Scientific advisors to the British government have reportedly told the Prime Minister Boris Johnson that China is covering up the full extent of the coronavirus pandemic, and that things could be 40 times worse there than the communist state admits.
The Daily Mail reports that “Mr Johnson has been warned by scientific advisers that China’s officially declared statistics on the number of cases of coronavirus could be ‘downplayed by a factor of 15 to 40 times.’”
“There is a disgusting disinformation campaign going on and it is unacceptable,” an anonymous government source told The Mail.
“They [the Chinese government] know they have got this badly wrong and rather than owning it they are spreading lies.”
“It is going to be back to the diplomatic drawing board after this. Rethink is an understatement,” another government source said, with a further source adding that “There has to be a reckoning when this is over.”
The British government also “believes China is seeking to build its economic power during the pandemic with ‘predatory offers of help’ [to] countries around the world.’” the report continues.
China has been delivering hundreds of thousands of testing kits and masks to nations around the world. One problem, however, is that they don’t work.
“In Spain, which currently has the fourth-highest number of coronavirus cases in the world, the government purchased 640,000 rapid test kits from China and South Korea as it fights the pandemic,” The Free Beacon reported this week.
“Experts soon discovered, however, that the tests it purchased from Chinese company Bioeasy were only correctly identifying coronavirus cases 30 percent of the time, according to Spain’s El Pais.” the report notes.
“The Czech Republic also purchased 150,000 rapid test kits from China, and have likewise found problems.” the report continues, adding that “One doctor using the tests found that 80 percent of the kits were faulty and has reverted back to the conventional lab tests, which are significantly slower to process.”
Other countries such as Turkey and Georgia, as well as Holland have reported problems with the tests and the masks.
A scientific study out of the University of Southampton in the UK found that had China acted sooner to combat their coronavirus, then the further spread could have been almost entirely avoided, and it would not have become a global pandemic.
It has become clear that the first cases of the Chinese virus were reported in mid-late November and early December, with scientists even estimating that the first jump of the virus from animals to humans probably occurred in October in the city of Wuhan.
Instead of acting immediately, the Chinese government waited until January 23rd before issuing quarantine orders to the 11 million people living in Wuhan.
The communist state was also actively working to suppress and punish doctors and scientists who tried to get warnings out, and lied to the world by claiming there was “no evidence” of human-to-human transmission.
“Chinese laboratories identified a mystery virus as a highly infectious new pathogen by late December last year, but they were ordered to stop tests, destroy samples and suppress the news.”
They covered it up for a over month, brutally silenced whistleblowers, lied to the rest of the world and facilitated a geographic spread that would have been reduced by 95% if they’d been honest.
As the communist state relaxed lockdown orders and opened up again this week, further questions were raised. It has been reported that thousands of urns at funeral homes in Wuhan, along with cremation statistics, do not tally with numbers of new cases and deaths being logged by the Chinese government.
China has a previous track record of lying about health crises. In 2003, The New York Times reported that China admitted to under-reporting the total number of SARS cases.
“What Is Really Essential”? In The US Golf And Guns, In France Wine And Pastries
Among countless other unprecedented changes and transformation, the coronavirus pandemic has unveiled an odd divergence within global cultures: the definition of what’s deemed “essential” for people across the world, and what things we really can’t do without, even though we might not need most of them for survival.
As AP reports, in its attempt to slow the spread of the virus, authorities in many places are determining what shops and services can remain open. They’re also restricting citizens from leaving their homes. Stay-at-home orders or guidance are affecting more than one-fifth of the world’s population. This has left many contemplating an existential question: What, really, is essential?
Whether it is in Asia, Europe, Africa or the United States, there’s general agreement: Health care workers, law enforcement, utility workers, food production and communications are generally exempt from lockdowns. But some lists of exempted activities reflect a national identity, or the efforts of lobbyists.
In some U.S. states, golf, guns and ganja have been ruled essential, raising eyebrows and — in the case of guns — a good deal of ire. In many places, booze is also on the list of essentials. Britain at first kept liquor stores off its list of businesses allowed to remain open, but after reports of supermarkets running out of beer, wine and spirits, the government quickly added them.
“Recent events clearly demonstrate that the process of designating ‘essential services’ is as much about culture as any legal-political reality about what is necessary to keep society functioning,” said Christopher McKnight Nichols, associate professor of history at Oregon State University.
Countries including India and U.S. states are listing the information technology sector as essential. The world’s dependency on the internet has become even more apparent as countless people confined to their homes communicate, stream movies and play games online to stave off cabin fever.
Several states where marijuana is legal, such as California and Washington, deemed pot shops and workers in the market’s supply chain essential. For some, the emphasis is on medicinal uses, not enabling cooped-up people to get stoned.
“Cannabis is a safe and effective treatment that millions of Americans rely on to maintain productive daily lives while suffering from diseases and ailments,” Erik Altieri, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said in an email. “It is the very definition of essential that these individuals can still access their medicine at this time.”
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont added gun shops to his list of essential businesses, generating shock and dismay among families of gun violence victims. His spokesman Max Reiss said Lamont is trying not to overly disrupt commerce or interfere with legal rights.
Newtown Action Alliance, a group formed after a gunman killed 26 people in 2012 at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, urged Lamont to reconsider, noting a recent surge in gun and ammunition purchases. The group predicted an “increased number of deaths due to unintentional shootings, homicides and suicides.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a legal opinion Friday saying emergency orders in his state can’t restrict gun sales. “If you have a break down in society, well then our first line to defend ourselves is ourselves, so I think having a weapon … is very important for your personal safety,” Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told a radio interviewer.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf on Tuesday quietly allowed gun shops to reopen, but only by appointment during limited hours if customers and employees comply with social distancing and other protective measures.
* * *
There is a lot of variation across the United States because a national stay-at-home order has not been issued, said Benjamin Clark, associate professor of planning, public policy and management at the University of Oregon.
“We end up with places making up the rules that are culturally or geographically specific,” Clark said. “This is why we see so much variation, and potential risk.”
In Europe, the current epicenter of the pandemic, Italy has the most stringent rules, with only essential businesses such as food shops and pharmacies remaining open. The manufacturing sector was ordered shut down on Thursday, though factories that make needed products like medical supplies will continue to operate after making conditions safer for employees.
Britain, which was initially reluctant to shut down business, has issued orders to close nonessential operations. Restaurants and eateries must be shut, but Britons can still get fish and chips and other meals, as long as they’re carry-out.
In France, shops specializing in pastry, wine and cheese have been declared essential businesses.
In a nod to Israel’s vibrant religious life, people can gather for outdoor prayers — with a maximum of 10 worshipers standing 2 meters (2 yards) apart. Demonstrations — also allowed — have occurred outside parliament and the Supreme Court, with participants maintaining social distance.
“In times of uncertainty, institutions and practices that are central to the cultural identities can become really important touchstones — material markers of certainty, comfort, and mechanisms to persist,” said Aimee Huff, marketing professor at Oregon State University, specializing in consumer culture.
In China, authorities closed most businesses and public facilities beginning in late January but kept open hospitals, supermarkets and pharmacies. Truck drivers delivering food, disinfectant and medical supplies to locked-down cities were hailed as heroes. Now, the ruling Communist Party is relaxing restrictions to revive the economy after declaring victory over the outbreak.
For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing conditions, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death. In the United States, lobbyists have been trying to influence what gets on lists of essential services, so their clients’ businesses can remain open.
“They were absolutely earning their pay” in Connecticut, said Reiss, the governor’s spokesman. He noted lobbyists for manufacturers and the golf course industry were particularly active.
Despite their efforts, golf wasn’t deemed essential in Connecticut. But Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey included golf courses on his list. Officials in Phoenix encouraged the city’s 1.7 million residents to “get outside, get exercise and practice responsible social distancing” in golf courses, parks and trails.
Mayors of five other Arizona cities pushed back, telling Ducey that including golf courses and payday lenders was taking the definition of essential too far.
In California, construction executives and others lobbied state officials to get construction exempted from the stay-at-home mandate, the Sacramento Bee reported. State health officials responded by including all construction as essential.
If construction in America’s most populous state stalls — as it it did during the Great Recession — it would be difficult to restart, said Erika Bjork of the Sacramento Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, which advocated for the industry.
“We need to keep this engine humming, so when we come out of this we have housing,” Bjork said.
Like Britain, some U.S. states allowed liquor stores to remain open, including New Mexico, which routinely ranks first in alcohol-related deaths per capita.
State health officials were concerned that shutting them down would result in people with alcoholism seeking emergency medical attention, taking resources away from the coronavirus, said Tripp Stelnicki, a spokesman for New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.
In New Hampshire, Gov. Chris Sununu said flower shops are among the essentials. Asked why, spokesman Ben Vihstadt said they provide essential services for funeral homes.
Signs, especially in the United States, are that the post-coronavirus-plagued world will have even more inequality of wealth, within each nation, than existed prior to the plague. Billionaires are demanding to be included in the bailouts by their governments; and, because billionaires financed the careers of the successful politicians who won seats in their country’s legislature, those demands are almost certain to be complied with. Only the least-corrupt nations will be able to recover fully from the current plague.
In the United States, one Party, the Republicans, doesn’t even pretend to be concerned about the growth of wealth-inequality after 1980; but the other Party, the Democrats, do make that pretense; and so a deal was worked out in the U.S. Congress that both Parties tout as being a ‘balanced’ bailout bill, because it will bail out both the megacorporations that the billionaires own and control, and the public — their workers (especially the ones that those billionaires are now laying off). Because of the enormous give-aways to the billionaires, deficit-spending by the government will be soaring out of control, and ultimately paper money will plunge in value, which will bring on a global depression that will be even worse than 1929. Some governments will find ways to nationalize the wealth of billionaires and perhaps also of centi-millionaires in order to fund the continuing needs of the public, and there will be a scramble by many of those super-rich to relocate to countries where they still will be able to bribe enough government officials so as to provide safe haven for their accumulated wealth. Graduated exit-taxes will be instituted by any of the industrialized countries that aren’t totally corrupt, but the most extremely corrupt industrialized countries will experience massive capital-flight and a future as a “third world” nation, under extended martial law.
On March 22nd, Zero Hedge headlined “‘Stop The Coronavirus Corporate Coup’: Here Is A List Of Everyone Demanding A Bail Out” and Matt Stoller listed the many different categories of mega-corporate lobbyists who were urging the Senators and Representatives, whose campaigns they fund, to bail out their respective industries. The few other news-sites that republished or linked to that list were other alternative-news sites, not any of the mainstream ones. This was a major news-report, which deserved to become a top topic of public conversation, but that didn’t happen; and here is an example of what it said (and which the rest of the press were hiding):
Mitch McConnell wants big business to rule, so he’s playing a trick. He is refusing aid to workers. Democrats are negotiating with him to try to get unemployment assistance and social welfare. McConnell knows Dems won’t pay attention to corporate bailouts if he takes the public hostage, and Democrats know that they can hand out favors to big business if they just talk about how they got larger checks for workers.
So McConnell will put a bill down in front of Nancy Pelosi, with some good stuff like unemployment insurance, but also the really ugly stuff to hand over America to big business. The corporatists in the Democratic Party will tell her “Pass the corporate coup bill, after all we have to do something right now!” And because she doesn’t have the votes from within her own caucus because of these corporatists, and because she doesn’t particularly care if America is sold off to big business, she will do that.
It’s a song-and-dance routine, performed by the two “good cop, bad cop” political Parties, in order to satisfy not only the audience (the voters) but the producers (the billionaires).
On March 21st, I headlined “Triage Starts in Government Bailouts: Who will get the money?” at Strategic Culture, and submitted that news-report to all U.S. major news-media and most of the minor ones. 24 hours later, it was picked-up by only a few minor, very courageous, ones: The 21st Century, The Duran, Free World Economic Report, The Russophile, and Verity Weekly. The corruption is so pervasive that all of the news-media that 99.99% of the public rely upon for their ‘news’ were filtering out the news of the impending massive public subsidies to America’s billionaires by America’s ‘public representatives’ — shoveling the public’s money to the billionaires as bailouts.
Stoller was obviously correct that the Republican leader of the U.S. Senate, Mitch McConnell, “is refusing aid to workers” and (though Stoller — being himself a Democrat — didn’t use nearly such direct language to say) the Democratic Party’s leader in the House was trying to wrangle enough of the desperately needed funds for the American public (all sorts of workers, and, here, especially the most important ones, such as nurses, police, etc.) so that congressional Democrats will be able to give the billionaires what they demand, while still getting enough aid out to everybody else in order for congressional Democrats to be able to hold their congressional seats after November 3rd. (In America, keeping the poor away from the voting-booths, and undercounting the votes that they do cast, are usually insufficient in themselves so as to prevent a Republican landslide, and so as to supply the bumper-sticker benefits to non-billionaires that will be needed if Congress isn’t to become 100% Republican.)
In a profoundly corrupt country, over 99% of the press will filter-out such basic details of the true extent of the corruption, because, otherwise, the revolution that results will be against the aristocracy, instead of against the public itself (and producing martial law), and a revolution like that could produce actual democracy, which the few people who fund politicians’ careers fear the most. They much prefer, if a revolution is coming, that it be clearly against the public (and result in martial law, which will protect only themselves), not against themselves. In fact, such a country has a government almost solely in order to protect the aristocrats from the public, and almost not at all in order to protect the public from the aristocracy.
Interestingly, the very next day, on March 22nd, my headlined news-report was “Coronavirus Cases Soaring Much Faster in U.S. Than in Other Countries” and even that report had no takers in America’s major ‘news’ media, despite its being merely a presentation of the statistical data, which discredited the U.S. Government in comparison with almost all of the other governments in the world. (Only Turkey and Luxembourg had even worse figures at that time, but they were just beginning to count their coronavirus cases.)
On March 25th, I headlined “Coronavirus: Why Russians Are Lucky to Be Led by Putin”, and wrote that “within just three more days, America will have the world’s largest total number of cases, if Italy won’t. And after yet another day, the U.S. will almost certainly have the world’s largest total number of cases.” Both statements came to pass. On March 26th, America’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation published their projection of the rise and subsiding of the coronavirus-19 in the U.S., and predicted that this country would end up with 460,000 cases and 81,114 deaths from the disease, and that America’s epidemic would virtually end by July 1st. I headlined about that, on March 28th, “Projection: U.S. Coronavirus Deaths to = China’s Total Coronavirus Cases”.
Though all of these news-reports are major, and deal with the news-event that is currently obsessing all of the world’s news-media — which is the coronavirus plague — the news-media that are owned or otherwise controlled by America’s billionaires rejected them all and are doing everything else that they possibly can to delay, if not to block entirely, the crucial information from reaching America’s voters, and this is happening during an election year. The Jeff-Bezos-owned liberal neoconservative Washington Post reliably reported on March 28th that “in private discussions, the president has been driven much more by economic concerns, according to people involved in internal debates or briefed on them. Trump has long viewed the stock market as a barometer for his own reelection hopes.” Safety of the American people is a secondary concern for him. That was being reported by a Democratic Party billionaire against Republican Party billionaires, but what it actually indicates is America’s being controlled by its billionaires, of both Parties. The public, here, actually don’t count.
Under conditions such as this, one can easily understand — with this type of information, which is being hidden from the public — only politicians who satisfy the wants of the nation’s billionaires stand even so much as a chance to win seats in Congress or other high elective office. The public are so misinformed that they are like horses with blinders on and which are being driven by a master to whom they are expendable and replaceable, not objects of authentic and caring concern for their welfare. Everything has a price to such a master, who will grab at any chance to replace any of the public by a cheaper alternative, so long as “the job gets done” — to satisfy their own unlimited greed. The deception of the public is so extreme that America’s Establishment are so brazen as to blame China and Russia for the “disinformation” about the cornoavirus-19 pandemic. The U.S. regime is utterly shameless.
These bailouts of billionaires will destroy what little was left of a democratic future for America — and for any other nation that happens to be nearly as corrupt.
Is this to be the long-term impact of coronavirus-19? Is there an alternative likely scenario? Perhaps the coronavirus plague won’t spread as uncontrollably as is feared, but even if that is the case, what justification exists for bailing out any of the super-rich, in response to an emergency that is causing widespread suffering? And yet, America is doing that.
The Iranian government is encouraging residents to download an app it claims can test people for the coronavirus by asking them a series of questions. But activists note that you can’t really diagnose the virus that way, and upon questioning the Health Ministry said it did not develop the app, the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology did. Critics say the app is just another way for the government to snoop on citizens.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3bCCGBK
via IFTTT
The Iranian government is encouraging residents to download an app it claims can test people for the coronavirus by asking them a series of questions. But activists note that you can’t really diagnose the virus that way, and upon questioning the Health Ministry said it did not develop the app, the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology did. Critics say the app is just another way for the government to snoop on citizens.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3bCCGBK
via IFTTT
NY Prisoners Say They’re Re-Packaging Hand Sanitizer, Not Making It From Scratch, Under Cuomo’s Program
Who can forget Governor Andrew Cuomo’s presser weeks ago where he exclaimed that he would be putting New York state prisoners to work making hand sanitizer? The goal was to produce 100,000 gallons of it every week to be distributed, for free, to schools, government agencies and other needy institutions.
Well, that doesn’t appear to actually be what’s happening. Instead, prisoners are apparently taking hand sanitizer from elsewhere and just re-packaging it and re-branding it as “NYS Clean” sanitizer, according to a new expose from Vice.
At the time, Cuomo boasted that the NYS Sanitizer would be better than Purell’s due to its 75% alcohol content and its floral scent.
He also bragged about the economics: “This is also much less expensive than anything the government could buy—a gallon bottle is $6.10, the 7-ounce bottle is $1.12 our cost, and then there’s a very small size… which is 84 cents. So it’s much cheaper for us to make it ourselves than to buy it on the open market.”
“We are problem solvers, state of New York, Empire State, progressive capital of the nation,” he proudly stated after revealing NYS-Clean branded sanitizer.
But a New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision source says that the sanitizer itself is being produced at an outside vendor and that the prisoners are only bottling it and labeling it.
An inmate, who said that the rollout began on March 7, also said that people are bottling the sanitizer 24 hours a day in three 8 hour shifts. He also said that there’s as many hours as people are willing to take on: “There’s one guy who worked 116 hours in one week, and just stays there. They ask people if they want overtime, but a lot of people refuse it. It’s not actually overtime, it’s just more hours but you still get paid the same amount.”
He said the work mainly consists of “turning a nozzle” and filling gallon sized bottles. Inmates have been instructed to bottle 6,000 gallons of the sanitizer, he says, which is brought in by truck from an outside vendor for every shift.
He said they make $2 per hour for their work, and that’s why the price of the sanitizer at the end of the day is so cheap. The inmate said he hasn’t been to the prison’s commissary in more than a month due to the strenuous work hours he has been forced to put in.
“We’re completely overworked. They treat us like shit,” he concluded.
Here’s video of Cuomo’s initial press conference introducing the sanitizer:
When countries are turning to China because their supranational institutions won’t help, that’s a problem…
The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a greater toll on Italy than any other nation. The Italians are facing their most severe crisis since the Second World War, with Lombardy in the industrial north particularly hard hit. Yet for all its rhetoric about global citizenship and solidarity, the European Union has all but abandoned them.
That’s even though communist China, arguably globalization’s greatest and shrewdest state beneficiary, is ready to fill the void and help Italy put out the fire its own virus started.
The coronavirus first appeared in Italy on January 31 when two Chinese tourists from the Hubei province tested positive in Rome, eight days after they’d landed at the Milan airport in Lombardy. The two were immediately isolated and quarantined in the Roman Spallanzani hospital, and the situation seemed under control—until February 21. That day, Italy confirmed 16 new coronavirus cases, 14 in Lombardy and two in Veneto. A 38-year-old Italian from Codogno near Milan with acute respiratory symptoms was identified as patient zero. Despite Italy’s attempts to contain the virus by locking down the city of Codogno, coronavirus infections spread.
In just a few days, Italy had the highest number of infections in Europe, with Lombardy as the pandemic’s epicenter. To avoid the spread of infections to the rest of Italy, the government locked down the entire region of Lombardy and other areas in northern Italy, effectively quarantining 17 million people. A few days later, as the situation deteriorated, the whole of Italy was declared an “orange zone”—all “non-essential” commercial activities were shut down and the free movement of citizens was limited to grocery and pharmaceutical shopping and work obligations deemed by the state as of “prime importance.”
The economic repercussions of a complete shutdown loomed large. Consequently, Italy asked the EU for more flexibility on its accounts and requested that emergency measures be deployed to support Italian citizens and businesses. At the time, the crisis was hardly felt in the European powerhouses, France or Germany. The EU’s response was slow and inefficient, and Italians started to feel abandoned by European institutions. As the original signer of the Treaty of Rome, Italy is a founding member of the EU and the third largest economy in the eurozone.
On March 12, the president of the European Central Bank (ECB), Christine Lagarde, marked a point of no return—she gave a highly anticipated speech outlining the measures the bank would introduce to combat the effects of the coronavirus. Lagarde decided not to cut interest rates, arguing against the policy of “whatever it takes,” as had been outlined by former ECB president Mario Draghi. To Italians, the EU’s indifference was a betrayal. The consequences of her words were immediate—and disastrous for Italian stocks. Even the pro-EU president of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella, released a harsh statement asking the EU to correct its ways in the “common interest” of Europe.
The EU did change its position on the COVID-19 response, but not until the health care crisis had spread to France and Germany, making it their problem, too. By then, the damage done to the Italians’ trust in European institutions was already beyond repair. With few viable options left, Italy’s government is now considering the European “Save the State Funds,” asking the EU to implement the €500 billion emergency bailout program from the European Stability Mechanism designed for EU member states—a risky move that may saddle Italy with long-term debt on a scale similar to Greece.
The coronavirus emergency has exposed the failures and flaws of the European Union, while underscoring the importance of nation-states. In Europe, we’ve observed a series of events that have demonstrated the collapse of the supra-national model. First, the borders shut down—Austria and Slovenia acted unilaterally, without asking approval from Italy’s government. The move was also symbolic: Italy was not only isolated, it was abandoned to its own devices.
Globalization may have its efficiencies, but an overwhelmed health care system suffers in the absence of internal production of the necessary materials—life-saving ventilators, infection-preventing hazmat vests, face masks. The global evolution of supply chains exported manufacturing and relied heavily on the cheap imports of essential products from abroad. But with the spread of the coronavirus, many states are now forbidding the export of medical equipment. A good example is Turkey, a country that readily accepts EU funds and that many liberals would like to bring into the Union. Ankara blocked a shipment of 200,000 face masks already purchased by Italy for the hard-hit northern regions of Marche and Emilia Romagna.
The Italians are coming together to fight the pandemic. Many Italian companies have converted production at home: those working in the textile industry have started producing face masks. Italy’s only manufacturer of respiratory equipment, in the province of Bologna, is not able to meet the current needs and relieve the national shortage of ventilators. Army technicians are now helping to increase production capacity.
What has the coronavirus in Italy taught us so far? A great nation is doing what it can to become self-sufficient as the crisis proves daily that the propaganda of the prophets of globalization is false. We see that there are strategic sectors, such as health care, transport, energy, defense, and telecommunications, that have to be considered from the perspective of national security and not strictly business.
This is a new, unspoken understanding that unites Italy today. We have witnessed a return of patriotism: flags are hanging from windows and Italians are singing the national anthem. But there is something else to consider: our freedom. Some politicians, including former prime minister Matteo Renzi, are proposing to monitor the movements of individuals using their phones and data from telecommunication companies to police compliance with the lockdown rules and assess penalties for violations. This smacks of the Big Brother surveillance state. The collection of metadata for statistical ends, as practiced in Lombardy, should be separated from the indiscriminate control of individual citizens. Otherwise an Orwellian precedent will be set.Such an anti-democratic attitude seems to be one of the collateral ideological effects of what President Trump refers to as a “Chinese virus.”
Meanwhile, we are witnessing a dangerous government narrative born out of an emotional response to Chinese “help” in a time of crisis. This narrative, increasingly uncritical of communist China, turns a blind eye to Chinese long-term foreign policy aims and the fact that its help is tantamount to the arsonist helping to put out the fire he started. Only recently did the Chinese government sent medical assistance to Italy—and a propagandist’s camera to capture the event. But no gesture should whitewash the responsibility of the Chinese Communist Party. According to The South China Morning Post, the first case of coronavirus in China can be traced back to November 17, while the Chinese government publicly admitted the existence of the epidemic on January 12, almost two months later.
What is most disconcerting about Italy’s crisis-induced, pro-China narrative is that it is false. It portrays China as a benefactor, claiming that its ventilators are gifts. In fact, Italy paid for them under a regular contract. The grave absence of the EU should not induce the Italians to strike up an uncritical relationship with Beijing.
In the midst of a crisis that makes Italy particularly vulnerable, it is necessary to have a clear mind and remember how China has quickly turned soft power and public diplomacy into hard power and real influence. This is the aim of the new Belt and Road Initiative, described by President Xi Jinping in his book Governing China, which brought billions in investments that stretch through Greece’s Piraeus, the Balkans, and Italy’s north-eastern Trieste region. In May 2019, Italy became the first G7 country to join the Belt and Road Initiative.
Nor should we forget the incompatibility between China’s values and our own, their human rights violations and denial of liberty and democracy. When Mike Pompeo called Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio to emphasize the closeness between the United States and Italy, he also cautioned Italy about its relationship with China, saying, “the day will arrive in which we will evaluate how the world responded” to Beijing’s propaganda. Despite Pompeo’s clear warnings, the Italian government appears unaware of China’s overt imperial ambitions in Europe.
It is too soon to draw long-term economic conclusions from the coronavirus pandemic, but it is clear that those who reacted best are nation-states with the freedom to manage their borders and fiscal policy. When this emergency ends, the legitimacy of EU institutions will no doubt be questioned.
But there is another path Italy may choose: intensifying bilateral relations with the United States, becoming the nexus of commerce in the Mediterranean, increasing its presence in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, and reclaiming its role as a center of Christianity and Catholicism in the world.
Making Italy great again is more than a dream—it is an attainable possibility.
Greenland Bans Alcohol Sales To Reduce Child Abuse As Coronavirus Hits
For several weeks after the start of the global coronavirus pandemic there was a running joke that Trump’s offer to purchase Greenland was brilliant in hindsight as the northern island appeared immune to any the covid cases. That all changed on March 16 when the territory registered its first case.
Fast forward to today when dpa reports that Greenland has banned alcohol consumption in the capital Nuuk and nearby settlements in a bid to decrease incidences of child abuse as people stay inside to avoid spreading coronavirus.
The Sunday decision from Greenland’s government bans all sales of alcoholic drinks with immediate effect in Nuuk and in the settlements of Kapisillit and Qeqertarsuatsiaat until April 15. Explaining the move, Prime Minister Kim Kielsen said the coronavirus emergency response had necessitated a lot of different responses.
“But at the heart of my decision is protecting children,” Kielsen said. “They should have a secure home.”
Perhaps due to its location where social distancing was a given long before the coronavirus emerged, Greenland has a well-documented history of sexual abuse of minors, with some studies showing one in three adults living there having experienced it as a child. Many have linked the phenomenon to increased incidences of alcohol and drug abuse, among other things.
Under the influence of alcohol, people were also less aware, increasing the risk of infection with coronavirus, Kielsen said on Sunday.
So far only ten people have tested positive for coronavirus in Greenland. No one has died.
Greenland is largely independent, but officially belongs to Denmark; Last August Trump sparked a diplomatic scandal when he suggested buying Greenland (the purchase price was never disclosedd), sparking Denmark’s fury. Around 55,000 people live on the territory, which is the largest island on earth. About a third of them live in the capital Nuuk.
The coronavirus epidemic has been highly instructive. In the face of a looming early death for millions of citizens, Western States have entered a genuine crisis in which the Schmittian sovereign – who was always there lying in waiting – has reemerged into the open and taken all the measures deemed necessary, liberty and law be damned.
The nations making up the European Union are highly illustrative in this respect.
For starters, there was no unified European response.
Each nation having its own police and media/consciousness, each one adopted their measures in a haphazard and uncoordinated manner, although all tended towards a gradual escalation.
Jean Quatremer, Libération’s euro-federalist correspondent in Brussels, lamented:
“Up to now, it has been every man for himself. Italy, the epicenter of the European epidemic, was abandoned; Germany and France even went so far as to forbid the export of medical equipment, with no regard for solidarity.”
Admittedly that was two weeks ago and since then the Europeans have made some progress in getting their act together.
The European Central Bank (ECB) is perhaps the EU’s only truly federal and sovereign entity, in some respects more powerful than the U.S. Federal Reserve, because there is no pan-European political counterpart to counterbalance it. A few days after making the faux pas of declaring that the Bank’s job did not involve policing interest rate spreads, ECB President Christine Lagarde reversed her position and declared her institution would lend €750 billion to stabilize the European economy.
I am always left in awe of this spectacle: while European officials and lobbyists are locked in a perpetual struggle of niggardly Kuhhandel in Brussels over the pork-laden EU budget, Lagarde can summon up five times the annual budget with a snap of her fingers.
Corona really does work miracles.
Things that were declared “impossible” have become the norm. The parks of Western European cities are finally being cleared of migrants, now that these have been declared a sanitary hazard (being a criminal one was apparently not enough).
The European Parliament’s meetings in Strasbourg – a traveling circus which costs taxpayers €100 million per years – have been suspended. The EU’s balanced-budget rulebook, which the Germans fought so hard to impose over the last decades, has been thrown out the window. Each State is to borrow as it pleases to bail out businesses and provide welfare, at least for the duration of the national lockdowns. Individual liberty has been put indefinitely on hold.
In Italy, the number of cases and dead continues to steadily rise. As of 27 March, over 9,000 have died, including almost 1,000 just in the past day. Overwhelmed medical professionals have been forced to institute the grim practice of triage, choosing to concentrate on those individuals who have the best chance of survival and leaving many of the elderly to die.
Mankind only learns the hard way: one funeral at a time. A month ago, the mayor of Florence urged his fellow citizens to “huge a Chinese” in order to fight racism and xenophobia. Now Italian mayors are verbally abusing their residents to stay indoors in classic national style.
European States have adopted genuinely totalitarian levels of social control, affecting all citizens’ daily lives. In France, you cannot go into the street without a written declaration of your particular reason for being outside. Our countries have adopted a basically Mussolinian notion of collection liberty. As the Duce himself argued in his Doctrine of Fascism:
[Fascism] is opposed to classical liberalism which arose as a reaction to absolutism and exhausted its historical function when the State became the expression of the conscience and will of the people. [. . .] And if liberty is to be the attribute of living men and not of abstract dummies invented by individualistic liberalism, then Fascism stands for liberty, and for the only liberty worth having, the liberty of the State and of the individual within the State.
And, in truth, Western Europeans have by and large embraced the new measures. Huge majorities of over 85% support the national lockdowns in Spain, Italy, France, and Britain. With a typical “rally-around-the-flag” effect, leading politicians have also regained in popularity. French President Emmanuel Macron now has a 44% approval rating, a figure not seen since July 2017, while confidence in Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe has jumped by over 10 points since the start of the crisis, reaching 51%.
Our liberal democracies found their legitimacy on the sacrosanct equality and liberty of the individual, that is to say. Such doctrines and practices certainly thrive in peacetime but as soon as there is a real threat of death – an early death for millions of elderly Westerners, in this case – these notions melt away like snow in the morning sun.
In the face of genuine danger, the natural social condition effortlessly reasserts itself. Liberty, equality, and the “rights of man” naturally give way to the imperative of collective survival: Every man at his post!
In truth, collective organization in the face of imminent danger has been the norm throughout human history. Social prescription went far beyond mere politics to being part of something much deeper: custom.
There is a curious contradiction running across Western societies today. Over the last two-and-a-half centuries, we have seen the individual rebel more and more forcefully against the formal strictures of the group, against formal inequalities and restrictions on “private” liberty (for instance, buggery, harlotry, and spinsterdom). Any attempt to take action to reverse Western nations’ decline and save their ethnic and genetic identity is considered a “human rights violation.” At the same time, in practice, our citizens tolerate and often outright expect massive curtailment of their liberties, usually in the name of security.
The fascist critique of liberal-democratic ethics basically boiled down to a denunciation of selfishness and hypocrisy. As Ezra Pound complained in 1938: “In our time the liberal has asked for almost no freedom save freedom to commit acts contrary to the general good.” Indeed, Pound noted that as people had only known “the loose waftiness of demoliberal ideology,” one needed “sharp speech” to open minds.
Many have warned of the dangers of making individual entitlement the moral yardstick of nations. Gandhi, Heinlein, Solzhenitsyn, to name only a few, all tried to make the point their own way. Here is a lesser-known example, the Romanian anti-communist Petre Țuțea, who in the first years after the fall of Ceaușescu confused his freedom-hungry interlocutors by saying:
Communist totalitarianism is a contradiction in terms. Totalitarians can only be those people who from start from the whole to go to the part – according to the Aristotelian formula. [. . .] The [Communist] Manifesto’s end is final anarchy [. . .]. By their end, communists are anarchists.
Fascists, Hitlerians, and the Catholic Church are totalitarian, because they start from the Aristotelian principle: the whole comes before the part. These are totalitarians.
A journalist told me: You can’t say that, you are confusing the youth! I can’t broadcast that if everyone considers communists to be totalitarian . . .
But me […] I cannot take it back. I cannot lie.
It’s all well and good to understand that such a thing as civic virtue exists in times of crisis: that we are all in this together and must behave accordingly. But why does such Hellenic good sense not extend to peacetime?
Already today, civic virtue is highly unevenly distributed among the “French” population. Videos are circulating on social media of Africans and Muslims in France blatantly ignoring the confinement and social-distancing measures. According to Le Canard Enchaîné newspaper, the Interior Ministry responded by instituting “confinement lite” among this decidedly sensitive population.
This crisis is also an opportunity to reflect on the slow death of the Italian nation. I was raised near Italy and frequently visited the country growing up, gaining a real fondness for Italians and Italian culture. For me, crossing the Alps was like entering a different world, a different rhythm of existence. Today of course, with the Internet and the euro, the difference does not feel so great, yet still I love every second spent in the country.
Today, over 22% of the Italian population is over 65. The fertility rate of 1.32 per woman is among the lowest in Europe and is in continuous decline. While the Italians do not practice birthright citizenship and have not made it easy for non-European migrants to settle, there is still enormous pressure on the country from a continuous flow of illegals from Africa and the Middle East. We can ask: What will be left of Italy in 100 years? Not much, it seems, and that would be a great tragedy and a great crime.
There do not seem to be ten thousand ways of preventing the death of a nation.
Italy’s former Fascist regime fought for the country’s birthrate, power, stability, and economic independence. Emil Cioran – suspending his usual manic-depressive hyperbole – gave this qualified praise: “Overpopulation and Mussolini’s political genius have obviously raised [Italy’s] historical level [. . .]. Through Fascism, Italy suggested to itself that it become a great power. The result: she has succeeded in attracting the world’s serious interest. Nothing more.”
The citizens of the postwar Italian republic, that byword for the sleazy corruption of parliamentary politicians, have certainly enjoyed the fruits of consumerism. In the meantime, the country has steadily dwindled in significance, childless and aging, being reduced to a kind of debt colony of the European Union and international high finance.
The current polls still indicate a certain unpopularity for the Italian government, with a majority supporting a Right-wing coalition including conservatives and, especially, the nationalist parties Lega Nord and Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy).
The European financial system – that pyramid scheme of pyramid schemes – will emerge extraordinarily weakened from this crisis, as all the highly-uneven gains of recent years are lost with piling-ups of debt and reduced growth due to the coronavirus response. There are sure to be more crises.
Many globalists are afraid of what is to come. Joseph Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, is worried China’s authoritarian competence will make Europe look bad. He opined on the European External Action Service’s blog:
There is a global battle of narratives going on in which timing is a crucial factor. [. . .] China has brought down local new infections to single figures – and it is now sending equipment and doctors to Europe, as others do as well. China is aggressively pushing the message that, unlike the US, it is a responsible and reliable partner. In the battle of narratives we have also seen attempts to discredit the EU as such and some instances where Europeans have been stigmatised as if all were carriers of the virus. [. . .]
But we must be aware there is a geo-political component including a struggle for influence through spinning and the ‘politics of generosity’. Armed with facts, we need to defend Europe against its detractors.
Personally, I’m not too worried about Chinese soft power. If Westerners look bad in comparison, that is only because of their own incompetence rather than the nefariousness of the Chinese. The Chinese State wants to make deals. The globalists want something much dearer: they want to bribe you into losing your national soul, your traditional values, your fighting spirit.
This crisis may come to be seen as the moment in which a declining and incoherent liberal-globalist West was geopolitically overtaken by an confident and organized national-authoritarian China. If so, we can also expect other countries may be tempted to change their political models.
For us Westerners, I’d arguer we don’t need to go so far afield for inspiration.
[Victim Janie] Marshall, who was at the hospital for a bowel obstruction, innocently grabbed a metal stand in a hallway near a bed where [Cassandra] Lundy, a seizure patient, was sitting around 2 p.m. Saturday, police sources said.
Lundy lashed out, complaining Marshall wasn’t following coronavirus social distancing guidelines, and allegedly slugged her in the head, knocking her to the ground, according to police sources….
Lundy … has 17 prior arrests, on charges including drug possession, trespass, assault and strangulation, sources said.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2JleW90
via IFTTT
