The Norwegian government has declared that Covid is just like the flu, with no higher death toll due to 70% of the population being vaccinated. So most restrictions were abolished. Not everybody was happy with the decision. To my knowledge, this has not been announced on American TV.
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LA COUNTY ISSUES NEW COVID DIRECTIVES
The Los Angeles City Council on Oct. 6 approved one of the strictest COVID-19 vaccination mandates in the country, requiring proof of vaccination to enter indoor restaurants, movie theaters, salons, shopping centers, and many more indoor venues.
People will have to provide vaccination proof at gyms, sports arenas, museums, spas, indoor government facilities, malls, restaurants, and bars. For people with religious or medical exemptions, negative COVID-19 tests within 72 hours of entry will be required, according to the ordinance, which doesn’t make mention of “natural immunity” afforded by a previous COVID-19 infection.
Unvaccinated individuals attempting to use government services will be provided with “alternative arrangements for access to government services,” including online or outdoor services, or providing proof of a negative test to enter, according to the ordinance. (Jack Phillips, Epoch Times, 10/6/2021)
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NATURAL GAS PRICE SURGING
Global gas markets are preparing for a volatile winter, says Seb Kennedy. The world is fighting for gas – and China is determined to win. Xi Jinping raised the stakes by ordering China’s state-owned energy companies to secure supplies ‘at all costs.’ Britain, along with the rest of Europe, will face the full force of this crisis. So will this winter feel like the apocalypse? Hopefully not. But a gas shortage will cause huge disruption to the economy, widespread shortages and a political crisis from which even the Johnson administration, with its formidable ability to bounce back, may not recover. (The Spectator, 10/7/2021)
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ISLAM
Senior Official Of Al-Qaeda In The Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Ibrahim Al-Qosi, Threatens U.S. With Attacks More Painful, Powerful Than 9/11 (MEMRI, 10/7/2021)
Swedish artist Lars Vilks, 75, who was best known (some would say infamous) for drawing a cartoon of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, with a dog’s body, has been killed in a highly suspicious automobile accident in Sweden. He had previously survived two attempts on his life. It is possible that he was killed in a third. According to the UK’s Daily Mail, Vilks was traveling in a police car along with two police officers around three o’clock in the afternoon on Sunday in Markaryd, Sweden. The officers were supposed to be protecting him in light of the previous attempts to kill him and the ongoing threat under which he was living. The identities of the officers have not been revealed. The car Vilks was in was speeding. Suddenly, it veered into the lane of oncoming traffic, right into the path of a truck. (Jihad Watch, 10/5/2021)
Jihadi Clerics Rejoice In Death Of Swedish Cartoonist Lars Vilks In Car Accident: May He Burn In Hell Like He Burned Our Hearts With His Mockery Of Our Prophet (MEMRI, 10/5/2021)
MIDDLE EAST MIGRANTS – STAY IN YOUR CULTURE ZONE
As the prospect of great numbers of Afghans fleeing their country – five million have been mentioned – comes into focus, a near-universal assumption exists that the West – meaning here Western and Central Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand – should be their ultimate destination. But does this make sense?
From the Afghan perspective, living in Christian-heritage, secular societies offend many of their mores and creates severe stresses. Their general lack of skills appropriate to modern economies holds them back. Finding host populations prejudiced against them, they complain tearfully about structural racism, xenophobia, and “Islamophobia.” They point to hate incidents and even murderous attacks, such as those in New York City, North Carolina, Quebec, New Zealand, and beyond.
From the Western perspective, the open invitation of 2015-16 by the leaders of Germany and Sweden, allowing into their countries an estimated 1 million and 100,000 unvetted migrants, respectively, from Syria and elsewhere, turned out badly. Westerners watched helplessly as Middle Easterners arrived by plane, boat, train, bus, car, and foot through the beaches, fields, and railroad stations of Europe. They then witnessed those large numbers bring disease, resist assimilation, impose Islamic laws, engage in crime wave, perpetrate the Cologne taharrush (mass sexual assault), and execute jihadi attacks in Paris and Brussels. They uneasily accepted that their societies turned into quasi-surveillance states.
These problems point to the need radically to rethink what is best for both migrants in distress and Westerners. I shall argue that the former generally should remain within their own cultural zone. That is where they most readily fit in, where they can stay truest to their traditions, best find economic roles, most easily can return home, and least disrupt the host society. Thus, East Asian refugees, asylum seekers, and illegals should be directed to resettle in East Asia, South Asians in South Asia, Middle Easterners in the Middle East, Africans in Africa, Latin Americans in Latin America, and Westerners in the West. This can mean internal migration, as in Syria, or moving to nearby countries. (Daniel Pipes, American Spectator,10/3/2021)
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WHY GERMANY IS THE WEST’S SANEST COUNTRY
Thank G-d for Germany. That is not a sentiment that you heard much during the 20th century. As the second world war drew to a close, Henry Morgenthau, the US Treasury secretary, argued that the only answer to the German question was the destruction of the country’s industrial capacity. François Mauriac, the French writer, welcomed the division of the country, joking “I love Germany so much, I’m glad there are two of them.”
When reunification loomed in 1990, a meeting of chiefly British intellectuals, convened by Margaret Thatcher, discussed the German national character. Her chief foreign policy adviser wrote minutes suggesting these were “in alphabetical order, angst, aggressiveness, assertiveness, bullying, egotism, inferiority complex, sentimentality.”
Thirty years on and these stereotypes about national character have been completely reversed. It is the US and the UK where politics seem increasingly prone to “angst, aggressiveness” and all those other unattractive, supposedly Teutonic, qualities. These days, it is German public life that is characterised by the virtues the British often attribute to themselves — calm, restraint, rationality and compromise.
The recent German election and its aftermath underline the point. It was a close contest, but the losers accepted the results gracefully. Nobody tried to claim that the voting was rigged or that their opponents were “scum” — or represented a mortal danger to the country.
The Social Democrats now look set to lead a German government for the first time since 2005. But a transition of power will not bring about an abrupt rupture in policies or an attempt by the political opposition to paralyse the government, as is happening in the US.
The SPD’s Olaf Scholz, who may become chancellor, ran as a continuity candidate. As my FT colleagues reported, voters saw Scholz “with his quiet demeanour, long experience in government and pragmatic politics, as Merkel’s natural successor.” How very different from the leadership profiles of Donald Trump or Boris Johnson. (part of an article by Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, 10/4/2021)
The German Bundeswehr has commissioned the “fabrication and delivery” of high-resolution maps of Russia – vector maps in military format, according to a report. Germany is part of a cooperation network, wherein 32 countries – grouped around a NATO core – “share photos and maps with one another.” This procurement of militarily applicable maps comes at a time when tensions between the West and Russia continue to escalate. Most recently, the EU threatened new sanctions. According to the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), new investments must be made, not only “in the defense capacities within the NATO and the EU frameworks.” “Change in Russia” must also be promoted through Intensive contacts within the Russian society. At the same time, the US company, Google, and its video platform YouTube has deleted RT DE – the German language edition of the Russian international broadcaster “Russia Today.” This move is akin to measures the DGAP had proposed to accompany a more aggressive German foreign policy. (German Foreign Policy, 10/3/2021)
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DEBT CEILING
There’s a lot of talk about the debt ceiling deadline on October 18th. Interestingly, no other country has a debt ceiling. Why do we?
The debt ceiling standoff is starting to be taken more seriously by markets with only 17 days left (now ten days) to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s deadline for a deal to avoid default. Speaking to the House Financial Services Committee yesterday she said there may be a few extra day’s grace on the deadline, but reiterated a default would be “catastrophic” for the country. The Washington-based Institute of International Finance said in a report that U.S. debt appears to already be losing favor as a haven, while Germany and Japan remain popular. Investors are demanding a premium to hold bills that come due in October and November, with those instruments having noticeably higher yields. (Bloomberg, 10/1/2021)
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TO THE POINT
- Norway Cathedral photo Exhibition: “The Palestinians are Jesus. The Jews are criminals who crucify him again. Daily.” (Jihad Watch, 10/1/2021)
- Russia holds lavish royal wedding – Russia will celebrate its first royal wedding in a century today when Nicholas II’s purported heir is married in the former Imperial capital of St Petersburg. Grand Duke George Mikhailovich Romanov, a hereditary pretender to the Russian throne, will marry Victoria Romanovna Bettarini amid a “lavish two days of imperial pomp and ceremony” complete with Faberge wedding rings, royal guests and a banquet provided by the catering tycoon known as “Putin’s chef,” reported The Telegraph. (The Week, 10/1/2021)
- China is driving a wedge between America and Israel – In the last two decades, there have been more than 460 Chinese investments and mergers and acquisitions in Israel (30 Aug 2021, by Jake Wallis Simons, Spectator magazine).
- Remember “let your light shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16)
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