Europe suffering from viral pandemic “through no fault of its own?”

The Shen Wu textile factory in Prato, Italy.The historical capital of Italy’s textile business, Prato, near Milan, has attracted the largest concentration of Chinese-run industry in Europe. (Photo: Stefano Rellandini/Reuters)

By Carolyn Yeager

THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS HAS, LIKE EVERY OTHER crisis faced by the European Union, exposed the competitor-conflict-mentality that remains always just below the surface of the proclaimed union of the  New Europe. Europe is made up of Germanic-Scandinavian, Mediterannean and Slavic racial national entities, with long histories of independent cultural development. Their main similarity is that they're all “White Indo-European” origin and share the continent named “Europe."

Northern Italy is suffering hardest from the COVID-19 pandemic. The Italian authorities were slow in waking up to the danger, allowing the virus to spread far and wide before safety measures were put in place. As of March 30, 2020 there are 97,689 infections and at least 10,779 deaths reported in a total population of 60 million, giving it the highest death-to-infection ratio in the world.

Under these dire circumstances, Italy is seeking help from Brussels. The help Italian Prime Minister Guiseppe Conte is asking for is in the form of a borrowing system in which poorer EU nations take out cheap loans, with richer member nations guaranteeing the funds would be returned. Eight other hard hit EU members also support the scheme, including France, Spain, Portugal and Greece.

"If Europe does not rise to this unprecedented challenge, there is a danger that the European house (EU) loses its foundations before the eyes of our citizens," Conte threatened when speaking with the daily newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore. Conte expresses fear that future generations will inherit a destroyed economy. In other words, Italy wants a bailout paid for by Germany.

Ursula van der Leyen, new commissioner of the EU, commented that "Italy stands in this coronavirus crisis through no fault of its own, the crisis that has hit the country right through its industrial heart, the medium-sized businesses in the north. These healthy companies need to be saved."

I think it is fair to ask whether there is some fault to be detected in Italy's predicament.

To wit: the highly lucrative Fashion and Garment industry in northern Italy has worked with China, and outsourced Chinese labor, for many years. 100,000 Chinese have been working in Italy. Many fashion firms in Italy are now even owned by Chinese.

Other reports say out of 300,000 Chinese in Italy, 90% of them work in the Italian garment industry.

Italy has direct flights to Wuhan.

The multi-billion euro Italian fashion market is dependent on Chinese workers in Italy, but also on the vast market in China for consumption of its products.

Wikipedia says “the community of Chinese people in Italy has grown rapidly in the past ten years. Official statistics indicate there are at least 320,794 Chinese citizens in Italy, although these figures do not account for former Chinese citizens who have acquired Italian nationality or Italian-born people of Chinese descent.

The Daily Mail on Jan. 31, 2020 reported:

A Chinese couple who tested positive for the coronavirus in Italy went on a tour of the country visiting Milan, Verona, Parma and Rome before they were quarantined. 

The woman, 65, and her husband, 66, are both from Wuhan and landed in Milan on January 23. 

They were taken to the Spallanzani hospital from their hotel in Rome after they became feverish. They are now stable.

The other 18 members of their tour group were found in Cassino by police and were taken to the same hospital. 

[As an example of the damage a single infected couple can cause, geneticists have documented that a single traveler from Wuhan to Seattle (USA) infected 39 Americans, who in turn infected several hundred others, who in turn … -cy]

I came upon a video made by an Italian woman who is now a citizen of the United States. It had a very informative 'video-within-a-video' on Chinese immigration in Italy that runs from 17:33 minutes to 43 minutes and is worth watching. It makes clear that those financial interests that tout the benefits of “Globalization” using widespread legal and illegal immigration are the ones responsible for something as deadly as this pandemic has become. Italy now suffers for its attempt to compensate the failure of its own people to reproduce by substituting imported cheap foreign labor. Don't we always pay a worse price in the end?

An illegal Chinese man stands in a clothing workshop in Prato, Italy.

But rather than accepting the price it is now paying, and correcting its course, Italy seeks to get bailed out by calling on the EU to initiate a system of “corona bonds” that will force solvent countries like Germany, Austria and the Netherlands (all Germanic peoples) to cover loans from the EU that they know Italians will not be able to pay back.

This type of EU borrowing scheme was floated and dismissed following the 2008 market crash. In 2012 , the head of Germany's central bank Jens Weidmann summed up the German consensus about it: “"One does not just trust someone else with their credit card when you don't have the option of controlling their expenses," Weidmann told Le Monde at the time (from DW). Pretty obvious.

On Thursday last, Angela Merkel said she was NOT in favor of the “corona bonds” solution; she instead recommended the European Stability Mechanism that was deployed in assisting Greece's economic recovery. Austria's chancellor Sebastian Kurz also rejected the idea of European bonds. And Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told reporters that a system to share debt would mean "crossing a Rubicon" for the eurozone:

"We are against it, but it's not just us, and I cannot foresee any circumstances in which we would change that position.” 

Thanks for that much at least from Rutte. But Portugal's Prime Minister Antonio Costa angrily labeled Rutte's comment "ignorant" and "petty":

"This type of response is completely ignorant and this recurring pettiness completely undermines what makes up the spirit of the European Union."

“The Spirit of the European Union” is invoked when someone's hand is out. Likewise, French President Emmanuel Macron told French newspapers,

“We won't overcome this crisis without strong European solidarity, in terms of health and budgets.

"This could involve a capacity to assume common debt — whatever it is called — or an increase in the EU budget to provide real support for the worst-hit countries."

The Social Democrat German President Frank Walter Steinmeier once again joined the “one-worlders” wishing to take advantage of Germans: “We must look beyond the next border fence. The virus has no nationality, and suffering does not stop at borders.”

Ursula van der Leyen, the EU's new commissioner, commented that the EU's goal "has always been to bring us together economically."

"Italy stands in this coronavirus crisis through no fault of its own, the crisis that has hit the country right through its industrial heart, the medium-sized businesses in the north, These healthy companies need to be saved."

She said EU officials are working on a new policy proposal to be presented to the states' leaders within 14 days.

Less successful nations in Eurozone remain on the “help” list forever

The European Union is not a union of equals. Not only that, but the deep divisions, crimes and propaganda biases left from both world wars, and even farther back, are in no way healed. Only truth is healing and that is still in short supply.

If this deadly pandemic, brought to us courtesy of China and it's communist system, causes Europe to go back some way to every nation sufficient unto itself—to a re-cognition that only the enduring ties of blood and language make up a strong national family—it will have been worth the painful loss of the many lives that are being taken. But I fear the very opposite may be the case. It depends on each one of us to interpret events correctly.