Germany  was reminded of its Nazi history in a passionate plea for financial support to help tackle the deadly coronavirus by a group of influential Italian politicians. Angela Merkel was asked to consider the colossal debts racked up by Adolf Hitler’s evil war efforts some 81 years ago today. Rome has become infuriated with the German Chancellor after she helped block the creation of so-called “coronabonds”, a shared Eurozone debt mechanism to help prop up economies worst-affected by the global pandemic. In an open letter to the veteran leader, 12 Italian politicians, including the mayors of Venice and Bergamo, called on Mrs Merkel to reconsider her position.

“Currently the Netherlands are leading a group of countries, though, which resist this strategy, and Germany also seems to want to follow this group,” they wrote.

“The Netherlands are the one state, which has been evading taxes of the important European countries with its tax system for years. Our public budgets and the socially weak in our countries who have to pay the price for this. Those who are most affected by the crisis.

“The Dutch attitude is in every aspect an example of a lack of ethics and solidarity. But it was solidarity which was shown to you Germans after the war and until reunification by many European countries.”

The group were keen to remind Mrs Merkel that Hitler’s war machine run up debts of over €15 billion, in the Germany’s original deutsche mark currency.

They accused her of ignoring the generosity of Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, who have all voiced support for the creation of coronabonds, in halving the German debt in 1953.

“After 1945 the German debt had reached the amount of what was 29.7 billion deutsche mark,” the group wrote.

“Germany would never have been able to pay back the accumulated debt. In 1953 in London, 21 countries allowed for cutting the debt in half and the deferment of payments of the rest of the debt.

“This way German was able to avoid state bankruptcy. Italy is still proud and convinced of the correctness of the decision back then. And we repeat: with the eurobonds for the fight against coronavirus old debts are neither cancelled, nor shared.”

Despite the growing support for a joint Eurozone debt instrument, the single currency bloc’s bailout chief has warned it could take years to set up.

Klaus Reglung, the managing director of the European Stability Mechanism, said any short-term lending programmes would have to come from existing structures.

He said if the goal is to cover short-term lending to bolster healthcare or support businesses “then I think the only way is to use existing institutions with existing instruments”.

He told the Financial Times it was possible to create a new bespoke EU institution if there were political agreement between European capitals.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1262775/Angela-Merkel-latest-Germany-coronavirus-support-Italy-Nazi-history

The Association of Libertarian Students today issued a press release referring to an incomprehensible scandal. Ali Rami, lecturer for anti-discrimination and religion at the University of Vienna, had insulted local police officers on Facebook in the harshest way. The man had already appeared at an event of the radical Islamic Muslim Brotherhood in 2014. The Islamic scholar Ali Rami is supposed to have said about the Austrian police: “If you have nothing to do then stay damned in your holes and crawl out only when you are needed. What a dirty fool you have to be to get off on harassment and fear of kids” This was reported by the Association of Libertarian Students (RFS) in an APA press release.RFS federal chairman Lukas Heim was horrified by this. “Especially the police should be paid a lot of respect in these difficult times of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

RFS federal chairman Lukas Heim was horrified by this. “Especially the police should be paid a lot of respect in these difficult times, of the COVID-19 pandemic.” The RFS further pointed out that Ali Rami appeared at an event of the radical Islamic Muslim Brotherhood in 2014. In the background of the photo (above) published for this purpose, one can see the Islamist Rabia sign, which is now even banned in Austria. During an ORF television discussion in 2018, he allegedly refused to distance himself from the Muslim Brotherhood.

Clear steps are now expected from the university management. “With such a demasking an immediate dismissal is the only logical consequence , so RFS federal managing director Matthias Kornek. Also Freedom Party city councillor Maximilian Krauss demanded an immediate dismissal of Ali Rami as lecturer. “Ali Rami and his family environment are open sympathizers of the radical Islamic Muslim Brotherhood and must therefore also be considered a danger to our society. That alone is reason enough to remove this person from the University of Vienna”, emphasizes the Viennese Freedom Party education spokesman.

wochenblick.at/lektor-der-uni-wien-bezeichnet-polizisten-als-dreckige-wappler/

The prominent American historian, Dr. Jeffrey Herf, sharply criticized the Berlin Center for Antisemitism Research for failing to address radical left-wing, communist and Islamic Jew-hatred.Herf, one of the world’s leading experts on antisemitism, wrote on Thursday in the German paper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) that, “The Center for Antisemitism Research in Berlin has been noteworthy in recent decades for standing outside this scholarly consensus due to its reluctance to address the Communist/radical leftist, as well as the Islamist strains of antisemitism.“

He added that, “Scholars at the Center for Antisemitism Research, despite being located within a short distance from the key archives of the former DDR [German Democratic Republic], did not write an archivally based history of the East German diplomatic and military assault on the Jewish state. I did. No amount of theoretical gymnastics can avoid the simple truth that those in the Soviet bloc, including the DDR, who used force and falsehoods to attack and defame the state of Israel with the hope of destroying wrote a chapter in the longer history of antisemitism. “In 2016, Cambridge University published the distinguished historian Herf’s monumental work: Undeclared Wars with Israel: East Germany and the West German Far Left, 1967–1989.The highly acclaimed book was published in German by Wallstein publisher in September 2019.

“Three Faces of Antisemitism: A Response to Stephanie Schüler-Springorum,” was the title of Herf’s FAZ article. Schüler-Springorum is the director of the controversial Berlin Center for Antisemitism Research.Herf teaches German history at the University of Maryland. The scandal-plagued Berlin Center for Antisemitism Research has faced intense criticism over the years for employing a researcher who worked for an organization that promoted an Iranian regime-sponsored rally calling for the destruction of the Jewish state.

The Jerusalem Post reported in 2018 that the center, which is part of the Technical University of Berlin, hired Luis Hernandez Aguilar, who was previously listed as a research officer of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, a main organizer of the Iranian regime-sponsored al-Quds Day march.According to a report in the London-based The Jewish Chronicle at the time, Hezbollah flags were on display at the march in London, where one speaker said Israel should be “wiped from the map.” The founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, created the al-Quds Day in 1979 as world-wide rally to urge the destruction of Israel. The Center defended its hire of Aguilar.The annual al-Quds Day rally in Berlin attracts a mix of neo-Nazis, radical Islamists, BDS activists, secular Palestinians from the US and EU-designated terrorist entity the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and Hezbollah members.BDS is an abbreviation for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign targeting Israel.Herf wrote that “Over a period of forty years during the Cold War, the Communists and then the radical left in Europe and the United States placed the entire blame for the conflict on Israel but had next to nothing to say about the terrorist campaigns waged by the PLO, and PFLP, and or the refusal to make peace by Iraq and Syria. That silence was due in no small part because they were doing what they could to support those efforts. “Herf cited academics and a civil society group who are focused on addressing the blind spots of the Berlin center. “The Antonio-Amadeu Stiftung in Berlin led by Anetta Kahane, notable for its civic activism against racism towards immigrants and people of color took a lead in Germany in drawing attention to the antisemitism of the former DDR regime,”Herf wrote.He continued that “In Germany, scholars and writers such as Stephan Grigat, Matthias Küntzel, Bassam Tibi and Samuel Schirmbach have made valuable contributions to understanding the origins and consequences of these ideas. Israeli scholars, notably Meir Litvak, Professor of History at the University of Tel Aviv, have published important work on the antisemitism of the Islamic Republic of Iran. These authors and others merit careful attention at the Center for Antisemitism Research and in the German universities. “Herf said that “As readers of the journal Antisemitism Studies will quickly see, scholarship on antisemitism today focuses on all three faces of antisemitism…We examine and oppose BDS advocates who attack academic freedom, repeat falsehoods about Israel as an aggressor and racist state and say not a word about the antisemitic hatreds of those who commit armed aggression and terror against Israel. We also describe and interpret the leaders of Hamas or of the government of Iran who give supposed religious rationale for murderous, even genocidal goals aimed at the Jewish state.

“https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Antisemitism/US-expert-Berlin-antisemitism-center-ignores-Israel-related-antisemitism-623073

An assailant armed with an ax and a machete threatened a woman and wounded a man who came to her help in southern Germany on Tuesday, police said.

The suspect, a 27-year-old Tunisian citizen who lives in Augsburg, first broke the windshield of a bus taking bus drivers to their early shift in the Bavarian city, police said.

A few minutes later, at about 4 a.m., he smashed the windshield and side window of a 50-year-old woman’s car and threatened her. Another man tried to overwhelm the assailant, who hit him in the head with a machete, according to a police statement.

The injured 28-year-old was still able to prevent the suspect from attacking anyone else. Police arrested the assailant at the scene and the victim was taken to a hospital.

There was no immediate word on a possible motive. Police said a search of the suspect’s apartment produced no evidence of any danger to residents.

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/assailant-ax-machete-wounds-man-southern-germany-69891185

By Monica Showalter

In coronavirus-crushed Italy, it’s not just European Union flags being burned now, the situation is now degenerating into at least a threat of riots.

Police have been deployed on the streets of Sicily’s capital, Palermo, amid reports gangs are using social media to plot attacks on stores. A bankrupt ferry company halted service to the island, including vital supplies of food and medicines. As the state creaks under the strain of the coronavirus pandemic, officials worry the mafia may be preparing to step in.

Preventing unrest in the so-called Mezzogiorno, the underdeveloped southern region that’s long lagged behind the wealthy north, has become the government’s top priority, according to Italian officials who asked not to be named discussing the administration’s strategy.

With the European Union’s most dangerously indebted state already fighting the Germans over the terms of the financial aid it needs, the fallout may reach far beyond Rome if Conte fails.

Proud of yourselves, European Union? Turns out it’s not just Italy’s European Union membership that’s immolating in Italy, it’s the state itself.

Europe’s refusal to help Italy in a disastrous pandemic that has left more than 10,000 dead is not only making Italians wonder what its EU membership is good for, it’s making some, at the fringes at least, wonder what state is good for. The state has failed to protect the people, and now the state is on the line, and there’s a major threat of riots and disorder making the country a powder keg.

Here’s an additional affirmation of a crumbling state, according to the Wall Street Journal:

At a time when aid from Italy’s allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and European Union was nowhere to be seen, Mr. Putin dispatched nine Iluyshin-76 aircraft laden with medical supplies and military personnel—planes that landed at the Pratica di Mare military airfield near Rome within 24 hours of his March 21 conversation with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.

“The Russians have taken advantage of the situation in a very agile way,” said retired Gen. Vincenzo Camporini, the former chief of staff of Italian armed forces. “Yet, it’s very unpleasant that our tragedy is being exploited for propaganda purposes.”

Russians to the rescue? In a NATO country? It’s insane. But it’s certainly possible in a place where the state is helpless, which this highlights. Apparently, the Russians invited themselves in, bearing banners in Russian, Italian, and English (to make sure we can read it) “From Russia with love.” We all know what Russia-love is like.

Meanwhile, a threat of a mafia takeover is positively surreal – and yet in Italy, it’s also perfectly possible. The Italian government thinks as much. Italy’s mafia originally arose out of the failure of the state to act as a state, leaving people in the hinterlands to fend for themselves, the dynamic being that of peasants taking matters in their own hands, and surviving by family-based crime and thievery. Italy’s government must know well that when it fails, the mafia is right there, organized and ready to step into the void. Poor and despairing people will often gravitate to whatever seems to offer protection. It happened in Colombia with Pablo Escobar’s narcostate, and shockingly in the 21st century, it looks like it’s on track to happen in modern Italy.

The horrors the the country has endured, and its abandonment by the international community has had to have left a sense of despair in the country, at minimum, the feeling of being “a broken civilization” like post-Aztec Mexico. Oh, and there’s not much religion to turn to, socialism has left empty pews in Italy and the current pope isn’t much help. Yet what could be more horrible in family-oriented Italy, where large numbers of people still live with their parents and grandparents, than to lose all the Italian nonnos and nonnas? That personal social disintegration leaves a lot of people feeling uprooted and lost and looking for some kind of strong hand. Which is dry tinder for riots and unrest.

Some kind of shakeout is coming to Italy in light of this disaster. It’s hard to say what, but it underlines that it’s important for Italy’s allies to embrace it in its distress. The WSJ article notes that the Russian show of aid has at least prompted allies, including the U.S., to send aid. The pandemic, it seems, has capacities to remake states. It might not just be China and Iran that get a reckoning from this, it’s also Italy. It’s also worth heeding the lessons seen there here.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/in_italy_coronavirus_crisis_puts_not_just_globalism__but_the_state_itself__under_fire.html

Already last Friday around 8 p.m. two Asian looking women were attacked in front of a supermarket in the shopping mall Q6/Q7 in Mannheim by a so far unknown perpetrator with Arabic appearance.

As far as we know, the unknown man pushed the women, insulted them because of their Asian appearance, spat and coughed on them several times and said “Corona”. Finally, he punched one of the women in the face. The woman suffered pain and her glasses were damaged.

Not until the women screamed for help and supermarket employees became aware of the situation did the unknown perpetrator flee and abandoned his offense.

presseportal.de/blaulicht/pm/14915/4560452

The professional membership body representing Ear, Nose and Throat surgery, as well as its related specialities in the United Kingdom (ENT UK) reports that there is now new evidence that anosmia, that is, loss of the ability to sense odor, is a symptom of Covid-19 infection.

Anosmia or the inability to smell or taste, comes from the Greek an (without) and osme (smell). Hyposmia is the medical term for the reduced sense of odor.

ENT UK writes that there is already sufficient evidence of this from South Korea, China and Italy. A significant number of patients with proven Covid-19 infection have developed anosmia/hyposmia. 

In Germany, more than 2 in 3 (67 percent) of all confirmed cases have anosmia. In South Korea, where testing has been more widespread, 30 percent of patients who tested positive for Covid-19 have had anosmia. 

This was noted in milder cases where the main symptoms have been just lost smell and taste. It was thus reported as one of the earliest symptoms that those infected with Covid-19 suffer from and is considered an early warning signal that the person is infected. 

And one may therefore be infected with the virus SARS-CoV-2 despite having no other symptoms which means that the infected person is at risk of infecting others.

The British doctor and trainer Doctor John Campbell, who has followed Covid-19 closely since its origins, recalls that smell and taste are interrelated. Campbell says that lost smell and taste indicate a “strong possibility” that the person has Covid-19 and therefore “should self-isolate for at least a week”.

ENT UK also noted that normal treatment usually includes steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as cortisone, but these drugs should be avoided. This is because in several studies it has been found that all forms of anti-inflammatory drugs counteract the body’s defense against Covid-19 and thus aggravate the course of the disease. 

They are clearly dangerous to use.

freewestmedia.com/2020/03/31/loss-of-smell-and-taste-may-be-sign-of-covid-19-infection/

Austria has introduced measures to halt the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus, including making it mandatory to wear masks in supermarkets.

The government, led by Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, announced the measures this week stating that protective masks would be handed out to the public at the entrances of supermarkets and must be worn while shopping.

Chancellor Kurz stated that masks were still no substitute for keeping a safe distance from others and, according to newspaper Kronen Zeitung, stated: “I am fully aware that masks are something foreign to our culture.”

Minister of Health Rudolf Anschober, a member of the Green Party, added that the masks would only be effective for a period of about four hours and that they would help make sure the capacity of hospitals was not overwhelmed.

The government has also ordered a large part of the tourism sector to shut down, with a ban on overnight stays in hotels and guest houses.

Kurz added that Austria’s hospitals could become overwhelmed within the next two weeks with just 1,071 intensive care beds still available across the country and 908 ventilators.

“How long the overload lasts, especially in intensive care medicine, depends on all of us. It is already clear that many people will die from this disease. But we have to do our utmost to ensure that no more people die than have to die,” Kurz said.

Vice-Chancellor Werner Kogler, leader of the Green Party, added that he saw the current situation as a “calm before the storm” and said: “If we listen to the experts, I am in favour of orienting ourselves to those who draw the more dramatic scenarios.”

Despite sharing a border with Italy, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak in Europe, Austria has managed to keep cases at just over 9,000 as of Monday with 108 deaths.

Italy, by contrast, continues to see growth in cases and deaths, with over 100,000 confirmed cases and 11,591 deaths as of Monday.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/03/31/austria-declares-wearing-masks-mandatory-supermarkets/