much more important matters than ‘a little flu.’ In early March, Spain’s Communist government was focused on passing its aberrant “sexual freedom law.” With a name like that, you might think that we Spaniards have been procreating by pollination for 2000 years. Meanwhile, the Swiss press, strangely enough, seemed intent on overthrowing the Spanish monarchy, as if we hadn’t had enough of church-burning and coldblooded murder at the hands of the Second Republic. And a few days earlier, on March 2nd, the big issue in Switzerland was a referendum to pass a law banning any comments or attitudes against gay-friendly policies. It brings to mind the warning that Gómez Dávila, Colombian intellectual, gave us towards the end of the 20th century: “Despite what they teach us today, easy sex isn’t the solution to all our problems.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/now-that-canada-is-rationing-masks-trudeau-faces-backlash-for-donating-medical-supplies-to-china/

Canada’s Official Opposition Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer took aim at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for shipping tons of medical supplies to China in February, calling the move “outrageous” with current concerns that Canada is running short on supplies amid its own fight against coronavirus.

“Drs. across the country are facing urgent shortages of critical supplies. PM must explain why he sent 50,118 face shields, 1,101 masks, 1,820 goggles, 36,425 medical coveralls, 200,000 nitrile gloves and 3,000 aprons from Canada’s own gov’t reserves overseas in Feb,” Scheer tweeted.

Canada’s Foreign Affairs department announced on February 9 that “Canada has deployed approximately 16 tonnes of personal protective equipment, such as clothing, face shields, masks, goggles and gloves” overseas to China, the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic.

The move came after the World Health Organization warned the international community that “further international exportation of cases may appear in any country” and that “severe coronavirus-related disruptions” would occur as a result.

https://www.city-journal.org/covid-19-european-union

Covid-19 may tear apart the European Union. The new crisis arrives after years of populist pressure on the EU from around Europe, with many asking whether the idea of a union was wrong from the start. The virus will ratchet up the tension.

Europeans fought one another for centuries, with increasing cruelty, until 1945. At the end of the Second World War, most of Europe had been destroyed by aerial bombings, and populations had experienced suffering unimaginable to most people today. The project of a European Union was born of the motto: “No more wars among us.”

But there is a big leap from “peace” to a United States of Europe, which would require significant conditions, including minimum agreement about major social issues and a willingness to share resources. Europeans from the EU’s founding countries already share attitudes and moral preferences on topics of fundamental importance for communal living—freedom of thought and of religion; economic freedom; the role of the state vs. the role of the market; gender equality, gay rights, divorce and abortion rights; and attitudes about child-rearing.

But the second condition for a workable union is that its citizens agree to redistribute income across borders, and that, when one country is hit by a shock, the other countries share part of the risk and part of the pain. Moreover, when some common shock arises, the members of the union should agree to take coordinated action and to redistribute the costs. So far, these elements have been lacking, or have been imperfectly handled.

On one side, self-declared virtuous northern European countries refuse to use their savings to help their supposedly lazy southern European counterparts, in a continental version of the fable of the ant and the grasshopper. It’s unfair to withhold aid from “grasshopper” countries now suffering from a pandemic that has nothing to do with their historically irresponsible fiscal behavior. Northern European countries tend to think that the “unethical” behavior of the South—accruing debt, tolerating corruption—is to blame for any problem. Symmetrically, southern European countries tend to downplay their own responsibilities and imperfections, while blaming northern Europeans for their self-centeredness and greed.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15804/china-duplicity

In an article in Xinhua, one of the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpieces, Beijing threatened to halt pharmaceutical exports, after which America would be “plunged into the mighty sea of coronavirus… — Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health, Council on Foreign Relations, Twitter, March 4, 2020.

China’s leaders are probably hoping that you cannot challenge a powerhouse that is selling you most of your vital medications.

“Hidden behind declarations of solidarity, China plans to buy out our troubled companies and infrastructure” — Bild, March 19, 2020.

Italy, a country hit hard by China’s coronavirus pandemic, is now at the center of a strategic Chinese propaganda campaign. Beijing has sent doctors and supplies to Italy and is doing the same all over Europe. In Italy you can see posters saying, “Go, China!” China is trying to buy our silence and complicity. Sadly, that is already taking place.

China is not helping at this point out of “solidarity”. The Chinese regime is now seeking to portray itself as the world’s savior. Beijing, at the beginning of the pandemic, did not care about the lives of even its own people: it was busy censoring the news.

“The West is so tolerant, passive, accommodating and naive towards Beijing. Westerners… are seduced like an old man in front of a young girl…. Europe shows all its weakness. It does not realize that the Chinese offensive threatens its freedom and values”. — Liao Yiwu, Chinese writer exiled in Berlin, Le Point International, April 6, 2019.

The Chinese Communist Party is the “central threat of our times”, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo astutely said in January. Back then, coronavirus was already spreading throughout China and over the world; the Communist Party’s attempt to hide the epidemic proved that Pompeo was more than right. “My concern is that this cover-up, this disinformation that the Chinese Communist Party is engaged in, is still denying the world the information it needs so that we can prevent further cases or something like this from recurring again”, Pompeo added this week.