RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15976/eu-covid-19-immigration

Persons “in need of international protection or for other humanitarian reasons”, however, are exempted from these restrictions on non-essential travel from third countries.” — European Commission statement, March 30, 2020.

This means that people who apply for international protection cannot be turned away and that the rights of migrants and refugees to apply for asylum cannot be suspended, even in the time of coronavirus.

This policy was on display during the recent crisis on the border between Turkey and Greece, when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan used migrants — whom Turkey transported to the border with Greece — as political blackmail, threatening to unleash a new migration crisis on Europe. At least 14,000 migrants were brought to the border, according to media reports.

As much as the EU remains committed to international law, it would seem that under the circumstances of a worldwide pandemic, which has forced countries to go to extremes in terms of limiting the liberties of their own citizens to fight Covid-19, it should be possible to find ways temporarily to suspend the right of third-country nationals to migrate to the EU.

On March 16, the European Commission recommended a temporary restriction of non-essential travel from third countries into the “EU+ area” for 30 days. On April 8, the European Commission recommended that the temporary restriction be prolonged until May 15. According to the European Commission’s press release:

“The Commission’s assessment of the current situation points to a continued rise in the number of new cases and deaths across the EU, as well as to the progression of the pandemic outside of the EU, including in countries from where millions of people usually travel to the EU every year. In this context, prolonging the travel restriction is necessary to reduce the risk of the disease spreading further.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15858/turkey-hunger-strike-death

The placard read: “Let Nuriye and Semih live.” Just one line — it was a simple, peaceful wish that the two teachers would not die in prison during their hunger strike. The governor’s officials and law enforcement authorities acted immediately. From security cameras, they identified the persons who displayed the placard and launched a criminal probe against them on charges of “supporting a terror organization”

This is a compilation of shame for Turkey. Bölek and other members of Grup Yorum have never been charged with engaging in any terrorist activity. They were prosecuted for allegedly sympathizing with a terrorist organization with their songs. With their songs, not guns or bombs.

Those in the free world do not have to care what ideology Grup Yorum adopted; what they should be aware of is the level of religious zealotry and overbearing governmental control that has been reached in a presumably “Western,” NATO-member country.

When someone dies on a hunger strike, there is often a political motivation. It is understandable, therefore, if supporters of that political motivation mourn the victim while opponents just shrug it off. One such death in Turkey, however, again unveiled how dangerously a thin line of deep hatred divides Turks along pro- and anti-government lines. This is a psychological cold war.

The Turkish state is notoriously cruel to every ideology and its adherents that it considers “hostile.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/swedens-covid-19-fatality-rate-is-high/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

Sweden ranks seventh on the list of countries with most COVID-19 fatalities per capita. (I exclude microstates with populations under 100,000.) The six countries with more fatalities per capita are all in Western Europe. (I include the United Kingdom.) The fatality rate in the Netherlands is only slightly higher than in Sweden, but since April 1 it’s grown faster in the latter. Sweden appears to be on track to move up from seventh to sixth place before long.

The United States should learn from Sweden’s response to the pandemic, John Fund and Joel Hay argue in their most recent article at NRO. They think that the lesson we should take away is that Sweden’s response has been a success and is a model that other countries should follow: Go light on social-distancing restrictions, reopen schools, bars, restaurants, and gyms yesterday, and aim for herd immunity.

Arguments for lifting any given lockdown can be made. At this point in the pandemic, however, Sweden’s experience no longer clearly supports them. Granted, the landscape may look different a year from now. We’re still trying to see through the fog. Fund and Hay tout Sweden’s relatively low number of COVID-19 cases per capita, but that figure alone isn’t meaningful unless we know how many Swedes have been tested. In any case, if Swedish policymakers are aiming for herd immunity, they should want the infection rate to be higher, not lower. Twelve percent of Swedes who have tested positive have died. That figure is high — in the United States, for example, the percentage is 7 — and so perhaps Sweden is overcounting deaths related to COVID-19. But perhaps not. We don’t know.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/weighing-swedens-coronavirus-model-11588631127?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The American left has misunderstood Sweden for years, holding up its significantly liberalized economy as a socialist utopia. Now the misapprehension has moved in the opposite direction, as progressives fret over the country’s supposed economy-over-life approach to Covid-19.

While its neighbors and the rest of Europe imposed strict lockdowns, Stockholm has taken a relatively permissive approach. It has focused on testing and building up health-care capacity while relying on voluntary social distancing, which Swedes have embraced.

The country isn’t a free-for-all. Restaurants and bars remain open, though only for table service. Younger students are still attending school, but universities have moved to remote learning. Gatherings with more than 50 people are banned, along with visits to elderly-care homes. Even with relatively lax rules, travel in the country dropped some 90% over Easter weekend.

Officials say the country’s strategy—which is similar to the United Kingdom’s before it reversed abruptly in March—is to contain the virus enough to not overwhelm its health system. Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist, said the country isn’t actively trying to achieve broad immunity. But he predicted late last month that “we could reach herd immunity in Stockholm within a matter of weeks.” Some British public-health officials reportedly leaned toward less restrictive measures before the country’s leaders imposed a harsh lockdown.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/coronavirus-crisis-sweden-refused-lockdown-other-countries-following/

No lockdown, no shuttered businesses or elementary schools, no stay-at-home. And no disaster, either.

Spring is in the air, and it is increasingly found in the confident step of the people of Sweden.

With a death rate significantly lower than that of France, Spain, the U.K., Belgium, Italy, and other European Union countries, Swedes can enjoy the spring without panic or fears of reigniting a new epidemic as they go about their day in a largely normal fashion.

Dr. Mike Ryan, the executive director of the World Health Organization’s Emergencies Program, says: “I think if we are to reach a new normal, I think in many ways Sweden represents a future model — if we wish to get back to a society in which we don’t have lockdowns.”

The Swedish ambassador to the U.S., Karin Ulrika Olofsdotter, says: “We could reach herd immunity in the capital” of Stockholm as early as sometime in May. That would dramatically limit spread of the virus.

A month ago, we first wrote about Sweden’s approach, which we said “relies more on calibrated precautions and isolating only the most vulnerable than on imposing a full lockdown.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/boris-and-bibi-ride-coronavirus-pandemic-popularity-11588629245?mod=hp_opin_pos_3

The Covid-19 pandemic is, among other things, a test of leadership around the world. For some—Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, for instance—the pandemic has been a major political setback. Others, such as Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, have seen their popularity soar. Then there are those like Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who have exploited the pandemic to expand their sweeping powers.

Prime Ministers Boris Johnson of Britain and Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel are the two world leaders who have been most successful at strengthening their positions amid the pandemic. This isn’t because they have both succeeded in stopping the spread of the disease. While Israel has, so far, contained the disease with fewer than 300 fatalities at press time, Britain trails only Italy among European countries in number of lives lost to Covid-19. Many more deaths are likely to come. Messrs. Johnson and Netanyahu are succeeding because the pandemic drives home their core messages.

National leaders acquire and hold power in part by offering a “theory of the case”—a vision of what their country needs and why a particular leader and particular program are the solution. In 2016 Donald Trump’s theory of the case was that a broken and corrupt establishment was driving the country into the ground. In 2020 former Vice President Joe Biden’s theory of the case is that America needs a president who will bring “normal” back.

President Trump was preparing to run on “the strongest economy in world history.” The pandemic crushed that argument, and although his base continues to support him, Mr. Trump is struggling to reinvent his re-election campaign. President Vladimir Putin’s core message for 2020 was that a stable and respected Russia was becoming more secure economically. A referendum scheduled for this month would have sealed his grip on power. But thanks to the pandemic and the resulting oil price implosion, the referendum has been postponed, and Mr. Putin must find a new message.

For Bibi and Boris, the pandemic reinforced the arguments they have been making to the public. In Mr. Netanyahu’s case, his response to the pandemic enabled him to split the opposition, postpone his trial on corruption charges, and continue his reign as Israel’s longest-serving and most effective prime minister since David Ben-Gurion. His core message is that in a dangerous world Israel needs a decisive prime minister and government with a real majority, and that the opposition, whose fissures are becoming deeper, is incapable of providing it. Mr. Netanyahu must survive a ruling by Israel’s Supreme Court about whether a person under indictment can serve as prime minister, but the strength of his new Knesset majority shifts the odds in his favor.

Let me fuse two tales of resurrection — the PM’s medical ordeal and his party’s return from death’s door — into a single narrative in which the hero, an outcast Tory rebel, ends up as a Prime Minister who dominates British politics more completely than anyone since Margaret Thatcher. Better still, the voting public come to realise just how much they like him.

The story begins a month before the 2019 European elections when Tory constituency associations began passing motions of no confidence in Prime Minister Theresa May. That rebellion, which spread rapidly, signified that the Tories were a party with a clear Leave majority—something like 70 per cent of activists and 55 to 60 per cent of Tory MPs (if the latter had taken a truth serum).

Those no-confidence votes were important, but national political correspondents treated them as marginal. That was partly because they’re overwhelmingly Europhiliac. Also, they shared a deeply rooted collective sentiment that Tory activists shouldn’t be important, which slid imperceptibly into thinking they couldn’t possibly be important. As a result they were consistently mistaken in predicting that May would eventually get her non-Brexit bills through the Commons and, more generally, that Brexit would be lost in the quicksands of a Remainer House of Commons.

Those calculations, like much else, were shattered by the European elections, in which the triumph of the Brexit Party under Nigel Farage could only have been achieved with the support of both Tory voters and Tory activists. (When a Tory canvasser asked my sister to vote Tory in local elections, she agreed to do so but added she would vote for the Brexit Party in the Euro-elections. He replied: “So will I.”) But the 8 per cent national vote, amplified by more association votes of no confidence and the looming prospect of one by the National Conservative Convention of 800 senior Tories, led in quick succession to May’s resignation, a Tory leadership election, and Johnson’s clear victory on a promise to achieve a real Brexit.

https://quillette.com/2020/05/03/an-icu-doctor-reports-from-the-frontline/

I had been out of clinical medicine for a couple of years but felt a calling to return to the intensive care unit (ICU) to help my local area in London cope with the additional burden presented by this pandemic. Like everyone, I had read that the National Health Service (NHS) needed a dramatic increase in capacity to save lives—beds, ventilators, and staff. I was a little scared. Would there be enough Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)? Would my new colleagues accept me? Would I survive, or become another face on the news of a frontline staff member who had succumbed to the virus? I felt a little deflated when I contacted four local London hospitals to offer my help, my time, possibly my good health, only to have my emails either not replied to or batted around various HR departments. Hospital administrators struggled to process a volunteer who was an ex-intensive care doctor with 11 years’ experience. Classic NHS, I thought. The national institution that all we Brits know: at times loved, at times hated, full of wonderful people, but not always well-run. This was part of the reason I had left my UK clinical work to become a doctor in the global pharmaceutical industry.

I cycled up to the hospital on an unseasonally warm day before the Easter weekend. My first day back. What immediately struck me was that the corridors of the old Victorian hospital were empty. Where was everybody? Where was the pandemic? There seemed to be no patients, no staff, no one about at all. Had this all been media hype? I expected the hospital to be a hive of bustle. The front line. This was where the rubber met the road of tackling COVID-19, I thought.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-sweeps-across-brazil-a-land-ill-equipped-to-fight-it-11588603847?mod=hp_lead_pos5

In the tiny, stifling home she shared with seven relatives in the Amazon, Maria Portelo de Lima began coughing, started feeling weaker and, over a week, got sicker and sicker.

Her family tried to get the 61-year-old to a hospital in Manaus, a city of 2.2 million in the heart of the rainforest. They were told no ambulances were available or hospital beds free because of a flood of coronavirus patients.

Ms. de Lima died April 26. With so many other Covid-19 victims in the city, it took 30 hours for an ambulance to pick up her body. She was buried in a mass grave, her identity marked by a wooden cross that cost $22.

Covid-19, which has focused its fury most heavily on wealthier countries, now is hammering Brazil. Brazil has just passed China, the origin of the pandemic, both in confirmed cases, 101,147, and in deaths, 7,025, becoming the hardest-hit country in the developing world.

Unlike in China, which corralled the virus through stern restrictions, things in Latin America’s largest country are expected to get much worse. Infections are rising by more than 5,000 a day and deaths by nearly 500.

There is so little testing in Brazil that its real number of Covid-19 infections might be far higher than the official figure. One university study has estimated the total to date at higher than the U.S.’s world-leading 1.19 million.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15973/denmark-bible-translation-outrage

This misleads the reader twice. Once, the Danish Bible Society statement dodges the truthful assessment that the word “Israel” was omitted or replaced in the Hebrew Bible in 9% of its occurrences and in the New Testament nearly completely. By omitting any distinction between the two parts of the Bible the statement claims that it mentions “Israel” scores and scores of times in the translation. Second, the statement inflates the word “Israel” with “Israelites.” Again here, the analysis of the critique has been side-stepped. The accusation has not been against the replacement of “Israel and the Israelites,” but against the replacement of “Israel.”

The word “Israel” has an extended history of three thousand years, the word “Israelites” of less than one thousand years. These two words are of unequal measure and had not been joined together in the critique.

After a spectacular denial of the crime of which the Danish Bible Society has been accused internationally, it finally admits to it. But it does not sound like repentance…. While any translation has to wrestle with the transportation of meaning and culture of a text from one language to another, the extraordinary decision of the Danish Bible Society staff to deprive their readers of some of the key points of the Christian faith is mind-boggling.

Above all, the Danish Bible Society separates Israel from its Land. Apart from other key issues of the faith, it denies the reader the knowledge of the intrinsic connection between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, and between Israel and its Land. It falls in the trap of which the Apostle Paul warned, “It is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you” (Romans 11: 18). Its version of the Bible robs the Christian faith of its Jewish roots. It presents a new story of the Christian faith. Its maker is the Danish Bible Society.

No one seems to be in the know about this translation of the Bible. Is it possible that the superfluous mistranslation of the Bible was an initiative of the General Secretary of the Danish Bible Society, Birgitte Stoklund Larsen? Did her office raise the money? Where from? Who is profits from this initiative? If not her, who then?

For Christians and Jews, the Bible is serious. Any tampering with its words, above all with the word Israel, is unacceptable and rejected unequivocally. The attempted murder of Israel, from time eternal until our day, is too real to let people play, whimsically, with its land, its people or its name.

The misrepresentation of Holy Scripture by the Danish Bible Society (DBS) has been met with a crescendo of international protest demanding the withdrawal of the falsified Bible.

The March 2020 Danish Bible, for the secular Danish reader’s easy reading, has omitted or replaced the word “Israel” in all but two places of the more than 60 Greek occurrences in the New Testament and in 9% of the Hebrew Bible.

Protests started on April 21 with the Danish author Jan Frost, who, in a video, first revealed the changes and took the Danish Society to task for them.

On April 26, the Bible Society of Israel (BSI) issued a gracious but unambiguous statement asking to “take measures to correct” the translation:

“The local body of believers as well as others in Israel and beyond were very surprised by and disappointed with the approach that the translators took regarding the term Israel and in its implementation in this translation…..We believe that the Danish Bible Society, as our fellow brothers and sisters in the Lord, will seriously consider our feedback, which echoes the voices of many, and will take measures to correct their translation as necessary.” (Emphasis added.)