Burning EU and Other Flags Can Now Bring German Jail Term

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Germany has made public burning of the EU flag or that of another country punishable by up to three years in jail, classing it as a hate crime.

The vote in the Bundestag (parliament) on Thursday makes defiling foreign flags equal to the crime of defiling the German flag. . .

The move followed Social Democrat (SPD) complaints about protesters’ burning of the Israeli flag in Berlin in 2017.

Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht, a member of the centre-left SPD, said “burning flags publicly has nothing to do with peaceful protests”. She said it stoked up “hatred, anger and aggression”, and hurt many people’s feelings. (Read more from “Burning EU and Other Flags Can Now Bring German Jail Term” HERE)

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China: Trump ‘Like a Giant Baby on the Brink of a Meltdown’

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Chinese state media ridiculed U.S. allegations of wrongdoing in the coronavirus pandemic in a spate of editorials on Thursday and Friday, mocking U.S. President Donald Trump as a baby throwing a temper tantrum and repeating the Communist Party’s standard line that all questions about China’s conduct are merely attempts by other nations to distract from their own purportedly inferior responses to the coronavirus.

China’s Global Times claimed people around the world think Trump is “insane” for threatening to disengage economically from China in the wake of the pandemic. . .

The threats advanced by the CCP through its Global Times included ominous warnings about invading Taiwan, as well as confident predictions that American consumers would suffer more than the CCP from disengagement, which sound very similar to the entirely incorrect predictions CCP mouthpieces made before the pre-coronavirus trade war:

China has nothing to be afraid of as “in the past, we didn’t solve the Taiwan question because we wanted to maintain the China-US relationship, and if the US unilaterally cuts it off, we can just reunify Taiwan immediately since the Chinese mainland has an overwhelming advantage to solve this long-standing problem.”

“Trump is like a giant baby on the brink of a meltdown as he faces tremendous pressure due to massive failures that caused such a high death toll,” Shen Yi, an expert from Fudan University, told the Global Times. “It’s like someone who wants to show his guts when he passes by a cemetery in midnight. He needs to shout to give himself the courage,” he said.

(Read more from “China: Trump ‘Like a Giant Baby on the Brink of a Meltdown’” HERE)

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North Korea Mysteriously Locks Down Major Border City

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North Korea has mysteriously locked down a major border city, a move reportedly connected to either the coronavirus — or a planned event for missing-again despot Kim Jong Un.

The Hermit Kingdom — one of the few nations on Earth claiming to be coronavirus-free — barred entry earlier this month to Rason, a city of 20,000 that is a major hub for trade with Russia and China, sources told Radio Free Asia Tuesday.

The notoriously secretive nation has refused to tell its citizens why the city was suddenly locked down, RFA said.

Many fear that it could be a sign of a coronavirus outbreak, with bordering China also sealing off Jilin city and Shulan close to their shared border after a recent spike in cases. (Read more from “North Korea Mysteriously Locks Down Major Border City” HERE)

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China Is Now a Dangerous Adversary of the United States

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Thursday’s breaking news regarding the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) decision to pull approvals for dozens of mask makers in China proves the point: China must now be seen as an adversary.

For half a century, the American establishment has seen China as a partner on the international stage. Some Americans looked at China and saw only the size of its potential market for American goods; others looked at China and saw it as a strategic linchpin in the Cold War against the Soviet Union; still others saw a vast manufacturing plant with a low-paid workforce that could be used to produce “American” goods inexpensively.

Presidents and administrations both Democratic and Republican saw China as a partner, and worked regularly to deepen the ties that bound the two countries, even as a relatively small number of us voiced concerns over what we saw as the clear national security threat posed by the relationship. . .

The Chinese Communist Party’s behavior in the coronavirus crisis has made clear that China is no “partner” to the United States. China, clearly, is an adversary— and, going forward, the United States must treat it as such, across the entire spectrum of policy.

For now, though, let’s just focus on one aspect of the relationship — the threat posed by China’s virtual chokehold on American medical supplies. Once we opened up free trade with China in the early 2000s, we began shifting production from the United States to China. Our last aspirin manufacturing facility closed down in 2002, as did our last vitamin C plant. Our last penicillin plant closed in 2004. Chinese manufacturers, subsidized by their government, picked up the slack. (Read more from “China Is Now a Dangerous Adversary of the United States” HERE)

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Sweden Cared More About Islamophobia Than Saving Elderly in Nursing Homes From Coronavirus

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. . .Sweden has a higher rate of deaths in care homes than Norway or Finland, and lockdown enthusiasts have struggled to explain why keeping bars open would be killing people in housing for the elderly.

But there is a crucial difference between Swedish, Norwegian, and Finnish care homes.

A decade ago, in Sweden, 13% of the workers in care homes were immigrants, while only 5% in Norway and 1% in Finland were. Currently, 28% of care home workers in Sweden are foreigners, but in Stockholm, where the real dying has occurred, 55% of the care home workers are foreign immigrants. . .

In an interview, Johan Giesecke, Sweden’s former Chief Epidemologist and Chief Scientist of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), let slip the formerly unspeakable.

Giesecke admitted that Sweden had failed to protect the elderly, and noted that, “many of the people working in nursing homes are from other countries, they’re refugees or asylum seekers.” (Read more from “Sweden Cared More About Islamophobia Than Saving Elderly in Nursing Homes From Coronavirus” HERE)

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China: U.S. ‘Sabotaged’ Global Coronavirus Efforts; China Renews Lockdowns

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By Breitbart. China’s state-run People’s Daily on Tuesday accused the United States of “sabotaging” the global battle against the Wuhan coronavirus by criticizing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The latest twist to Chinese propaganda is an allegation that the U.S. ignored warnings from China and the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), a perfect inversion of the reality that W.H.O. spread false information fed to it by China that greatly increased the damage caused by the coronavirus in countries that took the W.H.O. seriously.

The People’s Daily claimed the entire world is in “shock” over America’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, basing its claim of “sabotage” largely on claims that the United States has handled the disease poorly and wallowed in “egoism” by blaming the CCP for unleashing it:

The US now has the largest number of confirmed cases and fatalities of COVID-19 in the world, and is the current epicenter of the pandemic. Its reluctance to promote global cooperation to tackle the lethal virus has made it a less credible and consistent partner for the international community. Experts and officials around the world have criticized the nation’s egoism amid a global pandemic, condemning its failure to protect its own people, as well as its hindering of joint global efforts to stop the virus’ spread.

(Read more from “China: U.S. ‘Sabotaged’ Global Coronavirus Efforts” HERE)

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China Is Renewing Lockdown Restrictions After New Coronavirus Clusters Were Found in Wuhan and Shulan, 2 Cities Hundreds of Miles Apart

By Business Insider. Two new clusters of coronavirus cases in China have been reported hundreds of miles apart, sparking fears of another large-scale outbreak.

On Sunday, the country’s National Health Commission reported 17 new coronavirus diagnoses, the highest number in almost two weeks, and the second day in a row new cases were in the double digits, Reuters reported.

Fourteen cases were in Shulan, a city of more than 700,000 near the Russian and North Korean borders. They were all traced to a 45-year-old woman working at a police laundry department with no history of recent travel or contact with an infected person.

The government has reclassified Shulan as a high-risk region, the only city in China with that classification. Authorities have closed public spaces, with residents told to stay home unless there were “unusual circumstances.” (Read more from “China Is Renewing Lockdown Restrictions After New Coronavirus Clusters Were Found in Wuhan and Shulan, 2 Cities Hundreds of Miles Apart” HERE)

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Israeli PM Suggests Microchipping Kids

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Cyber experts slammed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his proposal to “microchip” children who return to schools and kindergartens as the coronavirus lockdown is lifted, Ynet reported on Friday.

While speaking at a press conference on Monday, Netanyahu suggested the Health Ministry use new technology to help Israel adjust to its new routine as the state is lifting the coronavirus lockdown. “That is, technology that has not been used before and is allowed under the legislation we shall enact,” he clarified.

“I spoke with our heads of technology in order to find measures Israel is good at, such as sensors. For instance, every person, every kid – I want it on kids first – would have a sensor that would sound an alarm when you get too close, like the ones on cars,” the prime minister said.

“It will be hard to do it to more than a million schoolchildren who return to their educational institutions in order to ensure one student sits at the distance of two meters from another. It is fictional and dangerous,” cyber resilience expert Einat Meron told Ynet. . .

The Prime Minister’s Office responded to the report, telling Ynet Netanyahu’s suggestion “is not to be implemented through databases, but through simple technology notifying [the citizens] about their distance. It is a voluntary option that is designed to help children keep their distance, like Mobileye with vehicles.” (Read more from “Israeli PM Suggests Microchipping Kids” HERE)

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Putin to Loosen Lockdown Despite Russia’s Emergence as Coronavirus Hot Spot

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Russia is easing orders that require most workers to stay at home even as the country’s coronavirus cases continue to grow rapidly.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the move on Monday and said that the “nonworking period” would be lifted the following day.

“Starting from tomorrow, May 12, the national period of nonworking days will be over for all sectors of the economy,” he said during a meeting with officials, according to Agence France-Presse.

Putin said that individual regions of the country would still be able to maintain restrictions to combat the pandemic. The mayor of Moscow extended a lockdown of Russia’s capital through the rest of May. (Read more from “Putin to Loosen Lockdown Despite Russia’s Emergence as Coronavirus Hot Spot” HERE)

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China: “Prepare for Armed Confrontation Between the Two Global Powers”

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Amid the deepest economic contraction in nearly a century, President Xi Jinping had already made it very clear, last month, that China should be ready for unprecedented, relentless foreign challenges.

He was not referring only to the possible decoupling of global supply chains and the non-stop demonization of every project related to the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative.

An allegedly leaked internal document, secret and invisible inside China, but nonetheless obtained by some obscure Western-connected source, even stated, essentially, that the blame game against China over the virus is like the backlash over Tiananmen all over again.

According to the secret, invisible document, China would have to “prepare for armed confrontation between the two global powers” – a reference to the US. It’s as if this was an aggressive strategy deployed by the Chinese state in the first place, and not in response to the massive escalation of hybrid warfare 2.0 by the United States government. . .

What Beijing used to define as a “period of strategic opportunity” is over. There were rumblings in intel circles that the CCP leadership believed this strategic window of opportunity would last unimpeded until the key date, 2049 – when “national rejuvenation” should have been fully accomplished. (Read more from “China: “Prepare for Armed Confrontation Between the Two Global Powers” HERE)

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Israel Threatens to Pull Evangelical Christian TV Station Aimed at Jews

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The Israeli government is threatening to take off air a Christian television channel that launched in the country to preach to Jews, warning that it will be barred if it breaks strict rules around proselytising.

GOD TV, an evangelical media network that broadcasts across the world, signed a seven-year deal with a major Israeli cable television provider, HOT, to host its new Hebrew-language channel that began airing last month.

In a video message, Ward Simpson, the CEO of God TV, said: “God has supernaturally opened the door for us to take the gospel of Jesus into the homes, and lives and hearts of his Jewish people.”

Many in the Jewish state see the conversion of Jews as a threat to the relatively small global population as well as their majority status within Israel. While the country’s laws do not place an outright ban on proselytising, it is forbidden to preach to a person under 18 without the consent of a parent. . .

Communications minister David Amsalem threatened last week to shut down the channel if it was confirmed to have broken the rules. “We won’t allow any missionary channel to operate in the state of Israel, not at any time and not under any circumstances,” Amsalem, a member of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rightwing Likud party, said in a statement. (Read more from “Israel Threatens to Pull Evangelical Christian TV Station Aimed at Jews” HERE)

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