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May 2020

Flag burning and freedom of speech in the US and Hong-Kong

I have been having a discussion with a friend in China who is a professor of public administration about Hong-Kong. He said wasn't it of course justified for the Chinese government to prohibit insults to the Chinese flag. In the US you believe in freedom but you would never allow this, he said. Actually, I pointed out, during the protests against the war in Vietnam in the 1960s some students burned the US flag. A few local governments made flag burning illegal, but the courts ruled that these laws violated the constitutional protections for free speech. These laws no longer exist. It is fully... Read more about Flag burning and freedom of speech in the US and Hong-Kong

Britain opens immigration possibilities to Hong-Kong people

The British government has announced that Hong Kongers born in Hong-Kong before 1997 will be allowed to stay in England indefinitely and have a path to citizenship if the Hong-Kong government enforces the Hong-Kong national security law. This is a very wonderful humanitarian move from the UK, kudos to them. Sad this will be part of the death of Hong Kong.

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New York Times editorial, “Stand by Hong Kong”

The New York Times has a strong editorial today called, "Mr. Trump should stand by Hong Kong." The editorial notes that over Memorial Day weekend, when the Hong-Kong situation was exploding, none of his many tweets over the weekend mentioned Hong-Kong. The editorial also notes that the only time he has ever tweeted about Hong-Kong ever was in 2014 when Obama supported the Hong-Kong protests and trump tweeted, "We should stay out of the Hong-Kong protests, we have enough problems in our own country."

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Another “can’t believe this actually happened”

I know I have written this before but here is another case of I can't believe that this has actually happened. Trump tweeted over Memorial day weekend about the MSNBC host and former conservative Congressman Joe Scarborough, suggesting he was under investigation for murdering a former staff member in 2001!
He said he heard people talking about this at Mar el lago. This is how he spends his holiday.

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“The Americans” on AmazonPrime

I normally watch almost no television except for the evening news with fellow geriatrics. However, my wife and I have during the pandemic been watching pretty much every night the Amazon prime show the Americans, which is about sleeper Soviet agents in the United States. It is loosely based on a true story taking place in Boston, and in reality one of the sleeper agents enrolled at the Kennedy school! Anyway, after 6 seasons we will watch the last episode of the show tomorrow. If anyone has watched it, tell me before tomorrow night whether the last episode was disappointing or not. Also...

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Study concludes moving 2 weeks earlier against Coronavirus would have saved most of the lives

A study from Columbia University concludes that had we locked down 2 weeks earlier than we did, the large majority of deaths would have been avoided. We rightly criticize China for a one month delay in taking strong actions against the Coronavirus, but thanks to trump's minimization of the problem earlier, we delayed 3 months.

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