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China Enacts Law Banning Most Online Christian Content

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has activated measures to drastically restrict the availability of Christian content on the internet, Open Doors reported this week.

Last December, China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) announced its upcoming “Measures for the Administration of Internet Religious Information Services,” a series of regulations designed to eliminate any online religious message that fails to conform to the principles of the CCP.

Without express government permission, no organization or individual “shall preach on the Internet, carry out religious education and training, publish sermon content, forward or link to related content, organize and conduct religious activities on the Internet, or live broadcast or post recorded videos of religious rituals,” the CCP declared at the time.

The new measures went into force on March 1 and the effects are already being felt by Christians throughout China, reported Open Doors, which monitors Christian persecution around the globe.

Online Christian ministry has been restricted to CCP-approved groups with special permits, which are only issued to state-controlled religious institutions, such as the Three Self Patriotic Movement.

The CCP has approved the state-sanctioned Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association and the Bishops’ Conference of the Catholic Church in China, for example, but not the underground Catholic Church faithful to Rome.

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Umm… Are We The Baddies?

Reuters reports that Facebook and Instagram are now allowing calls for the death of Russians and Russian leaders in exemption from the platforms’ hate speech terms of service due to the war in Ukraine:

“Meta Platforms will allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion, according to internal emails seen by Reuters on Thursday, in a temporary change to its hate speech policy.”

Twitter has also altered its rules against incitement and death threats in the case of Russian leaders and military personnel, as Ben Norton explains here for Multipolarista.

Last month we also learned that Facebook is now allowing users to praise the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov Battalion because of the war, a move that is arguably the most liberal thing that has ever happened.

Western institutions everywhere are rejecting all things Russia with such a savage degree of xenophobia it really ought to shock anyone who was born after the 1800s. Everything from Russian athletes to Russian musicians to Russian-made films to Russian composers to Russian Netflix shows to lectures about Russian authors to Russian restaurants to Russian vodka to Russian-bred cats to Russian trees to dishes that sound a little too much like “Putin” have been cancelled to varying degrees around the western world.

Normally when the US and its allies are involved in a war they’ll at least pay lip service to the notion that they have nothing but good will for the people of the enemy nation, claiming they only oppose their oppressive rulers. With Russia it’s just a complete rejection of the entire culture, the entire ethnicity. It’s a widespread promotion of hatred for the actual people because of who they are.

These are the people who are being smashed with crushing economic sanctions while western pundits proclaim that “There are no more ‘innocent’ ‘neutral’ Russians anymore” and ask “At what point do you hold a people responsible for putting an evil despot in power?” This even as the Russian people are being arrested by the thousands in anti-war protests, putting to shame our own western society that has generally slept through war after war in the years since 9/11 while our militaries have been killing of millions of people.

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The White House is briefing TikTok stars about the war in Ukraine

On Thursday afternoon, 30 top TikTok stars gathered on a Zoom call to receive key information about the war unfolding in Ukraine. National Security Council staffers and White House press secretary Jen Psaki briefed the influencers about the United States’ strategic goals in the region and answered questions on distributing aid to Ukrainians, working with NATO and how the United States would react to a Russian use of nuclear weapons.

As the crisis in Ukraine has escalated, millions have turned to TikTok for information on what is happening there in real time. TikTok videos offered some of the first glimpses of the Russian invasion and since then the platform has been a primary outlet for spreading news to the masses abroad. Ukrainian citizens hiding in bomb shelters or fleeing their homes have shared their stories to the platform, while dangerous misinformation and Russian propaganda have also spread. And TikTok stars, many with millions of followers, have increasingly sought to make sense of the crisis for their audiences.

The White House has been closely watching TikTok’s rise as a dominant news source, leading to its decision to approach a select group of the platform’s most influential names.

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British MP Calls Scale of COVID-19 Vaccine Damage a ‘Nightmare’

A veteran MP believes that tens of thousands have been severely adversely affected by COVID-19 vaccines in the UK and is calling on the government for more support.

“The public is going to catch on in the end,” Sir Christopher Chope told The Epoch Times.

“All the harms that have been caused and the fact that there are a whole lot of people out there who did the right thing and now, contrary to their expectation, are not receiving the help from the government that they believed they were to receive. That’s where I am in this,” he said.

The Conservative MP believes that tens of thousands have been adversely affected by vaccines. He said that the debate is not about all those who have benefited from vaccination, he firmly believes in them. But it’s about those who were vaccinated but then, as a result, suffered death, serious injury, or other life-changing adverse consequences.

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Meta changes policy, says Facebook and Instagram users may call for violence against Russians, Putin’s assassination

Users of Facebook and Instagram in certain countries will be temporarily allowed to call for and threaten violence against Russian citizens and Russian troops, according to a new report.

In a change to Meta‘s hate speech policy, users in these countries will be able to make such posts only in the context of Russia’s war in Ukraine, according to Reuters, citing internal emails.

“The social media company is also temporarily allowing some posts that call for death to Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in countries including Russia, Ukraine and Poland,” the report from Reuters says. “These calls for the leaders’ deaths will be allowed unless they contain other targets or have two indicators of credibility, such as the location or method.”

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Whistleblower: FBI Is Just Now Asking Basic Questions About Jan. 6 Pipe Bombs — A Year Into Its Investigation

A senior FBI special agent has sounded the alarm on the bureau’s investigation into the pipe bombs that were placed outside the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee buildings the night before the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, suggesting that the investigation has been a low priority and made no real progress.

According to a letter sent on Wednesday from Rep. Jim Jordan, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, to FBI Director Christopher Wray, the FBI agent filed a whistleblower disclosure about the pipe bomb investigation — an investigation the Associated Press had characterized as “one of the highest-priority investigations for the FBI and the Justice Department.” The agent alleged that on Feb. 7, 2022, more than a year after the bombs were planted, the bureau’s Washington Field Office asked its other field offices “to canvass all confidential human sources nationwide for information about the individual and the crime.”

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