RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/europes-new-covid-wave-11602888710?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

One of the biggest falsehoods of 2020 is the notion that everyone other than the United States has a handle on Covid-19. This distortion undergirds Democratic and media criticism of President Trump and some governors for not locking down as aggressively as the Spanish or tracing contacts as assiduously as the Germans.

If only this were true. Instead, most places that have been held forth as coulda-woulda-shoulda models for Washington are now in the grip of their second virus wave. Nor are their pandemic politics any less messy.

Take Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel has been hailed as a leadership model. Germany quickly implemented a test-and-trace program to isolate cases and adopted a relatively mild spring lockdown that seemed to control the spread. Mrs. Merkel won plaudits for her bracing, science-driven media appearances, with credibility bolstered by her earlier career as a chemist.

No longer. Cases started rising again in August and as of this week the number of daily new cases exceeds the spring’s high. The number of deaths is still well short of the spring level, but German pandemic policy has descended into chaos anyway. Some cities have reimposed restrictions, or have added limits on nightlife not seen since the Allied occupation of the 1940s. Berlin faces new political disputes as some states try to ban hotel bookings made by residents of virus hot spots.

Spain and Italy bore the brunt of the spring’s first wave, and their draconian lockdowns were supposed to be a model for bringing a major outbreak under control. It hasn’t stuck. Spain is the epicenter of Europe’s second wave, with cases several times higher than in March and April and deaths rising too. The government has tried to reimpose a lockdown in some areas, but this time with fierce resistance from politicians and businesses wary of doing as much damage to the economy.

France also imposed a strict lockdown in the spring and is also suffering a large second wave. Authorities have imposed new curfews in some cities, including Paris. And police reportedly have raided the homes of some current and former officials as part of an investigation into the government’s earlier pandemic response.

In the United Kingdom, Covid-19 threatens to wreck Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government. Cases and hospitalizations are surging again, despite the alleged success of the spring lockdown. But local officials in the hardest-hit areas object to being singled out for regional lockdowns and demand national restrictions instead. The feud is dividing Mr. Johnson’s Tories while policy vacillations dent his credibility.

These European governments have at least learned lessons from earlier mistakes. The main one is that general lockdowns are no solution. Despite headlines about a return to lockdown in Europe, governments now use that term to mean restrictions that are much milder than the spring’s stay-home orders. Joe Biden might be the only politician in the West who hasn’t figured this out.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/mexican-ex-defense-minister-faces-drug-trafficking-money-laundering-charges-11602869775

MEXICO CITY—Mexico’s former defense minister received bribes from a drug cartel in exchange for allowing it to ship tons of cocaine and other drugs to the U.S., and used his position to pass along information on investigations to crime bosses, U.S. prosecutors alleged.

The allegations were part of an indictment unsealed Friday against Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos, who served as defense minister from 2012 to 2018 in then-President Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration and led the army’s war on drug cartels. U.S. agents arrested the retired general at Los Angeles International Airport on Thursday as he arrived with his family.

Gen. Cienfuegos, 72 years old, is the highest-ranking Mexican official ever charged with drug-related corruption. The arrest is expected to damage bilateral cooperation and trust in the campaign against narcotics trafficking; harm the image of one of the few institutions in Mexico that enjoy broad public support; and raise more doubts about Mexico’s strategy of relying on the army to chase cartels.

“This is a huge scandal,” said Jorge Chabat, a professor at the University of Guadalajara. “It’s a devastating blow to the Mexican army,” which he said is the most important pillar of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s security strategy.

Mexico’s president said the arrest showed that corruption is the country’s biggest problem and reinforced his longstanding claim that past administrations were hopelessly corrupt.

“I always said that it wasn’t just a crisis, but a decadence that we were suffering from,” Mr. López Obrador told a news conference. He won a landslide victory in the 2018 elections, promising to do away with a corrupt “mafia of power.”

Gen. Cienfuegos was unavailable to comment. Mexico’s army declined to comment on the allegations.

https://www.newsweek.com/opinion

Bulls usually lose bullfights not because they fail to charge, but because they charge at the matador’s cape rather than at the matador himself. President Trump has no qualms about charging at China’s national champion Huawei, but he is charging at the equivalent of the matador’s cape.

Consider Huawei’s handset business, which depends on high-end chips manufactured by Taiwanese foundries. Because the Taiwanese use some American equipment to manufacture the chips, the U.S. has imposed an effective blockade on Huawei’s outsourcing, and China does not (yet) have the domestic capability to make high-end chips. A similar ban blocks Huawei’s access to key American chip-design software.

Huawei will lose market share in the low-margin handset business, and Chinese competitors like Xiaomi will pick up the slack (which explains why the latter’s stock price has jumped this year from HK$8 to HK$22). Huawei will have little difficulty using older chips for 5G base stations, installing the lion’s share of the six million units that China has ordered to build out its 5G network over the next two years.

Huawei’s most important business, though, will emerge unscathed from U.S. sanctions. American strategists think that Huawei is a telecom equipment company. Among other things, Huawei is the world’s largest telecom equipment manufacturer, with a 31 percent market share during the first half of 2020—more than the combined share of the second and third position companies, Ericsson and Nokia. Huawei, though, is first and foremost a big data and artificial intelligence (AI) company—the most inventive and imaginative one in the world. Let’s call this combination “BD/AI,” for short.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16608/erdogan-declares-war-on-arabs

“Some countries in our region did not exist yesterday, and they may not exist in the future….” — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, addressing parliament on October 1, 2020.

“His [Erdogan’s] crimes against the Arab peoples must be exposed, such as his massacres against the Syrian people, against the Kurds in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, and in Libya….” — Abdel Aziz Razan, a Saudi adviser at the Center for Arab-Russia Studies, Okaz, October 4, 2020.

Such powerful responses made by Saudis and other Arabs to Erdogan’s contemptuous statements show that the Arabs now understand it is Erdogan and his friends in Iran whom they should fear. In the eyes of these Arabs, Erdogan and his Iranian connections represent the real threat to their security and stability.

In light of such reactions, perhaps more Arab countries will follow the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in signing diplomatic agreements with Israel. The State of Israel, as it turns out, is a strategic and strong ally that can help Arab countries stop Turkey and Iran from spreading their contagion of terror in the Middle East.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is continuing to insult and threaten Arabs, specifically those living in the Gulf.

Many Arabs are concerned about Erdogan’s threats against their countries and his ongoing meddling in their internal affairs. Some Arabs are saying that the time has come to stand up to Erdogan and end his “malicious” schemes against Arab countries.

In the past few days, many Arabs took to social media and other platforms to condemn Erdogan’s latest offensive remarks and veiled threats against their countries.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/10/china-faces-historical-turning-poin

China appears to be on the brink.

The communist regime is threatening our ally, Taiwan — one of several Asian countries seeking closer ties with the United States while China’s domestic turmoil grows.

In a recent column in China’s state-sponsored Global Times, editor-in-chief Hu Xijin warned, “As the secessionist forces’ arrogance continues to swell, the historical turning point is getting closer.”

“The only way forward is for the mainland to fully prepare itself for war and to give Taiwan secessionist forces a decisive punishment at any time,” he wrote.

Taiwan’s opposition party has been seeking closer cooperation with the United States. But, Hu wrote: “The more trouble Taiwan creates, the sooner the mainland will decide to teach Taiwan independence forces a hard lesson.”

China has been angered by the ongoing tour of Asia by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is seeking support for U.S. efforts to contain China. Recently, the Taiwanese Kuomintang Party, or KMT, renewed its effort for the government to reestablish diplomatic ties with the U.S.