RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17193/european-union-tragic-farce

Five hundred years from now, when historians look back on the COVID era, they will say that America’s “Operation Warp Speed,” under President Donald J. Trump, was a triumph of science and logistics.

Many liberals have a short memory, but the EU has not always been the big, remote machine it has become.

The principle of equality of states and the principle of equality of citizens cannot be reconciled in the current EU setting of institutions, says Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court.

Of course, EU institutions are dressed up with flowery language — such as “making the EU more democratic” — aimed at making people believe that EU institutions… are increasingly democratic and only waiting to become fully democratic.

This evolution consisted, first of all, in subverting European institutions to make them accomplish, in addition to their economic aims, missions that were foreign to them, such as a “common foreign policy” that was never anything than words. How could you have a foreign policy common to the UK, Austria and Portugal?

EU elites are weak, cowardly and pusillanimous because they know they do not represent anyone, in the true democratic sense of the word – they are not democratically elected, they are not transparent and they are not accountable to anyone. They are ultimately the playthings of governments that never agree with each other – but that do have the legitimacy of being truly democratic: elected, transparent, and accountable. There is also no mechanism for citizens to unelect anyone, should they wish to do so.

Concerning the European Union, opinions are divided between those who consider it useless and costly, and those who believe it to be the future of Europe and a model for the human race.

What is the reality?

Before today’s EU emerged, the construction of a European union was, at first, a tremendous success.

Many liberals have a short memory, but the EU has not always been the big, remote machine it has become. In the era of the more modestly named “European Communities” – entailing, for example, cooperation amongst multiple countries’ economies; or within their coal, steel and nuclear industries – Europe achieved four freedoms of movement: those of people, capital, services and goods. Despite its flaws, shortcomings and innumerable imperfections (nothing human is perfect), this common – or single – market made a massive and substantial contribution to the freedom and prosperity of Europeans.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/convicted-in-hong-kong-11617316506?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

A Hong Kong court Thursday convicted Jimmy Lai, Martin Lee and five others of organizing or taking part in a pro-democracy protest. Mr. Lai, 72, is a billionaire who founded and publishes Apple Daily, which is a frequent critic of the Chinese Communist Party and among Hong Kong’s most popular news outlets. Mr. Lee is 82 and known as Hong Kong’s “father of democracy.”

Everyone in the former British colony understands the message being sent from Hong Kong’s new masters in Beijing: If we can get these men, we can get you too.

That’s especially true for the thousands of other Hong Kong citizens, far less well known, who were also arrested on charges relating to participating in such protests. The Aug. 18, 2019, protest at the center of this trial drew 1.7 million people, which is roughly a quarter of Hong Kong’s population, though police had not granted a permit.

The convictions are the flip side of the recent rewrite of Hong Kong’s election rules meant to ensure that only pro-Beijing “patriots” hold positions of power. This week the U.S. consul general to Hong Kong, Hanscom Smith, explained that the new rules “will not produce meaningful democratic results, and will be neither inclusive nor credible representations of the will of people in Hong Kong.”

For China that’s a feature, not a bug. The real crime of those convicted this week is that they took seriously China’s promise of autonomy for Hong Kong in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration. They are being punished today simply for trying to make the governments in Beijing and Hong Kong honor that promise.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/horrifying-conditions-sikhs-muslim-countries-krishna-priya/

Attempting to build alliances in their war against Hindutva, Islamists in India can now be seen wooing the Sikh community. However, the lesser-known chapters of history and the horrifying condition of Sikhs in Islamic countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan establish that those who are chasing the dream of bringing the world under the flag of their Islamic faith have no tolerance for people of any other religion.

Centuries ago, Islamic invaders in India martyred the revered Sikh gurus in unspeakable and disturbing ways. Guru Arjan Dev Ji, the fifth of the ten Sikh gurus, was executed by Jahangir in 1606 CE for refusing to embrace Islam.

Two generations later, the brave Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji was arrested by Aurangzeb’s forces for confronting the religious persecution of Kashmiri Hindus by the Mughal emperor. His three associates, Bhai Mati Das, Bhai Dayal Das, and Bhai Sati Das, were jailed as well. They were tortured in prison and told to abandon their faith and accept Islam. But true to their commitment, withstanding all torments, they refused to convert. Frustrated with their determination, all three were executed by the Mughal administration. Bhai Mato Das was sawed into two halves, Bhai Dayal Das was boiled in a large iron pot, and Bhai Sati Das was rolled up in sheets of cotton and burned alive. Even these grotesque slaughters of his associates couldn’t move Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji from his convictions. Tired of this, Aurangzeb ordered his execution by beheading in public.

Students in India were denied knowledge of these crucial episodes in history. Instead, they were forced to study history crafted by leftist propagandists who dexterously crafted chapters venerating these Islamic invaders.

The oppression of the Sikhs at the hands of Muslims continues to be common in South Asian countries with a Muslim majority. Muslims in countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan frequently exert pressure on the Sikhs to convert to Islam, destroy their properties, seize their homes and businesses, and abduct their women. Their places of worship are attacked practically every time a group of Muslims are having a bad day. These instances are often swept under the carpet by the Muslim-sympathizing leftist establishment that casts a strong influence over the international media.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/frances-macron-under-fire-for-pandemic-strategy

PARIS—French President Emmanuel Macron announced a national lockdown Wednesday, closing schools and nonessential businesses, amid mounting public frustration over his government’s handling of the pandemic.

Speaking from the Élysée Palace on national television, Mr. Macron said new measures were needed after his strategy of relying on targeted restrictions failed to tame the pandemic. France’s sluggish vaccine campaign has left the country vulnerable to more contagious coronavirus variants, which have sent cases soaring and filled the country’s intensive-care units with Covid-19 patients.

“It would be false to say that things will get better on their own,” Mr. Macron said. “Then we would place ourselves in a sensitive situation where the entire country could be overloaded.”

Mr. Macron said restrictions that currently apply only to Paris and other hard-hit areas would be extended across the country for four weeks, starting Saturday evening. Schools will shut for three weeks beginning Monday, Mr. Macron said, with spring break being shifted to coincide with the last two weeks of the shutdown. Elementary-school students will return to in-person classes after the vacation, while middle- and high-school students will return to the classroom a week later, Mr. Macron said. Unlike a year ago at the start of the pandemic, the public won’t be required to fill out a form to leave the house during France’s third nationwide lockdown.

In an attempt to cushion France’s economy, Mr. Macron left the country relatively open during the depths of winter and then hewed to softer restrictions in mid-March as infections surged and intensive-care units in Paris overflowed. French authorities were loath to shut schools, taking pride in avoiding that step even as Germany and other European countries closed them months ago.

Some French doctors say the president’s refusal to impose strict measures during the winter missed an opportunity to bring the pandemic under control.

“Show me how a two-month lockdown in December-January is worse than what we’ve been living the past six months,” said Gilbert Deray, a doctor at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris.

Now the French are staring into an abyss of uncertainty that risks extending into the summer, when the country’s tourism industry usually shifts into high gear.

France’s vaccine rollout, meanwhile, has been hamstrung by a lack of supplies and mixed messages from Mr. Macron and health authorities across the continent about the safety and effectiveness of the AstraZeneca PLC vaccine. Across the English Channel, about 45% of the U.K. population has received at least one vaccine dose, compared with 12% in France. On Sunday, London recorded zero deaths for the second time since the pandemic began.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/godfather-of-hong-kong-democracy-movement-convicted-for-big-2019-protest-11617262828

HONG KONG— Martin Lee, the 82-year old lawyer credited with helping found Hong Kong’s democracy movement, and newspaper publisher Jimmy Lai were among seven veteran activists found guilty by a judge on charges related to a mass demonstration in 2019.

The Thursday guilty verdicts raise the prospect of jail time for a prominent group of democracy campaigners who have been fighting to preserve the rule of law in the former British colony since before it was returned to China in the late 1990s. Sentencing on the charges, which can carry up to five years’ jail time, was set for later this month.

“We believe we were just exercising our constitutional rights to protest come what may,” said the labor leader Lee Cheuk-yan, one of the defendants, after the verdict. “It will be a badge of honor for us to go to jail for fighting for freedom and rights for Hong Kong people.”

The trial is part of a wave of prosecutions under way in Hong Kong as China crushes dissent in the former British colony. Amid a continuing crackdown that worsened last year when China imposed a sweeping national security law, many of the city’s democracy campaigners are now either on trial, in jail or living in exile.

After the judge read out the verdict Thursday, a lead prosecutor called on the judge to revoke bail until sentencing, saying the offenses were serious and risked plunging Hong Kong into anarchy by undermining public order. Defendants however, were granted bail but can’t leave Hong Kong.

The group was found guilty of organizing and attending an unauthorized assembly in August 2019, a rainy day in which hundreds of thousands of people gathered in the city Hong Kong to protest the mainland government’s growing intervention in the city.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17229/china-iran-challenge

According to a leaked draft of the comprehensive strategic partnership agreement, circulated last year, Iran will receive $400 billion dollars in Chinese investments over the next 25 years in key Iranian economic sectors, including energy, telecommunications, defense, infrastructure, banking, petrochemicals, railways and ports. According to the leaked draft, there will be also an expansion of military assistance, training and intelligence-sharing. Nearly 100 projects are cited in the draft. In return, Iran will commit to providing regular and heavily discounted oil, gas and possibly other natural resources to China.

“Strategically, the BRI is how China is seeking to collapse Western-American dominance in the region peacefully… the BRI is a sophisticated Chinese plan to transfer hegemony from the West and the U.S. to China without war or conflict”. — Dr. Mordechai Chaziz, author of China’s Middle East Diplomacy: The Belt and Road Strategic Partnership, thediplomat.com, March 10, 2021.

The timing seems hardly a coincidence, but rather an outcome of the Biden administration’s appeasing overtures to Iran with its formal offer of restarting nuclear talks. The signing of the agreement itself can be seen as a Chinese-Iranian act of defiance against the US, undercutting sanctions against Iran by supplying the regime with an economic lifeline, while showing China off as an active global power that is able and willing to stand up to the US.

For China, Iran is a welcome counterbalance to US influence in the region, as the only large regional power that is not aligned with the US, in addition to having enormous oil and natural gas resources and providing a large market of more than 80 million citizens for Chinese goods.

“China is pivoting towards more autocratic regimes that represent greater stability for its supply lines than democracies that are, or may become, hostile to Beijing.” — Verisk Maplecroft risk consultancy firm, March 17, 2021.

On March 27, China and Iran signed a comprehensive strategic 25-year partnership agreement on economic and security cooperation. The agreement was signed in Tehran, where China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi was visiting as part of his tour of the Middle East.

Details of the agreement were not immediately published. The Iranian Foreign Ministry communicated that it was a “roadmap for cooperation” and that no “contracts” were included in it. “Prospects for cooperation, whether economic, political, cultural or strategic, have not been quantified, therefore it does not include numbers on investment or financial and monetary resources,” a statement of the Iranian Foreign Ministry reported.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-troop-movements-on-ukraine-border-test-biden-administration-11617230084

Russia has begun mobilizing troops along its border with Ukraine, presenting a fresh challenge at the Biden administration and threatening to upend a cease-fire between Ukraine and pro-Russian fighters.

The move follows escalated fighting along the demarcation line inside Ukraine, where one attack last week killed four Ukrainian soldiers and wounded two.

In response, Ukraine said Tuesday it had put its own forces on alert and was reinforcing units in eastern Ukraine and on the border with the Russian-occupied peninsula of Crimea.

While Mr. Biden has wrestled with Kremlin machinations such as a massive suspected Russian hack of U.S. government computer systems and the assessment by U.S. intelligence that Moscow attempted to interfere in the 2020 election, the situation in Ukraine is the first involving movements of Russian troops. Russia has denied meddling in the election and denied responsibility for the hack.

In Washington, a State Department spokesman said the department was discussing the situation with NATO allies.

“We are concerned by recent escalations of Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine, including violations of the July 2020 cease-fire that led to the deaths of four Ukrainian soldiers on March 26 and the wounding of two others,” a State Department spokesman said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-wuhan-whitewash-11617142921?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

The World Health Organization on Tuesday finally released its report on the origins of the coronavirus, and the result wasn’t worth the wait. The document is best understood as a whitewash heavily influenced by the Chinese Communist Party and Westerners with conflicts of interest.

The report—based primarily on an international team’s visit this year to the city of Wuhan, where Covid-19 was first detected—has little new information. But the team analyzes four origin scenarios.

The report says the most likely origin was a transfer to humans through bats with an intermediary host. The second most probable, according to the report, is that bats directly transmitted Covid-19 to humans. The report also takes too seriously a third theory, pushed by Beijing, that the virus arrived in China in frozen food, which the WHO claims is “possible” and merits more study.

Most telling is that the team concludes it is “extremely unlikely” that the virus leaked from a lab such as the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The report simply asserts that WIV facilities “were well-managed, with a staff health monitoring programme.” The report suggests “regular administrative and internal review of high-level biosafety laboratories worldwide” and following up on new evidence.