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WORLD NEWS

The EU Has Failed Europe over Coronavirus by Con Coughlin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15892/eu-failure-coronavirus

All the evidence suggests that the majority of European governments are ignoring the EU’s advice, and acting unilaterally to tackle the impact of the pandemic on their citizens.
The divergence in approach among various member states indicates that European leaders are — as they have been from the outset — acting selfishly in their own national interest rather than for the good of the EU as a whole.
It also means they are in breach of some of the EU’s fundamental principles, such as the single market which requires all member states to conduct business on an equal footing. The fact that several countries are allowing various businesses, such as construction, to return to work, whereas in other nations they have been banned from operating during the lockdown, means that disparities will inevitably develop in the economies of member states, a fact that is likely to increase tensions between European leaders in the months to come.
The problem for the EU is that, now that so many European countries have already taken matters into their own hands, any attempt by Brussels to impose a unified approach to ending the lockdown will surely be a case of too little, too late.

The deepening divisions among European nations over their response to the coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the inability of the European Union to provide strong and effective leadership in times of crisis.

Faced with arguably the greatest challenge Europe has faced since the end of the Second World War, the EU’s failure to help coordinate the actions of the 27-nation bloc in tackling Covid-19 has once again brought the organisation’s institutional failings into sharp focus.

Happy Birthday, Margrethe! The best sovereign on the continent reaches a milestone. Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/happy-birthday-margrethe-bruce-bawer/

Queen Margrethe of Denmark turns 80 today, and to commemorate the occasion she gave an interview that appeared in the newspaper Politiken on Saturday. The conversation was wide-ranging, but the part that made headlines throughout Scandinavia was her admission that while she considers climate change an important issue, she’s not personally panicked about it, and that while she’s aware that climate does change – “it has changed and is changing all the time” – she’s not certain whether humans directly influence those changes. Let it be emphasized here that this is one queen who actually knows something about these matters: she studied prehistoric archeology at Cambridge and hence has an extremely long-term perspective.

(This isn’t the first time, by the way, that Margrethe has failed to strike the approved tone on climate change: in more than one New Year’s address, for example, she’s celebrated the melting of Greenland ice because it opens up the possibility of exploiting the island’s rich natural resources.)

The reactions to the queen’s birthday interview came swiftly. Søren Jakobsen, a commentator on Danish royal affairs, expressed surprise and dismay that she’d waded into such “controversial” waters. Danish scientists lamented what they considered Her Majesty’s unfortunate ignorance. And Uffe Elbæk, a member of the Danish parliament, responded in the strongest terms he could come up with: he compared the queen to Donald Trump. But the critic who seems to have gotten the most attention is Sikandar Siddique, another parliament member. Describing the interview in a tweet as a “coarse, irresponsible, and decidedly misleading intrusion into the political debate,” Siddique called on the Royal Palace to retract the whole thing. For good measure, he told the newspaper BT that the queen was ignoring an “existential crisis.” And in a letter to the daily Ekstra Bladet he went full Greta Thunberg: “Are 250 million refugees not a catastrophe? What about the lack of food? The extreme weather that is killing millions? What about the lack of clean water, which will have disastrous consequences for billions of people?” Siddique demanded that Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen “put the queen in her place.”

The Populists Next Door No One’s Talking About By Bradley Betters

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/04/the_populists_next_door_no_ones_talking_about.html

The new, trailblazing party governing the French-Canadian province of Quebec deserves more attention than they’ve received this side of the border.

Although being a quite young party as well as an openly nationalist one (a deep oddity for globalist Canada), the Coalition for Quebec’s Future — or ‘CAQ’ as it’s known by its French acronym — trounced the Justin Trudeau-affiliated Quebec Liberal Party in elections in late 2018 and currently commands a huge majority in that province’s parliament. Roughly one year on, the party’s showing conservative nationalists everywhere that if it can do it, you can to.

CAQ, which similar to Trump blends socially conservative policies with economically protectionist ones, has taken advantage of Quebec’s unique jurisdictional position in Canada like few parties before it — among other things, Quebec’s allowed to a large extent to shape its own immigration and multicultural policies.

In its first year as the province’s governing party, it’s unrepentantly asserted French-Canadian cultural hegemony in Quebec and has barreled over critics in the broader Anglo-Canadian media. This has made them wildly popular in la belle province and should make them a big source of inspiration for President Trump and his supporters this election year.

Millionaire entrepreneur and current Quebec premier Francois Legault created the CAQ party in 2011. Formally a cabinet minister with the pro-independence Parti Quebecois (PQ) party, Legault managed to peel away a wing of the party that wished to forgo outright separatism (which has been on the wane in Quebec since its heyday in the 1990s) and seek instead greater autonomy within Canada’s existing federalist structure.

Iranian and US Ships Come Dangerously Close as Disputes Continue in Persian Gulf By Isabel van Brugen

https://www.theepochtimes.com/iranian-and-us-ships-come-dangerously-close-as-disputes-continue-in-persian-gulf_3314174.html

Nearly a dozen Iranian naval vessels made “dangerous and harassing” maneuvers near U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships in the Persian Gulf, also known as the Arabian Gulf, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command said on Wednesday.

In a statement, the Navy said that 11 vessels from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) came dangerously close to six U.S. vessels, repeatedly crossing their bows and sterns while they were conducting integration operations with U.S. Army Apache attack helicopters to support maritime security outside of Iran’s territorial waters.

Iranian naval vessels came as close as 10 yards of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Maui, and within 50 yards of the USS Lewis B. Puller, a ship that serves as an afloat landing base, according to the statement. Other vessels among the U.S. ships included the USS Paul Hamilton, a Navy destroyer, and the USS Firebolt.

The U.S. ships attempted to issue multiple warnings, through bridge-to-bridge radio, long-range acoustic noise maker devices, and five blasts from the ships’ horns, but U.S. crews received no response from the IRGCN.

The IRGCN vessels responded after roughly one hour by radio and moved away from the U.S. ships.

World Health Organisation ‘Not Immune to Criticism’: Australian PM By Victoria Kelly-Clark

https://www.theepochtimes.com/world-health-organisation-not-immune-to-criticism-australian-pm_3314192.html#

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Australia will continue to support the World Health Organisation (WHO) but he said they’re not immune from criticism and should do things better.

This is because had Australia relied on WHO advice back in January, “Then I suspect we would have been suffering the same fate that many other countries currently are,” said Morrison.

“I mean, [Australia] called [the pandemic] weeks before the WHO did,” he said.

At the time, on Jan. 14, the WHO advised countries that there was no human-to-human transmission of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus.

However, we now know that this was wrong and that by at least mid-December, the CCP was aware that human-to-human transmission was occurring in mainland China, making the virus ripe for spreading. Yet the CCP did not admit this until Jan. 20, after over 5 million people had left Wuhan.

Australian Strategy and the Gathering Storm in Asia Michael Evans

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2020/04/australian-strategy-and-the-gathering-storm-in-asia/

The US world order is a suit that no longer fits.
               —Fu Ying, Chair, Chinese National People’s Congress, Foreign Affairs Committee, 2016

Over the next decade two challenges face Australia which, in combination, seem likely to transform our strategic fortunes for the worse. The first challenge is the need to confront the reality that the great project of Western liberal globalism conceived in the 1990s is slipping into the pages of history. The second challenge is the return of great power competition, most particularly in the form of the rise of a revisionist China that is determined to assume global superpower status and to become the hegemon of Asia. China’s geopolitical ambitions mean that the 2020s and beyond will be marked by a Sino-American struggle for mastery of Asia in which Australia will be directly and fatefully involved.

Outside of expert circles, few Australians seem to grasp the implications of these major strategic changes. It is the purpose of this article to explain the dynamics of a gathering storm in Asia and to make the case for a national rejuvenation in thinking about defence and national security strategy.

 

The end of liberal globalism

For the past quarter of a century, Australia has been a major beneficiary of the West’s global triumph in the Cold War. This era coincides with the most dramatic growth in Australian prosperity since the boom of the second half of the nineteenth century. The Australian economy tripled in size, and per capita GDP grew by 182 per cent, between the early 1990s and the second decade of the new millennium. Yet, as we enter the 2020s, the age of liberal globalism is disappearing—as documented by a group of Anglo-American scholars and commentators as politically diverse as John J. Mearsheimer, Bill Emmott, Steven D. King, Patrick Deneen and Michael Burleigh. The reasons are not hard to detect. Put simply, the liberal global order is ebbing away because of a self-induced crisis of legitimacy. Liberal globalism has become a system that privileges transnational elites over national voters; seeks to preference the rules of international institutions over domestic democratic legislation; promotes universalism over patriotism; and has pursued open borders rather than controlled immigration, so creating new forms of populist nationalism. As Patrick Deneen writes in Why Liberalism Failed (2018), the global liberal project has promoted a form of elitist progressive politics that has accelerated economic inequality and fragmented the civic and spiritual bonds that underpin cultural life in democratic nations. There has been a backlash from ordinary voters and the Western public has discovered a fundamental truth: it is easier to change elites than it is for the elites to change the public.

Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union and Donald Trump’s America First policy are merely the early results of an emerging array of new democratic political forces driven by a renewed sense of nationalism and cultural conservatism. By the early 2030s it is possible that the rump of liberal globalism may still operate with its assorted transnational elites meeting annually in a glare of electronic publicity at Davos. Yet such gatherings will increasingly resemble the irrelevant universalism of the late Holy Roman Empire and be confined to symbolic gestures on climate change, arms control and economic inequality.

The real drama in world affairs will emanate from the strategic competition developing between the United States and China.

Palestinians: Don’t Believe UNRWA, They Are Not Helping by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15879/palestinians-unrwa-coronavirus

Those considering donating to UNRWA ought first to listen to the voices of the leaders of the Palestinians in Lebanon who are accusing the UN agency of negligence and failing to fulfill its promises to help the Palestinians battle the pandemic.

Meanwhile, the Lebanese human rights activist Riad Issa alleged that UNRWA has for years failed to assist the Palestinian refugees, and that the problem did not begin with the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. “The crisis is not related to lack of funding,” he said. “Palestinians have been complaining about UNRWA’s lack of services for many years.”

If the Palestinians are saying that UNRWA hasn’t been helping them for years, why are the agency’s heads appealing to donors for urgent financial aid?

The Palestinian public is trapped: Arabs appear to care nothing for their Palestinian brothers, while UNRWA appears to care only about collecting funds to pay the salaries of its managers and workers.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) claims that it is on the “frontlines of responding to COVID-19,” and its officials are appealing for donations to help Palestinian refugees in the Middle East. According to an UNRWA statement from April 5:

“UNRWA is doing its part to flatten the curve and has mobilized a number of prevention and control measures across its field of operations, including the issuing of hygiene products and protection gear to UNRWA staff, the distribution of educational pamphlets to refugees, the regular sterilization of camps and UNRWA facilities, and the support of students at home through our Education in Emergencies programme. UNRWA is committed to providing emergency relief and maintaining essential services like food assistance, education, and primary health care for the millions of Palestine refugees that depend on us, but in order to do so, we need your help.”

While UNRWA is boasting of its services to Palestinian refugees and asking for donations, the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are accusing the UN agency of doing nothing to help them face the threat of the coronavirus pandemic.

Those considering donating to UNRWA ought first to listen to the voices of the leaders of the Palestinians in Lebanon who are accusing the UN agency of negligence and failing to fulfill its promises to help the Palestinians battle the pandemic.

The Palestinians’ complaints against UNRWA are embarrassing for the agency’s administration and expose its attempt to mislead donors into believing that UNRWA is making a herculean effort to assist the refugees in Lebanon.

Sharia, the Law of the Land in Afghanistan By Terry Bishop

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/04/sharia_the_law_of_the_land_in_afghanistan.html

Beyond our current concerns with the coronavirus pandemic looms the “historic” formal agreement between the U.S. and the Taliban signed on February 29, 2020.

The three-and-a-half page conditional peace agreement (which is accompanied by secret annexes) provides a means for the U.S. to draw down its forces from 13,000 to 8,600 within 135 days of the agreement, then subsequently remove all of its forces from Afghanistan within 14 months. A major part of the agreement hinges on the ludicrous assertion that “Afghan soil will [no longer] be used against the security of the United States and its allies.”

Apart from concerns that the Taliban has no intention of disavowing its ties to multiple terrorist organizations (including its longtime ally, al-Qaeda), upholding a reduction in violence (RiV) or consenting to a permanent ceasefire; Afghanistan’s future political roadmap may be more than the Afghan government can bear after the current military balance tips the other direction — in favor of the Taliban who have already gained control of more territory in Afghanistan since 9/11.

While there are four parts to the public agreement, “the obligations of the [Taliban] in [the] agreement apply in areas under their control until the formation of the new post-settlement Afghan Islamic government as determined by the intra-Afghan dialogue and negotiations.” It comes as no surprise the Taliban has refused to talk to the 21-member Afghan government negotiating team.

Turkey: Erdoğan’s Post-Corona, Existential Economic Challenge by Burak Bekdil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15886/turkey-erdogan-coronavirus-economy

Before the coronavirus, Turkey hoped its tourism revenues might reach as high as $45 billion this year. But in the first quarter of the year, the number of passengers traveling through Turkish airports fell by 18.8%, and the second quarter does not look promising. Economists agree that the year-end decline will be even sharper.

This is where alarm bells ring for Erdoğan. Turks are scheduled to go to the ballot box again in 2023 to elect the president and members of parliament.

Erdoğan owes his spectacular election victories, uninterrupted since 2002, in large part to rapid economic growth and the subsequent improvement in the standard of living. A reversal now could end his glittering political career.

Erdoğan remains the potential victim of a small virus.

We may be months away from Covid-19’s global peak but the punishing, global, post-pandemic economic repercussions will vary from one country to another, depending on what economic vulnerabilities the pandemic has caught off-guard. One anticipated outcome is to see bigger post-corona damage to economies that have a large dependence on tourism and on economies with fundamental imbalances. Turkey belongs in both categories.

In the early days of the virus, before the skyrocketing number of cases, Turkey’s fragile economy boasted 4.3 million jobless. The official unemployment rate was 13.8%.

President Trump Says U.S. Will Cut Off Funding to WHO Andrew Restuccia

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/us-will-halt-funding-to-world-health-organization-over-coronavirus-response/ar-BB12Diws?li=BBnb7Kz

WASHINGTON—President Trump said the U.S. would halt funding to the World Health Organization while his administration investigates what he called the group’s mismanagement of the coronavirus response.

The president faulted the WHO for, in his view, failing to adequately investigate early information about the virus’s ability to spread from one human to another and for not calling out China on its alleged lack of transparency over the virus.