By Jared Peterson

As Americans remain riveted to the corona virus and the nauseating vicissitudes of the Democrats’ battle to choose a presidential nominee — a choice now apparently winnowed down to the Marxist or the moron — this writer’s thoughts once again are drawn to events in Europe. The critical situation now unfolding day by day on the Greek-Turkish border may at first seem of minor concern to America, but in fact it’s a critical part of the overall struggle by patriots on both sides of the Atlantic to preserve Western Civilization.

The same forces working here to dissolve American civilization through mass migration and deliberately inculcated cultural self-loathing are busy in Europe pursuing the same goal by identical means. And the same traditional, patriotic segment of the population, guilty of the crime of loving their civilization and wanting to preserve it, resists cultural dissolution in both Europe and America. The commonality of the struggle is striking.

European patriots, however, face worse odds. Their governments are more ruthless in condemning patriotism and love of country (who knew those feelings made one a Nazi?), and Europeans’ history of submission to authority, and consequent ingrained passivity, make them less inclined to risk social condemnation to save themselves.

Consider the events unfolding on Europe’s eastern border with Islam:  

Over the last week to ten days, the Islamist 21^st century Sultan on the Bosporus, Recep Erdogan, has abrogated Turkey’s 2016 Agreement with the European Union, under which the Turks committed to preventing a repetition of the 2015 mass migration of Muslim migrants into Western Europe. During the 2015 fiasco, welcomed by German Chancellor Merkel, at least one million “refugees” (read “economic migrants”) from the Middle East and elsewhere streamed into Germany (hence, into all of Europe), following a route that crossed Turkey, the Greek-Turkish border, the Balkans and Austria. By today, the number in of Muslim newcomers in Germany has metastasized, through “family reunification” and continuing migration, to at least two million, with all the vast increases in criminality and sexual assaults, widespread overt loathing of European culture and traditions, and massive social welfare costs, all of which any even casual student of Islamic history would have predicted.

In return for Turkey’s supposed commitment to prevent a recurrence of the 2015 catastrophe, the EU’s appeasement junkies, “led” by Merkel, agreed to provide vast monetary support to the Turkish Islamist regime and diplomatic support to Turkey’s military efforts in Syria and elsewhere. This was a fool’s bargain for Europe from the beginning, as it granted Erdogan permanent leverage to extort both massive financial contributions to his regime from Western Europe and a mandatory diplomatic cheering section for his expansionist military adventures in the Middle East, especially in Syria.

But as usual, enfeebled European elites, having neither the requisite cultural pride nor the military means to defend their fragile borders with Islam, saw little choice: Pay off the Turks or endure another invasion by millions of young Muslim men from all over the Middle East and elsewhere — masquerading as “refugees” from the Syrian war, and dishonestly assisted in their masquerade by Western Europe’s leftist-dominated mainstream media.

Last Saturday, the futility of a purchased peace with Islamist governments was once again revealed with striking clarity: Recep Erdogan explicitly cancelled the 2016 agreement and announced that his government would no longer halt or hinder the estimated 3.5 million non-Turkish Muslims already living in Turkey, and the hundreds of thousands more migrants who will now enter Turkey across its eastern border, in their westward movement across Turkey into Europe, via Greece.

Little more than a week after Erdogan’s announcement, scenes of chaos and violence just short of war are unfolding on the Greek-Turkish border. In the ancient Greek province of Thrace, where Turkey’s European-side province is separated from Greece by the River Evros, Greek soldiers and police, behind fences and barbed wire, face off against would-be border crossers numbering, depending on source, anywhere from 13,000 to 30,000, to 75,000.  The numbers of would-be invaders and violence increase daily.

German language alternative web sites report that the mobs at the Greek border have not had to engage in all that much “trekking” across Turkey, that unmarked buses headed west — as many 5-6 per hour — depart from migrant camps in eastern Turkey, and that Erdogan’s state railroad assists with  transporting the invaders to the Greek/EU/Turkish border.

Clearly, this second 21st century Muslim invasion of Europe is Turkey’s child.

Erdogan’s motives are not merely to rid Turkey of the burden of feeding and housing a large population of non-Turkish migrant Muslims, nor fully explained by his disappointment at the level of financial and diplomatic support he’s succeeded in extorting from Europe since 2016.

Merkel’s feeble and naïve reaction to the 2015 invasion, and the Willkommenskultur (“welcoming culture”) she demanded of the German people (and got from a small but influential part of it), have laid bare the moral confusion, psychological weakness and atrocious leadership of Germany and Europe. In consequence, Erdogan, an Islamist to the core, sees his chance for historical Muslim greatness.

After the amazing governmental capitulation and public passivity in Germany during 2015, Erdogan is smart enough to perceive that now is his chance to dramatically advance through migration what Kara Mustafa failed to achieve in 1683 through direct military invasion: The gradual but relentless Islamization of Europe.      

Rocks have been hurled at Greek police and border soldiers by the would-be border crossers, and the defenders of Greece at times have responded with tear gas. Based on reports coming out of the border area today, as well as photographs and videos viewable at various European and German language web sites, the invading mob looks remarkably similar to the one that strode unhindered into the heart of Europe in 2015: Overwhelmingly young, single and male, with a rare smattering of women and small children for window dressing.

As in 2015, the wildly pro-migrant German mainstream press and television “reporters” seek out the few women and children, and feature them in tear-drenched reports and oh-so-cute kiddie photos, thereby grossly misrepresenting who the migrants are for the dependably ill-informed, gullible, fearful and guilt-ridden German public.

It’s not only Greeks living west of the River Evros in Thrace who are directly in the path of this new wave of invaders. Several Greek Aegean islands, particularly the once beautiful Lesbos, Samos and Chios, all substantially closer to Turkey than to mainland Greece, have been the destination of numerous migrant-filled boats since the Erdogan decree. As many as 1300 new migrants are said to have landed on Lesbos since the Erdogan diktat. These boats and their occupants are often aided by northern European workers for pro-mass migrant “NGO’s,” many based in Germany, staffed by Germans and supported by George Soros.

The situation on Lesbos is particularly acute, as some 20,000 Muslim “refugees” were already being held there in camps before the Erdogan “Let them pass” order to the Turkish army. They had already long been making life miserable for the local Greek villagers and farmers, sallying forth from the camps daily to beg, commit crimes and inflict damage on local property owners. One Lesbos farmer reported that scores of his decades-old olive trees had been cut down for firewood by the not particularly grateful migrants.

Although as yet receiving no help from timid EU leadership, the Greeks, on Europe’s front line with Islam, as they were 500 years ago, are showing much more mettle and will for civilizational survival than their infinitely richer and more powerful Teutonic northern neighbor.  The Greeks, who would be woefully outmatched in any military confrontation with Turkey, have announced that they are defending, and will continue to defend, their border, which, they point out, is the EU’s international border too.

Various EU poo-bahs arrived in Greece on Wednesday, March 4, chief among them famously incompetent former German Defense Minister and Merkel protégé Ursula von der Leyen. Von der Leyen, having totally neglected Germany’s defense obligations for years, failed up and is now is “EU Commission President,” whatever that is. On arriving in Greece, Von der Leyen mouthed the usual platitudes about supporting Greece’s efforts to defend its and the EU’s borders, but arrived with no real military aid and, in the next breath, counter-factually claimed that Turkey is not the enemy of the EU. If organizing and promoting an invasion of Europe doesn’t make a country an enemy of the EU, one wonders if anything would.

Meanwhile, at home in Germany, far from besieged Greek border troops and Lesbos farmers trying to protect their olive trees, the usual suspects are again beating the drums of the Merkel-created “Willkommenskultur.” The Green Party, once again, is urging that all comers be enthusiastically taken in. German Greens, never known for rational thought, are apparently unaware of the gross contradiction between their claim that Germany is already grossly overpopulated, on the one hand, and belief that there is no limit to the number of unassimilable third world immigrants Germany should take in, on the other.  

In 2015 Merkel made the first Willkommenskultur slogan famous: “Wir schaffen das,” (“We can do it!”), referring to Germany’s alleged ability to care for and assimilate millions of overwhelmingly young male, European culture-loathing, crime prone, sexual assault-prone Muslim immigrants.

A new slogan is now making the rounds at German Greens rallies: ”Wir haben Platz!” (“We have room!”).

What German Greens and other migration enthusiasts — largely drawn from the wealthier classes — actually mean is that “other people” have “Platz.” Last year, in a famously upscale Hamburg neighborhood riddled with wealthy Green virtue signaling voters, residents turned out in droves to explain why their neighborhood was singularly unsuitable as a Muslim migrant home. “Wir haben Platz.” would more honestly be rendered, “Du hast Platz, ich nicht” (You have room, I don’t.”)

Erdogan’s effort to gain financial and military advantage for Turkey, and at the same time to advance his deeply held Islamist goal of being remembered as  one who nobly advanced Islam’s dream of conquering Europe, are easy to understand. Who can blame him for pursuing his country’s interests and his religion’s age old goal?

The question is:  Since the 2015 inundation of Germany/Europe by Muslim economic migrants, have the Europeans — their self-loathing, naive governments and their passive peoples — learned anything at all about the fundamental incompatibility of Islam and the West? Have the massive increases in crime, sexual attacks and acts of terror, along with the obvious refusal of great majorities of newly “European” Muslims to integrate with a culture they despise, taught them anything at all?

How the latest attempted Islamic invasion of Europe plays out on the Greek Turkish border will go a long way to answering those questions.

americanthinker.com

While the European Union demanded that Turkey stop using “migratory pressure for political ends”, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has made a decision which does not seem to go in the direction of appeasement, reported French weekly L’Express.

On Thursday, March 5, Ankara announced the deployment of a thousand police officers along a border river with Greece.

“This morning we sent along the Meriç river 1 000 members of the special police force, fully equipped, to prevent them [the Greeks] from repelling” the migrants who are trying to reach Europe, said the Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu.

Since Friday, February 28, Turkey has in fact put a recurring threat into play, by opening its land border with Greece, 212 kilometers long. In a few days, several tens of thousands of migrants massed at the border in the hope of crossing into Europe.

Some of the illegals were caught cutting holes in the border fence. In total, Ankara announced that “millions” of migrants could attempt the crossing in the coming days.

On Wednesday 4 March, the heads of government of the 27 countries of the European Union reacted to the threat, accusing Turkey of blackmailing them by using the migrant threat and promising to “take all necessary measures” to protect the borders “with due respect for the EU and international law”.

In return, the Turkish presidency promised not to “consider refugees as a means of political blackmail” even though Ankara is not currently acting in compliance with the 2016 pact, which has significantly reduced the number of migrants arriving in the EU in exchange for financial aid.

freewestmedia.com/2020/03/06/turkish-special-forces-prevent-migrants-already-in-greece-from-returning/

71 years after NATO was founded to watch for an invasion, the invaders came from a NATO country.

After Turkey’s brutal Islamist regime suffered setbacks in its grandiose scheme to rebuild the Ottoman Empire by invading Syria, it decided to launch an invasion of a much softer target.

Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu has, with sublime chutzpah, kept a running count of the number of Muslim migrants invading Europe through Adrianople (renamed Edirne by its Turkish Islamic occupiers) on his Twitter account. At last count, the number of invaders was 100,577.

Soylu’s tweets are the equivalent of sending ransom notes while holding a gun to the head of the EU.

That 100,000 is a down payment. Turkey’s Islamist regime is threatening an invasion of millions. And NATO is absolutely helpless to stop a NATO country from masterminding an invasion of Europe.

“Hundreds of thousands have crossed, soon it will reach millions,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the brutal Islamist thug fantasizing about becoming the next Caliph by rebuilding the Ottoman Empire, declared.

There’s nothing spontaneous about this invasion of Greece by tens of thousands of migrants where the new ‘Gates of Fire’ are shoddy fences under assault by mobs throwing stones, bars, and firebombs.

And a moral assault by crying women pinching and burning their children to make them weep.

Turkey’s media, firmly under Islamist control after Erdogan’s Reichstag coup in 2016 allowed the greasy butcher to purge the last resistance to his rule, loudly urged announced that the invasion was here.

The European media, just as firmly under party line control, has been feeding a steady stream of staged photos and videos of crying women and children. Crowd photos show masses of young men. The women and children are there purely as human shields and sacrifices. Women in hijabs wail and cry on photogenic rocky shores while media freelancers elbow each to get the best shots. Children are made to cry by burning them and killed outright to guilt the infidels into selling out the future of their children.

There is already a dead migrant child. Who killed it? The migrants overturned the boat to avoid being returned by the Greek coast guard. The child went in the water and despite the best medical efforts in Europe, died. But mere cold facts like these are impossible for the average westerner to comprehend.

What kind of people are capable of drowning their own children for access to Europe’s welfare state?

To quote Colonel Kurtz, “I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men… trained cadres.” Drowning children or strapping bombs to them is a monstrously inconceivable crime to civilized people who no longer really believe in anything anymore.

The Alawites of Syria, their Shiite allies from Lebanon and Iran, will defend their borders. As the Turks discovered the hard way. They will lie, cheat, and steal, and die and kill to protect those borders.

And the Europeans will ask you for your papers. If you refuse, they will eventually let you in anyway.

America lost every war in the last three generations because we were willing to die, but not to kill. The Europeans are neither willing to die nor kill. And so, the continent is being overrun by those who are.

In WW2, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, as a last resort, turned to child soldiers as the war was lost. But being forced to face them did not make us question our morality. We understood that the monsters are the ones who dispatch children to fight their wars, not the soldiers who are forced to face them.

Seeing child soldiers made us determined to end the evil horrors of the Nazi eugenic breeding houses and concentration camps, and the Japanese biological experiments, mass rape, and ritual cannibalism.

By the time Vietnam came around, our elites no longer knew what they believed in anymore. When the enemy did horrifying things, it convinced us that we must be the monsters because they very clearly believed in something so compelling that they could do these things. And we didn’t believe in anything.

Erdogan, in his billion-dollar palace surrounded by costumed guards, understands this. So does the migrant hurling a cinderblock at a border guard. Westerners won’t fight for their countries. They will.

When the EU envoys go to negotiate with Erdogan, they will be up against a man who had the last independent military, police, and judicial leaders rounded up, and anally raped by Islamist thugs.

Whom do you want to bet on?

Last time, the Euros gave him nearly $7 billion. This time the price will be a whole lot higher. And no matter how much Danegeld is paid to the Sharia Vikings, the migrant streams will march on.

As to war.

Erdogan and the Islamists of the world are using refugees as a weapon because they know that Europe has the technology and the infrastructure to resist military forces, but can’t resist mere bodies.

Migrants are a weapon. They’re one of the more potent human missiles in the arsenal of globalism which has shifted the future from the technocratic upstarts of western civilization with their skyscrapers and empty houses of worship, to the old civilizations of Asia which have the relentless will to take them.

The latest invasion of Europe is a blatant move to extract more money for Turkey’s corrupt failing economy whose chief purpose appears to be supplying wealth to the Islamist nomenklatura, and to force countries already staggering under the weight of previous migrant invasions to help Turkey out in the Sunni-Shiite war set off by its invasion of Syria. But these are mere details of the political moment.

Western humanitarian nations want to fight their wars with bombs and tanks, but their ruthless eastern enemies prefer to fight them with humanitarian weapons. Muslim countries dispatch refugees, and when they turn terrorist, pay for their lawyers. The Russians and Qataris hack their way into poorly defended databases and disguise the attacks as leaks from journalists, and human rights activists.

Latin American countries send huge chunks of their populations to come to America and send back checks. Our elites blanch at being accused of locking children in cages. But the migrants, knowing that families will be immediately released, buy or steal children, as their golden tickets to the welfare state. And we are the monsters for wanting to apply DNA tests before releasing them to their captors.

Nobody wants to fight us on our own terms. And why should they? Who’s going to try to punch the giant in his armored chest when he has a glass jaw? Why bother equipping 30,000 men with rifles, when you can just dump them ashore, accompanied by a few women and children, for a successful invasion?

Resisting humanitarian warfare requires drawing firm lines between ‘us’ and ‘them’. That’s the line that globalism erases. And if there’s no line, then their crimes are evidence of the evils of our society.

Wars are won only by those nations, peoples, and people who can draw that line.

If there is no “us”, then what are we fighting for? If there are no nations, why defend their borders? If all beliefs are equal, then great conviction establishes moral superiority over those with lesser conviction. It doesn’t matter if the belief is in the supremacy of Sharia law and the descendants of Mohammed.

The EU established that there are no nations. The Ummah and Caliph Erdogan are taking it at its word.

And the Europeans protest against the mass invasion by tens of thousands of migrants, not because it’s bad for Europe, but because it’s bad for the migrants to have the burden of doing all the invading. They tell Erdogan, who would drown every one of them, that it’s not the best solution to the refugee crisis.

Erdogan sees the millions of migrants as Turkish national assets. Cannon fodder to be used in asserting his Ottoman dreams at the expense of Europe. The Europeans care more about them than he does. That’s what makes them effective weapons. When fighting monsters, humanity becomes a weakness.

American police officers were prevented from fighting crime because of all the people who would be locked up and maybe even shot. And now Baltimore has racked up 50 murders in just two months. Our soldiers were prevented from killing terrorists to save civilian lives, and thousands of our soldiers, and countless civilians died, and entire regions devolved into savage bloodlands of ethnic cleansing.

Europe allowed its cities to be swarmed before and thousands of women were raped, bombs and vehicles were used as weapons in crowded streets, and it still hasn’t learned to say “no” and mean it.

The members of the Ummah at the gates of Greece know what they believe. The thugs throwing stones, and the wailing women burning their children to make them cry, combine a perfect conviction in the providence of Allah, with the selfish collectivism of the family group into which they were born.

The EU believes in the selfish collectivism of its bureaucracy. But free health care, free education, and a short work week isn’t something you fight and die for. Once upon a time, hungry people did. But, as Nietzsche said, “Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral.” The hungry became obese burghers. With their appetites sated, they turned into moralizers filled with platitudes, but no actual beliefs.

They are not about to fight for what they have, because they aren’t hungry yet, and they believe in nothing except the power of socialist goodness that enables them to have their goodies. If they understood how finite those goodies are, they might fight, but then they wouldn’t be socialists.

Refugees are a weapon. But not one that comfortable people in prosperous societies understand. And by the time they come to understand what is happening, it may be because they will be the refugees.

When you believe in nothing, and family is an empty word, then you will only fight for what you have.

Einstein reportedly said, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

World War III was fought and won with humanitarian weapons. That’s why World War IV is already being fought with sticks and stones on the borders of Europe.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/turkey-proves-refugees-are-weapon-treat-them-one-daniel-greenfield/

If you ever wanted to know exactly why Bill Clinton had an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, he’s got an explanation for you now.

The 42nd president reveals in the forthcoming Hulu documentary “Hillary” that he had the affair because it helped to “manage my anxieties,” resulting from the pressures of the presidency. His affair, he claims, was a distraction from those pressures.

“You feel like you’re staggering around, you’ve been in a 15-round prize fight that was extended to 30 rounds and here’s something that will take your mind off it for a while, that’s what happens,” he said. “Because there, whatever life — not just me. Everybody’s life has pressures and disappointments, terrors, fears of whatever. Things I did to manage my anxieties for years. I’m a different, totally different person than I was, a lot of that stuff 20 years ago,” he said.

“What I did was bad but it wasn’t like: how can I think about the most stupid thing I could and do it,” he added. “It’s not a defense, it’s an explanation. I feel awful.”

The former president also expressed regret for how the scandal impacted Monica Lewinsky.

“I feel terrible about the fact that Monica Lewinsky’s life was defined by it, unfairly, I think,” he said. “Over the years I’ve watched her trying to get a normal life back again, but you’ve got to decide how to define normal.”

You can watch the trailer for the documentary below:

The documentary will premier on Friday, March 6, 2020. It will feature campaign footage from 2016, as well as exclusive interviews with Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, friends and journalists, and the twice-failed presidential candidate herself.

pjmedia.com/trending/bill-clinton-i-had-affair-with-monica-lewinsky-to-manage-my-anxieties/

Thousands of protesters marched in Germany calling for open borders and for the European Union to allow thousands of migrants to flow into the bloc from Turkey.

Outside German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s official residence in Berlin, approximately 3,000 protesters gathered on Tuesday evening, with matching protests being held in Hamburg and Potsdam, calling for the EU to “open the border in Greece”.

The protesters chanted “we have space!” and called the 2016 agreement between the EU and Turkey to halt the flow of migration as “toxic”, according to DW.

The march in Berlin was organised following Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s decision to “open the gates” to migration into the EU. The protest was led by the activist group Seebrücke Berlin (Sea Bridge Berlin), which says it is “against the policy of sealing off the EU and for the opening of the borders”.

“The solution is clear: open the border in Greece now so that there is no more suffering. Allow people to come to Europe and Germany. There are plenty of communities ready for reception here. Let’s oppose the fascist mobs and come together for a solidarity society!” the group wrote.

In a petition signed by over 2,000 people, Seebrücke said that the government of Germany should work to “ensure that the EU opens the border and allows people to flee unhindered. People must be able to enter the numerous German municipalities and apply for asylum.”

Germany has so far maintained that its borders will not be open to migrants coming from Turkey. Horst Seehofer, the German interior minister, sent a message in Arabic on Tuesday, attempting to dissuade migrants from attempting to enter Germany illegally.

“We will support Greece with all our might. Europe’s borders are not open to refugees from Turkey, and this applies to our German borders as well,” Seehofer wrote.

Friedrich Merz, who is vying to replace Angela Merkel as the head of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), warned that Germany must not lose “control” of its borders as it did during the height of the migration crisis in 2015.

Merz said that Berlin should say to migrants attempting to enter illegally: “There is no point in coming to Germany. We cannot take you in.”

The leader of the Free Democrats (FDP), Christian Lindner, said that the fate of Merkel’s governing coalition depends on whether or not they can keep migration at bay.

“In order to reduce the migration flows, it would be helpful if Ms Merkel clearly and publically stated that uncontrolled entry into Germany no longer exists,” he said. “We’ve been saying for years that in the event of a crisis, it must also be possible to deny entry at the German border which is something our European partners already do,” Lindner added.

breitbart.com/europe/2020/03/05/we-have-space-germans-protest-berlin-demanding-open-borders-migrants/

A new chapter in the “success story” of successful integration in Germany: the Hamburg police officer who was deliberately run over by the violent Turk Mahmut H. in the course of a traffic control at the end of February died of his serious injuries. The sad news reached relatives and colleagues in the early morning hours.

The police officer and two other investigators had already been hot on the heels of the felon known to the police and courts on the 25th of February and were about to arrest him as he approached a police checkpoint. Suddenly H. accelerated, ran into the civilian patrol car of the police officers in search and pushed it 11 meters in front of him. The 57-year-old police officer suffered severe injuries and has been in a coma ever since – from which he never awoke. His police colleagues honoured the deceased on Twitter and expressed their condolences.

Particularly disturbing in this case again: Cop killer Mahmut H. should not have been at large at all, but should have been in jail long ago: No less than three arrest warrants were issued against the 29-year-old highly aggressive serial offender. Now a fourth one has been added – for bodily injury resulting in death, as the newspaper “Bild” reported this morning.

journalistenwatch.com/2020/03/04/leben-sterben-merkeldeutschland/?fbclid=IwAR0LXMzHP7rd23eTTxDYuFrxHQ1-HeEfFnUaPSaQoUyQgs19-TmHg8BP01k

Only very few single cases of #coronavirusitalIa in Latium but Rome is totally empty. Empty corridors in 🇻🇦 Vatican museums. Empty roads. Cancelled events. No Holy Water in churches, no sign of peace, communion only in Hand.
But: no empty shelves in supermarkets. Romans chilled pic.twitter.com/Sw2NUSBEiT

— Eduard Habsburg (@EduardHabsburg) March 4, 2020

In an effort to slow down the spread of the coronavirus, Italy has closed all schools until March 15, effective immediately, conservative daily Magyar Hírlap reports.

Angelo Borrelli, head of Italy’s Civil Protection Service, said the number of confirmed infections has risen to 2,703, with the regions of Lombardy, Emilia Romagna and Veneto the most affected and the mortality rate stands at 3.47 percent. Over 100 people have died from the virus in Italy, with most of the victims elderly people.

In addition, Italy has also ordered all sporting events to be held behind closed doors for a month.

Meanwhile, opposition parties are questioning Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s ability to handle the situation: Giorgia Meloni, leader of the nationalist Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) party has called for opposition consultations with the prime minister. Matteo Renzi, leader of the governing Italia Viva party said what the country needs now is a prime minister who can “lead the country with unequivocal messages.

As Italy is struggling to contain the disease, the New York Post reported that Eight new coronavirus cases in China have been traced to Italy — marking the first time the virus has been discovered spreading back to the country after initially emerging there in December.

According to U.S.-based travel analytics company ForwardKeys, flight bookings to Italy fell drastically in February compared to last year, and all flight booking to Europe fell for a combined 79 percent.

The COVID19 virus hit travel in Italy harder than terror attacks, according to ForwardKeys’ Vice President of Insights Olivier Ponti wrote in a post he made this morning.

On social media, the Hungarian ambassador to the Holy See, wrote that Rome’s sights and roads are empty despite the lack of coronavirus cases in that region of the country, underlining the widespread effect it has had across Italy.

Italy is the first country in Europe to take such sweeping measures against the virus, though France has closed around 120 schools in the most heavily-affected areas of that country.

Some experts question the effectiveness of school closures, since children don’t seem to be particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus, at least relative to other demographics. However, there are fears that children could be carriers who can infect those more vulnerable populations.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said that there is no reason for fear or give up normal activities, but there is need for “responsible behavior”. 

rmx.news/article/article/coronavirus-italy-closes-all-schools-as-deaths-rise-tourism-crashes-nationwide