RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/sweden-defies-lockdown-trend-bets-citizens-acting-responsibly-n1172781

STOCKHOLM — As the temperature passed 50 degrees in Stockholm last week, people congregated in parks unable to resist socializing during the first signs of spring in the Swedish capital.

This country of 10 million has bucked the trend in Europe, where many countries have locked down their residents in an attempt to slow the coronavirus that has spread throughout the world at breakneck speed.

The Swedish government has left it up to individuals to act responsibly and decide whether to stay home or not. Restrictions that are in place are far more liberal compared with those of the nation’s neighbors.

Public gatherings of more than 50 people are prohibited but there are no restrictions on private meetings, meaning parties and corporate events can still go ahead. Libraries and swimming pools remain open.

Standing at bars has been prohibited but restaurants are still able to offer table service. Students over 16 have been asked to study from home but kindergartens and elementary schools are still open.

Rather than wide-ranging restrictions, the authorities have instead advised the public to practice social distancing and to work from home, where possible, and urged those over the age of 70 to self-isolate as a precaution. In other words, the country has staked its bets on people acting responsibly.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/lying-china-joseph-klein/

If we are to believe China’s figures, the number of Covid-19 coronavirus cases in China as of March 31 was 82,240, with 3,309 deaths. The United States has now just under 165,000 cases and has surpassed 3000 deaths attributed to the virus – about double the official number of China’s cases and fast approaching China’s official death total. China claims that it has largely defeated the coronavirus and is opening public transportation, schools, and factories. The Chinese Communist Party has promoted itself as the global role model for how to lead a “people’s war” against COVID-19 and save many lives. “Party officials have tried to spin the crisis as a testament to the strength of China’s authoritarian system and its hard-line leader, Xi Jinping,” the New York Times reported, “even announcing plans to publish a book in six languages about the outbreak that portrays him as a ‘major power leader’ with ‘care for the people.’”

China’s officially reported case and death totals to date just happen to be remarkably close to a prediction last February by Stanford University biology professor Michael Levitt. Dr. Levitt, who won the 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry, predicted that China would peak with around 80,000 cases and 3,250 deaths. Dr. Levitt  has spent a couple of months a year in China. “I became much more interested in China, and seeing the country through the eyes of somebody who has lived there made it very different,” he said. Dr. Levitt was appalled by the travel restrictions imposed by the United States. “It’s crazy,” he said, as quoted by China Daily. “Travel bans don’t help at all. I think all this punishment just leads to under-reporting, and it’s not a good idea.” Although he is not an epidemiologist, the Chinese government featured him with appearances on the Chinese State broadcaster China Global Television Network.

Dr. Levitt is now claiming that the growth of new cases worldwide should slow much faster than many health experts predict, just as he claims happened in China. We hope Dr. Levitt is right but have good reason to be skeptical regarding the validity of China’s official data. Dr. Levitt’s predictions more likely were used by Chinese authorities to lend credibility to the range of numbers that China is willing to report as the peak, rather than constituting validated forecasts of what actually happened.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/jew-hate-france-stephen-brown/

Last December, vandals desecrated 107 Jewish graves with anti-Semitic inscriptions in Westerhoffen in eastern France. Anti-Jewish graffiti was also found in the nearby town of Schafhouse-sur-Zorn. No suspects were arrested. Earlier in 2019, in February in Alsace, also in eastern France, 100 Jewish graves were desecrated with Nazi symbols.

The desecration occurred just hours before the French government’s lower legislative house was to adopt a motion modeled on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism which states that denying Jews their right to self-determination is anti-Semitic.

In the same month, an Israeli student was attacked by two strangers on the subway for speaking Hebrew into a cell phone. His nose was broken. A 17-year-old, arrested with a stolen phone and known to police, was taken into custody. His ethnic origin was not given.

And perhaps most frightening, U.K.’s leading freedom fighter Katie Hopkins stated in a recent Glazov Gang video that 18 Jewish families in Paris had received letters telling them to “get out” or be killed.

Perhaps to indicate the senders of these poisonous letters meant business, Hopkins also cited the case of the 82-year-old Jewish woman last year who lived in one of the poorer suburbs surrounding Paris. She was stabbed to death and thrown off her balcony by her Muslim neighbor.

Anti-Semitic attacks are on the increase in France. According to Wikepedia, in 2018, they rose by 69 per cent amounting to about 500 assaults. Anti-Semitism surged during the Second Intifada from 2002-2004 to disturbing levels.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15826/china-coronavirus-deceit

Any hope that the West may have harbored in the past about China evolving into a member of the liberal-democratic international order, should by now be considered dead, expired, extinct.

Worse, the wet markets, which were to have been closed, have apparently been reopening.

China is a threat to all of us. That is why it is more important than ever for the U.S. and the rest of the West to be aware of the risks involved in developing further alliances — technological or otherwise — with a country that has served up nothing but duplicity to its own people as well as to the rest of the planet.

The coronavirus may be strengthening the determination of China’s government. So far, it has been trying to guarantee absolute loyalty from its populace through surveillance technology and turning China into a spookily Orwellian society. Any hope that the West may have harbored in the past about China evolving into a member of the liberal-democratic international order, should by now be considered dead, expired, extinct.

China has not only been stealing intellectual property from the West for years, as US President Donald J. Trump has long observed; it has also behaved abysmally during the coronavirus crisis in Wuhan — and maybe also before. It is still not known if this coronavirus originated in one of China’s “wet markets”, which have probably caused other diseases, or in a bio-weapons laboratory — and we may never know. What we do know is that when the World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control offered to help, China ignored them.