RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15984/coronavirus-swedish-model

“For a long time, Sörmlands Media has tried to get information from all the county’s municipalities on how the spread of infection in elderly care looks, how extensive it is and where it is located. The municipalities have replied that they lack knowledge about the extent of the spread of infection and have said that it is also not possible to find out. — Maria Lapenkova, Svt nyheter, May 2, 2020.

Sörmland Media’s review, however, shows that the information is not correct and that the municipalities actively concealed the information… Some municipalities have also failed to report the number of infected persons to the National Board of Health and Welfare’s national reporting tool for orders for protective clothing. — Svt nyheter, May 2, 2020.

As of May 6, Sweden, which has a population of 10.18 million people, had 2,854 deaths, which corresponds to 280.27 deaths per million people. In comparison, the other countries of the Nordic region, Denmark, Norway and Finland, which all went on lockdown, had 503, 215 and 246 deaths respectively, corresponding to 86.76, 40.46 and 44.58 deaths per 1 million people, respectively.

“I think it’s a risky business and we don’t know anything about herd immunity. The only thing we know is that a lot of people have died. These are human beings, not just figures. And if we would have chosen another approach, this number would have been much smaller…You cannot take risks with people’s lives if you don’t know what risks you are taking”. — Dr. Stefan Hanson, a Swedish infectious disease expert, The Globe and Mail, Canada, April 30-May 1, 2020.

WHO — and the media — might wish to reconsider using Sweden as a model.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently described Sweden as a “model” for battling the coronavirus. “I think if we are to reach a new normal, I think in many ways Sweden represents a future model of — if we wish to get back to a society in which we don’t have lockdowns,” Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s Emergencies Program, said. “They’ve been doing the testing, they’ve ramped up their capacity to do intensive care quite significantly,” he added.

“And their health system has always remained within its capacity to respond to the number of cases that they’ve been experiencing… Sweden has put in place a very strong public policy around social distancing, around caring and protecting for people in long term care facilities and many other things,”.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/05/08/mexican-nightmare-coronavirus-deaths-far-higher-than-government-admitted-n389313

If any Americans want to see a “failed response” to the coronavirus pandemic, they don’t have far to look.

Health officials in Mexico City have been begging the government for weeks to reveal the true toll the coronavirus is taking on the city. But government officials refuse to acknowledge the massive extent of the crisis, as the “Mexican Dr. Fauci” — the “public face” of the crisis — assures the people that everything is fine. “We have flattened the curve,” said Hugo Lopez-Gatell, the health ministry official used as a frontman by the government. He’s apparently become something of a celebrity on TV.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports on the true nature of the nightmare that is gripping the country.

Only 0.4 of every 1,000 people in Mexico are tested for the virus — by far the lowest of the dozens of nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which average about 23 tests for every 1,000 people.

The government says Mexico has been faring better than many of the world’s largest countries, and on Monday its COVID-19 czar estimated that the final death toll would be around 6,000 people.

With so few tests being done, it’s impossible to get a handle on the scope of the problem.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/reconsidering-decades-of-western-outreach-to-china/

Western institutions have long assumed that cross-cultural exposure would loosen the Chinese regime’s grip. But the risks of such exposure are just as great.

Twenty years ago, as a lowly adjunct professor, I taught crisis management for Harvard in China. My memories, and some qualms about doing so, have flooded back as the world ponders whether China’s political system enabled the virus’s spread by discouraging local officials from reporting bad news. During those “executive education” programs at Tsinghua University in Beijing, I hoped that my colleagues and I might help nudge the Chinese system toward greater openness. But even back then — at a time when China was “ascending” to the WTO and optimism reigned among us globalists — our experiences of the country left me with doubts.

How to handle crisis was part of the curriculum when the Harvard Kennedy School struck a deal with the Beijing government to provide public-management education for local officials from across China. I have no idea whether the mayor of Wuhan was in the group I helped teach, but it’s quite possible. Our goal was to expose local and regional officials to Kennedy School-style techniques, which combine technocratic policy analysis with political leadership. It didn’t take long to see that the school’s dedication to fostering “freer” societies was going to be tested in the weeks a group of faculty spent at Tsinghua, thanks to what I understood to be the cooperation of the opaquely named Organization Department of the Central Committee.

It was above my pay grade to question whether the school should have entered into such a relationship in the first place. As I reflect, it’s possible that we planted some seeds for a freer society — but it’s just as likely that we helped provide legitimacy for a totalitarian government.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15979/apartheid-coronavirus-lebanon

Many Arabs and Palestinians took to social media to remind everyone that the only apartheid in the Middle East exists in an Arab country [Lebanon].

The latest Lebanese measure did not surprise those who are familiar with this Arab country’s long-standing discriminatory policies of apartheid towards Palestinians.

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), “Palestinians in Lebanon cannot work in as many as 39 professions and cannot own property [real estate].”

The Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, Samidoun… revealed that Palestinian refugees are “barred from 72 regulated professions, including medicine, public transit, farming and fishery.”

It now remains to be seen whether “pro-Palestinian” groups and individuals in the West will denounce Lebanon for its continued racism and discrimination against Palestinians.

Is Lebanon using the coronavirus pandemic to carry out ethnic cleansing of Palestinians?

A directive issued on May 1 by the Lebanese General Security, an agency responsible for immigration in Lebanon, bars, until further notice, the return of “foreign maids” and Palestinian refugees, even if their families have lived in Lebanon for generations. In the eyes of the Lebanese, there is apparently no difference between a “foreign maid” and a Palestinian Arab.

A Palestinian born and raised in an Arab country, in other words, is still considered by that Arab country to be a foreigner.

The May 1 directive, signed by Brigadier General Walid Oun, director of general security at the Rafik Hariri International Airport in Beirut, says, “accompanying maids and people of Palestinian descent” may not board Lebanese expatriate evacuation flights. These are Palestinians from Lebanon who left the country to search for work and are now seeking to return home.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/05/is_iran_going_home.html

Aside from the devastation of the Wuhan virus, Iraq closed its 1,000-mile southern border with Iran for “security reasons” after months of Iraqi protests against Iranian interference in its domestic affairs.  Oil prices flirted with zero in the wake of the Russia-Saudi oil war, and demand dropped owing to the virus, further gutting the treasury.  Iran harassed U.S. Navy ships in the Persian Gulf, but according to Navy sources, the action was clearly for domestic consumption and posed no actual threat (although a mistake on either side could have had major repercussions, making President Trump’s warning more than reasonable).  Germany, Tehran’s strongest defender in Europe, pulled the plug on Iran’s proxy army Hezb’allah.  More than 390 members of the U.S. House of Representatives — including Ilhan Omar, not normally an opponent of the Iranian government — called for extending the international arms embargo against Iran, set to expire in October.

Iran’s Quds Day celebration has been canceled.  The rallies and marches, an annual celebration of anti-Semitic glee, with their slogans and speeches and the “death to Israel” chant, will not take place in 2020, although the Iranian public has been assured that the supreme leader will make a speech.

And in Syria, things are blowing up.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15996/china-trade-imbalance

China’s communist leadership quickly recognized that if the U.S. continued to demand economic reciprocity, China could easily lose its ability to claim solo superpower status for the remaining decades of the 21st Century.

China found an “accidental” biological and economic weapon that has the potential to achieve their singular strategic goal: removing a strong and powerful international competitor, the United States.

As Vladimir Lenin, the father of the Soviet state, is reported mockingly to have said, “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” China’s leaders have long believed that America’s unsustainable trade imbalance with China is that rope. Add the global pandemic crisis introduced by China and Beijing sees victory without an artillery shell being fired.

Like blinders falling from the eyes of those who have long avoided the truth, this new clarity will create a united, engaged, and resolute international community prepared to confront Beijing’s agenda of global dominance.

China’s leaders are shrewd students of history and they apply those lessons every day as they pursue their agenda for global dominance.

For example: They know the decline and fall of the Soviet Union came about not because of military might or the square miles under control. Rather, it imploded because the West, and specifically the United States, used freedom of thought, capitalism and the enormous power of the free market to marginalize, reduce, and collapse the Soviet Union. They simply couldn’t compete on any level with the West. From technology to the quality of life provided for its people, the Soviet Union became a nation without a future. Fortunately, it ended with a tired sigh rather than a nuclear exchange.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/castration-nation-katie-hopkins/

Sometimes I think I need to read this in black and white to actually believe it might be true.

A quarter of the British workforce is sitting at home in its pajamas receiving 80% of its pay, up to a maximum of £2,500 ($3,000) a month, guaranteed by the government until the end of June.

A similar scheme has been put in place for the self-employed.

The prime minister’s official spokesman said: “Since the launch, 800,000 employers have used the Job Retention Scheme to furlough 6.3 million jobs. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) estimated that the scheme would cost the Treasury a total £39bn.”

This incredibly over-generous scheme by the British government was grasped at hungrily by big business eager to retain labor without any of the costs.

Even small- and medium-sized business owners, usually reluctant to turn to the state for support and with resilience built into their models, caved to the scheme. It was simply too generous to refuse. The state now holds their employees in its warm embrace, just as with all the rest.

As for the employees, most have been delighted, and with good reason. In their minds, government money is free money, the invisible golden goose in the sky is laying golden eggs to pay for them to stay-cation with their family.

Prohibited from working under the furlough scheme, the need to do any work at all, or to feel any kind of guilt about taking money for doing nothing, has been completely absent from these sedentary fools.

They fail to see that what they are actually gobbling up, along with their takeaways and Netflix box sets, is almost as much cash as it costs to fund our NHS (National Health Service) on a monthly basis.

Talk to any head teacher or NHS manager and they will tell you the same woeful story of “key-workers,” fearful of being asked to work through the lockdown while others sit at home, self-isolating on day one due to “a vulnerable adult at home” showing “symptoms.” Give many the opportunity to do nothing without penalty, and that is exactly what they will do.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15994/coronavirus-europe-china

The equivocation of European leaders is a reflection not only of Europe’s geopolitical weakness and economic overdependence on China, but also of a moral vacuum in which they refuse to stand up for Western values.

Meanwhile, the French government allowed the Chinese telecom company Huawei to supply parts for its 5G mobile network. The concession was made after China threatened to retaliate against European companies in the Chinese market.

“No country with a skerrick of self-respect can allow this behavior to go unpunished. I have already suggested some punitive measures designed to wound the regime’s pride without harming the Chinese people: cancel the Huawei deal; pass a Magnitsky-style Act targeting senior CPC figures; champion the Uyghurs at every opportunity (e.g. rename the London street that houses the Chinese embassy after a Uyghur political prisoner); and recognize Taiwan as an independent nation. All I would add, upon reflection, is this: grant British citizenship to Hong Kongers born before 1 July 1997, their children and grandchildren.” — Scottish political commentator Stephen Daisley.

“We increasingly hear words of admiration in Europe about the speed and efficiency of the Chinese market economy, the rigorous nature of its crisis management. All the time gladly ignoring the fact that China’s successes rest on a highly perfected system of digital surveillance that translates the perversions of the KGB and Stasi into the 21st century.” — Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer, Europe’s largest publishing company.

“It is remarkable that German politics, with its love of moralizing, seems to throw its values out the window when dealing with China. What is at stake here is nothing less than what kind of society we want to live in and our concept of humanity.” — Mathias Döpfner.

Australia and the United States are leading a campaign for an independent inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. Senior officials in both countries are seeking to determine if the virus originated in nature or in a Chinese laboratory. They are also calling on the Chinese government to account for its handling of the initial outbreak in the city of Wuhan.

In Europe, where the pandemic has killed more than 100,000 people and caused economic devastation on a scale not seen since the Second World War, political leaders have been deafeningly silent on demanding accountability from China. While a handful of European officials have agreed in principle that there should be an investigation at some undetermined point in the future, most appear afraid to challenge China directly.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15992/iran-spreading-coronavirus

At the same time that the airline [Iran’s Mahan Air] was flying to China, it also continued operations to other countries in the Middle East, with the result that it has now been accused of spreading the virus to a number of countries including Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Syria and Lebanon. Mahan Air has so far declined to comment on the allegations

Sources within the airline are said to have told the BBC that dozens of Mahan Air’s cabin crew were showing symptoms of Covid-19 after the flights to China, but that when staff tried to raise concerns about the airline’s management of the crisis and provision of safety equipment, they were silenced.

Claims that Iran has been responsible for spreading the virus throughout the Middle East could also have a negative impact on Tehran’s hopes of persuading the International Monetary Fund to provide a $5 billion bailout package. The IMF says the request is still under consideration, but it is unlikely the organisation will be prepared to provide funding to a regime whose irresponsible behaviour threatens the well-being of other countries.

Mounting evidence that Iran has been instrumental in spreading the Covid-19 virus throughout the Middle East adds a whole new dimension to the regime’s already well-established reputation for being a malign influence in the region.

Iran has already acquired the unwelcome distinction of becoming the country in the Middle East that has been worst affected by the coronavirus pandemic, registering more than 6,000 deaths according to official figures. There have, however, been repeated accusations that the Iranian authorities have sought to cover up the true extent of the outbreak, and that the death toll may be twice that number.