RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/another-terrible-24-hours-in-italy/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=first

Italy experienced the most deaths in a 24-hour period of any country during the pandemic, including China:

The coronavirus continued its assault on Italy, the hardest hit country outside of China, with officials on Sunday reporting the number of deaths rose to 1,809 — a 25 percent increase over the day before and the largest one-day uptick yet of any country.

The 368 deaths Italy reported exceeds the highest single-day number China reported at the height of its outbreak. China’s highest daily toll was on Feb. 13, when the country reported 254 new deaths, according to the World Health Organization.

According to this Reuters report, the health-care system in Italy is stressed, but not yet completely overwhelmed:

The head of the civil protection authority, Angelo Borelli, said that Lombardy had been able to transfer some patients to other regions. He also said he was so far unaware of any cases of patients dying because of a lack of intensive care facilities.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/international-counter-terrorism-group-addresses-ever-changing-al-qaeda-threat_3270200.html

The Warsaw Process Counterterrorism and Illicit Finance working group convened in Marrakech, Morocco, on March 4-5, with the goal of working out a solution to counter the potential threat posed by al-Qaeda and its affiliates, in preparations for the ministerial-level meeting to be held in Washington this year.

Al-Qaeda, overshadowed by ISIS over the past several years, took advantage of this situation to strengthen and expand its abilities to operate, adapt to using new technologies, and exploit conflicts and vulnerabilities in different parts of the world, e.g. the wars in Yemen and Syria, says a statement from the working group.

Threats Posed by al-Qaeda

Despite losing its main leader in 2011, al-Qaeda adapted to the changes in the world’s political situation and exerted its ideological influence. Its affiliates still pose a threat to the entire African continent and there is a possibility for al-Qaeda to engage in a relationship with ISIS, according to the statement. Al-Qaeda also operates in Asia and the Middle East.

Al-Qaeda’s tactics and methods may also evolve. It could exert more attacks outside of conflict zones, utilize more low-cost technology, and develop “more effective use of the internet” as well as “a sophisticated network of communication tools,” threatening global security and stability, the statement says.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15744/iran-coronavirus-coverup

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Ministry of Intelligence and Security have taken charge of dealing with the coronavirus by cracking down on any individual or institution that attempts to reveal accurate information about the origins of the virus or how Iran has become an epicenter of the virus which spreads to other nations.

Massoud Pezeshkian, an Iranian reformist politician, pointed out: “We should have quarantined Qom from day one… This disease is not a joke, which is the way we are dealing with it… The economy and everything will be ruined; it is no joke. What would have happened if they shut down the country for 15 days? If we had done so on the first day, it would not have spread….”

The regime has also threatened to imprison people who provide news about the actual scope of the crisis. Hassan Nowrouzi, the Speaker of the Judiciary Committee of the Parliament, said on February 26 that those who “disseminate fake news regarding coronavirus” will be sentenced from one to three years of imprisonment and lashes.

The Iranian regime continues to decline taking appropriate measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus that is not only threatening the Iranian population but also people across the region.

During a meeting with Ireland’s Prime Minister Leo Varadkar at the White House, President Donald J. Trump offered to help the Iranian authorities fight the coronavirus, but Iranian authorities rejected the offer as “hypocritical” and “repulsive”. “We do not need American doctors,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/turkey_threatens_nato_with_the_refugee_weapon.html

The Middle East conflict between Russia and Turkey being played out in Syria has a real possibility of escalating to world-shaking proportions.  Business Insider states, “For most close observers, it has long seemed only a matter of time before the long, bloody proxy war between Turkey and Russia for regional predominance in the Middle East would break out into full-scale direct hostilities.”  Of course “close observers” are experts and experts have had a very poor prognostication record in the Middle East.  But a major conflict cannot be ruled out.

Turkey became a full member of NATO in 1952.  Article 5 of the NATO treaty states that an attack on one member of NATO is an attack on all members.  The United States would be obligated to enter a Russian-Turkish conflict according to this treaty.  Of course, NATO will not enter a Third World War to save Turkey.  When Russian-backed Syrian forces attacked a Turkish military outpost killing more than 30 Turkish soldiers, Business Insider described NATO’s response as utterly impotent.  Turkey joined NATO at the beginning of the Cold War when the major threat was the Soviet Union.  Present conflicts frequently involve Islamic groups opposed to the West.  Islamic Turkey sometimes appears to have divided loyalties. 

There is significant evidence that Turkey aided ISIS in the past.  A Foreign Policy article contends that Turkey “helped fuel the rise of the Islamic State in the first place.”  30,000 militants traveled through Turkey to Iraq and Syria in 2013 to join the Islamic State.  Turkey was also a major buyer of ISIS-extracted crude oil and therefore a major funder of ISIS. Putin complained, “We see from the sky where these vehicles [carrying oil] are going.  They are going to Turkey day and night.” Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov asserted, “President Erdogan and his family are involved in this criminal business.”  Israel’s former Minister of Defense Moshe Yaalon called Turkey “Hamas’ terror headquarters outside of Gaza.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/iran-brink-ari-lieberman/

According to the latest coronavirus statistics emerging from Iran’s health ministry, 724 people have succumbed to the disease while nearly 14,000 are infected. Nothing the regime says can be trusted and most experts agree that these figures represent a gross understatement. In fact, it would be fair to say that Iran is now the global epicenter for COVID-19.

Based on open sources and utilizing various mathematical models, The Atlantic’s Graeme Wood demonstrates how it is possible, and even likely that the virus has already infected at least 586,000 Iranians. Some of the models posited by Wood indicate that as many as 8,000,000 Iranians have been infected. The article was published on March 9, so we can assume that the numbers have increased exponentially since then.

According to the latest figures from the World Health Organization, COVID-19 has claimed 6,492 lives and infected 168,834 globally. Even if we were to adopt the lower estimate cited in Wood’s article, the Islamic Republic’s infection rate is still nearly 3.5 times higher than the entire world’s infection rate combined. We do not know how many Iranians have died from the Wuhan virus but a figure of 22,268 would not be an unreasonable estimate. We arrive at this number by multiplying the conservative infection rate estimate of 586,000 by 3.8 percent, which represents the global mortality rate.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15737/coronavirus-europe-lockdown

The unprecedented restrictions on the movement of people, unimaginable only two weeks ago, is bringing life in Europe to a virtual standstill.

“We have to be prepared for the fact that Europe will be hit hard, that Europe will be hit even harder than China and that we will be dealing with this challenge for months.” — Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz.

“The numbers are growing alarmingly fast.” — Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz.

Europe is now the epicenter of the global coronavirus pandemic that has reached more than 45 countries on the continent. As of March 14, upwards of 42,000 people have tested positive for the disease, according to data from European health ministries.

The so-called Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is spreading extremely fast: roughly 40,000 of the cases (95% of all cases) in Europe were confirmed during just the first 14 days of March.

Italy is Europe’s worst-affected country, followed by Spain, Germany, France, Switzerland and Norway.

In Europe as a whole, more than 1,600 people — 4.0% of those confirmed as having been infected — have died from COVID-19. In Italy, the lethality rate currently is 5.8%, according to the Ministry of Health.

As the scale of the unfolding crisis has come into view, European leaders have started to implement increasingly severe measures aimed at slowing the spread of the disease. The unprecedented restrictions on the movement of people, unimaginable only two weeks ago, is bringing life in Europe to a virtual standstill.

In Italy, the epicenter of Europe’s coronavirus outbreak, where more than 21,000 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 (as of March 14), Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte ordered a nationwide lockdown. The quarantine of Europe’s third-most populous country, with 60 million inhabitants, bans non-essential travel to, from and within Italy; prohibits all public events; requires people to maintain a distance from each other of at least one meter (three feet); and shutters all bars, restaurants and shops (except for grocery stores and pharmacies).

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15730/please-please-help-us-the-persecution

A report cited by Fox News found that more than 6,000 Christians have been slaughtered by Islamic terrorists since 2015 — a thousand of them in just 2019.

“It is… genocide…. the longer we tolerate these massacres, the more we embolden the perpetrators. We give them a ‘green light’ to carry on killing.” — Baroness Caroline Cox, Fox News, December 24, 2019, Nigeria.

“Christian Syrian refugees … have been blocked from getting help from the United Nations Refugee Agency… by Muslim UN officials in Jordan.”

“You have this absurd situation where the scheme is set up to help Syrian refugees and the people most in need, Christians who have been ‘genocided,’ they can’t even get into the U.N. camps to get the food. If you enter and say I am a Christian or convert, the Muslim U.N. guards will block you….” — Paul Diamond, a British human rights lawyer, CBN News, December 4, 2019, United Nations in Jordan.

The following are some of the abuses Muslims inflicted on Christians throughout the month of December 2019, and categorized by theme:

The Slaughter of Christians

Nigeria: The Islamic State in West Africa Province released a video of the execution of 11 Christian aid workers on the day after Christmas. The brief video shows one Christian being shot, followed by 10 others, tied up and being beheaded by masked jihadis standing behind the hostages. “This message is to the Christians in the world,” a man’s voice narrates over the footage.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/no_israeli_coronaivirus_vaccine_for_me_iranian_journalist_tweets.html

As coronavirus panic spreads, scientists around the world are working to develop a vaccine to combat the disease.  Along with scientists in other countries, scientists in Israel and the U.S. announced they’ve had some early successes in the development process, although obviously much more remains to be done before anything is ready for humans.  

Amid fears of a looming pandemic, scientists in the US and across the globe are scrambling to develop vaccines — including in Israel, where one group of researchers says it could be ready in just three weeks and available for use within 90 days.

The scientists at the Galilee Research Institute, known as MIGAL, are adapting its vaccine against the avian coronavirus infectious bronchitis virus, or IBV, to work for the novel coronavirus known as COVID-19, the Jerusalem Post reported.

“Congratulations to MIGAL on this exciting breakthrough. I am confident that there will be further rapid progress, enabling us to provide a needed response to the grave global COVID-19 threat,” said Ofir Akunis, Israel’s minister of science and technology. …

MIGAL CEO David Zigdon said the vaccine could “achieve safety approval in 90 days,” according to the Jerusalem Post.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15719/eu-closing-borders

Even Germany is unwilling to take any of the migrants shuttled by Erdogan to the Greek-Turkish border.

“I thank Greece for being our European ‘aspida’ [the Greek word for shield].” — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, March 3, 2020.

The “solidarity” with Greece expressed by leading EU representatives seems to have come from having no alternatives other than relying on Greece to struggle with the situation.

Even if the EU manages to resolve its issues with Erdogan, which is doubtful and bound to be only temporary, Europe’s fundamental problem will remain: As long as migrants think that a better future awaits them in Europe, the welfare states, which have shown themselves extremely accommodating in receiving migrants and granting them all sorts of social rights, can continue expecting migrants to try breaching Europe’s borders.

On February 27, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made good on his many threats to send millions of migrants and refugees to Europe, despite a 2016 dealbetween Europe and Turkey to hold them. Apparently seeking to make Europe experience the full force of his intentions, Turkish officials sent busloads of migrants — predominantly young men from Afghanistan and Iran, according to several reports — to Turkey’s border with Greece.

“We prepared a plan with our colleagues and we are committed to arranging free buses for the refugees in Bolu towards the border town of Edirne,” said Tanju Özcan, the mayor of Bolu, a town in northern Turkey, 550 kilometers from the border with Greece. “Refugees willing to go to Edirne can apply to the Bolu municipality and its branches. We are ready to assure the transport whatever the number [of refugees].”