RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/trending/italys-prime-minister-says-the-risk-is-real-that-the-eu-could-break-over-coronavirus-pandemic/

The European Union is undergoing unprecedented stress as a result of differences over how to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.

EU finance ministers have been unable to come to an agreement over how to distribute the debt burden among bloc nations. Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte warns that the risk to European unity as a result of the lack of agreement is real.

Guardian:

“It’s a big challenge to the existence of Europe,” Conte told the BBC. “If  Europe fails to come up with a monetary and financial policy adequate for the biggest challenge since world war two, not only Italians but European citizens will be deeply disappointed.”

Speaking shortly before the ministers started their discussions, Mário Centeno, the former Portuguese minister who is president of the Eurozone group, said the EU needed to build a financial safety net as Europe “dipped into recession” with “all in lockdown, casualties rising by the hour and with no end in sight”.

“We either sink or swim together”, Centeno said as he called on ministers to show the “necessary spirit of compromise”.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15869/who-tedros-resign

Rather than criticising Beijing for its initial attempts to cover up the outbreak, Dr Tedros instead praised Chinese President Xi Jinping for his “very rare leadership”, and China for showing “transparency” in its response to the virus.

“The W.H.O. really blew it… Fortunately I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?” — US President Donald J. Trump, Twitter, April 7, 2020.

Why indeed?

As the body responsible for maintaining global health standards, the UN-sponsored World Health Organization (WHO) is supposed to adopt an even-handed approach when dealing with all member states, irrespective of how powerful they might be.

It is for this reason that the blatant pro-China bias the organisation has shown in its response to the coronavirus pandemic has raised a number of serious questions about the WHO’s handling of the crisis.

Under the terms of the WHO’s constitution, which sets out the agency’s governing structure and principles, the Geneva-based organisation is charged with ensuring “the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health.”

The accusation made by the Trump Administration, that the global body has become “China centric” and has been “biased” in its dealings with Beijing over the pandemic, therefore suggest the organisation has failed in its duty to treat all member states equally.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/peter-hitchens-selective-outrage-bruce-bawer/

Many decades ago, a British couple named Eric and Yvonne Hitchens had two children, both of whom grew up to be prominent journalists and political commentators with strong contrarian streaks. The older son, Christopher, who died in 2011 at age 62, was a lifelong Trotskyite and atheist; the younger, Peter, now 68, went through a period of youthful leftism and unbelief before moving to the right (although he still calls himself a social democrat) and becoming an Anglo-Catholic. There’s one other important difference between the two brothers, and it goes beyond political orientation: while Christopher was a bon vivant of the first water, famous for his wit and charm, who enjoyed cocktails, liqueurs, and a few bottles of wine over dinner and had a glittering circle of friends from all over the political map, Peter is a notorious curmudgeon, wet blanket, moral scold, and full-time blowhard who, on TV or radio or podcasts, seems incapable of making a point succinctly. Also, he has an upper-crust accent that makes Jacob Rees-Mogg sound like Ernest Borgnine in Marty – an accent that, fairly or not, makes him comes off as an unbearable snob. (In fact, his English sometimes ascends to glorious heights of aristocratic mumbling that many a mere American may, at times, struggle to make sense of.)

But let’s come to the point. In recent weeks, Peter Hitchens has been by far the most high-profile critic of the measures instituted in Britain to limit the spread of the coronavirus. In a March 21 column for the Sunday Mail, he asked: “How long before we need passes to go out in the streets, as in any other banana republic?” He accused his government of assuming “grotesque, bullying powers” and of employing “the crudest weapons of despotism,” and charged that his fellow Brits “seem to despise our ancient hard-bought freedom and actually want to rush into the warm, firm arms of Big Brother.” The following Sunday, March 28, he returned to the same topic with equal passion and hyperbole: “As I watched the Prime Minister order mass house arrest on Monday night, I felt revulsion, anger and grief – as anyone brought up when this was a free and well-governed country would.” Calling Britain under lockdown a “Stasi society,” Hitchens said that he wondered “whether there might also be restrictions on what can be said and published.” Humberside police, he noted with horror, were “already advertising a ‘portal’ for citizens to inform on their neighbours for breaking the ‘social distancing’ rules.” On the third Sunday, April 5, he was back with more of the same. 

https://www.theepochtimes.com/indonesia-reports-biggest-jump-in-covid-19-deaths-as-malaysia-trend-improves_3306402.html#

JAKARTA—Indonesia reported its biggest daily jump in COVID-19 deaths on Thursday, April 9, bringing the total confirmed number to 280 in the world’s fourth most populous country, the highest death toll in Asia outside China where the virus first emerged.

Indonesia confirmed 40 more deaths from the “CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus.” Its death toll accounts for nearly half of the more than 590 across Southeast Asia. More than 16,500 cases have been reported across the region.

Indonesian health ministry official Achmad Yurianto said the country had registered 337 new infections, also a new daily high, taking the total to 3,293.

Health experts say Indonesia faces a surge in cases after a slow government response masked the scale of the outbreak in Southeast Asia’s biggest country.

Indonesia has brought in “large-scale social restrictions.” Still, President Joko Widodo has resisted bringing in the type of tough lockdowns imposed by neighbors and only moved to allow areas like Jakarta, where there has been a spike in cases, more powers to tackle the crisis.

Researchers at the University of Indonesia have predicted there could be 140,000 deaths and 1.5 million cases by May without more stringent curbs on movement and gathering.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/japan-to-pay-companies-to-move-production-out-of-china/?utm_source=

Japan will devote more than $2.2 billion of its coronavirus economic stimulus package to incentivize its manufacturers to move their production out of China as relations fray between the neighboring countries in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

The record stimulus plan provides $2 billion for manufacturers to transfer production to Japan and over $216 million to help companies move production to other countries. Imports from China, Japan’s biggest trading partner, were down by nearly 50 percent in February as facilities in China closed while the coronavirus ripped through the country.

A state visit to Japan by Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier this month — the first such visit in about a decade — was postponed indefinitely last month amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“We are doing our best to resume economic development,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Wednesday of Japan’s decision during a press conference in Beijing.“In this process, we hope other countries will act like China and take proper measures to ensure the world economy will be impacted as little as possible and to ensure that supply chains are impacted as little as possible.”