France, the European leader in wheat, has given Germany the keys to supplying its packaging for flour. It is paying a high price today. Germany is a world leader in adaptable packaging and almost the sole supplier of flour packaging to its neighbour.

At the start of confinement, there was a pasta, sugar and flour rush. This unique environment was an opportunity for the French to revisit the kitchen by increasing the production of homemade bread and cakes. But quickly, the reality became apparent: in mass distribution, for lack of replenishment, there is almost no more flour. In about a third of supermarkets, the shelves are empty.

“Throughout France, flour sales to individuals have doubled in the past five weeks; millers are working like crazy,” says Jean-François Loiseau, president of the Meunerie de France and of the Axéréal cooperative.

To meet the high demand, millers are adapting their activity while their bakery outlets have collapsed.

France has a large supply of wheat. However, for the past few weeks, it has been an obstacle course to find flour in mass distribution outlets. The SARS-CoV-2 containment rules have resulted in sales of 1 kg bags doubling compared to last year.

Artisanal bakeries have recorded sharp drops linked to the change in consumer habits. On this circuit, flour sales collapsed by 50 percent in the first week of confinement, with disparities in town and in the countryside, where the artisan remains more accessible.

To meet changing demands, flour mills are therefore forced to adapt. Grands Moulins de Paris has launched La Boulangine, a one-kilo sachet of flour that bakers can market to consumers who no longer find it in supermarkets.

The Planchot flour mill has launched new packaging of 10 kg on conventional and organic T65 flours for its regular customers.

For its part, the Bellot flour mill closed its online sales service, saturated with calls from consumers in a few days. The company preferred to supply its historical customers. Its sales in supermarkets have multiplied by 20.

Very much in demand by major brands, the miller is limited in its production by the lack of empty bags of 1 kg. “In four weeks, I liquidated my stock planned for six months! The suppliers of this packaging in Europe can be counted on the fingers of one hand. They too, their activity is slowed down when they always receive more requests! The deadlines therefore go from a few weeks to a few months,” a manager explained.

In the event of packaging running out, its teams would find themselves at a standstill. He is therefore looking for new suppliers and in the meantime, markets 25 kg bags to supermarkets. He testified: “When their shelves were empty and they couldn’t wait, I offered them these packages. They tried and in a few days, they sold 1.5 tonnes of flour.”

The flour mills in France are still figuring out the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic but they hope not to be the only ones paying the bills.

freewestmedia.com/2020/04/28/french-consumers-face-a-flour-shortage-thanks-to-germany/

The number of corona infections in Germany in the past day has risen by 1,144 cases.

To date, 156,337 people have been infected with the virus in the country.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/497653

Scotland’s Justice Secretary, Humza Yousaf, announced the measures which are intended to also ‘protect’ members of the LGBT community and the elderly from discrimination.

Yet the measures have already been condemned by freedom of speech activists who fear that the move is a draconian attempt to introduce blasphemy laws and to criminalise often justified criticism of certain issues – including the ongoing debate into the homophobia, extremism and sexism that currently plagues the Islamic faith worldwide. As part of Scotland’s overhaul of its hate crime legislation, if passed in Holyrood (as is expected), the Hate Crime Bill will make any “stirring up” of hatred offences illegal; with citizens no longer able to criticise groups based on their age, disability, race, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity and “variations in sex characteristics”.

Nothing has so far been mentioned as to what constitutes as a “stirring-up” of hate crimes – with some Scottish citizens said to be concerned about not being allowed to express their own personal views and opinions, and many also worried that Scottish social media users will be heavily affected as a result.

Currently, only racial hatred is covered by a “stirring up” offence.

The new law will also make it an offence – punishable by up to seven years in prison – to possess ”threatening or abusive material” that could lead to hatred being stirred up against one of the protective groups.

Once again, no examples of what the new law and those who will be enforcing consider to be ‘abusive material’ were provided – leaving the potential for citizens to be targeted based on their political beliefs and party allegiances.

After pressure from women’s campaigners, Mr Yousaf announced an offence of misogyny would also be brought in at a later date after a “working group” considers how this would operate.

Senior judge Lord Bracadale previously warned in 2018 against bringing in a specific ‘anti-woman crime’, saying that any such offence should be about “gender”, and should not focus on one sex alone.

https://www.politicalite.com/scotland/blasphemy-law-scots-face-up-to-seven-yrs-in-jail-for-criticism-of-religious-groups/

As the coronavirus pandemic ravages the world, identity politics appears to have taken a backseat to fighting the virus. Yet on Saturday, Emily Cousens, a research assistant at Oxford University, said she doesn’t want her university to win the “coronavirus vaccine race” — because it would make Britain proud and might teach the wrong lessons about medical progress. Specifically, she worried about China looking bad and the West — full of those evil “white males” — looking good.

“The story will be clear: China, once again, has unleashed a threat to civilisation. But the best brains of the UK have saved the world,” Cousens wrote at HuffPost. “If my university is the first to develop the vaccine, I’m worried that it will be used as it has been in the past, to fulfil its political, patriotic function as proof of British excellence.”

“We’ll forget the lessons that the pandemic has taught us so far: that the UK and the US are in fact not exceptions at the global stage. That we are not only vulnerable but can also afford to learn lessons from countries, regardless of whether we have a special relationship with them – such as South Korea. That being white, male and Oxford-educated may not be the only criteria for effective leadership (the countries whose responses have been most widely praised, Germany and New Zealand among others, are all led by women),” she insisted.

The upshot of Cousens’ piece is the virtue of international cooperation, especially with — you guessed it! — China. She praised China for sharing the genetic sequence for the coronavirus in early January, ignoring the fact that the Chinese Communist Party repeatedly lied about the virus and destroyed early samples of it, enabling it to spread across the globe.

She went on to complain that British leaders have resorted to patriotism. She acknowledged that “war-time rhetoric is useful in instilling a sense that this is a moment when individuals need to make sacrifices and put the country first,” but she complained that patriotism makes “our collective solidarities end at the border.”

To be fair, it does not seem like Cousens is rooting for the virus or hoping that a vaccine does not develop. But she did express her hope that Oxford doesn’t develop the vaccine — because that would be inconvenient for her narrative.

According to the identity politics narrative, those evil oppressive white men have been lording it over everybody else for centuries, so true justice and progress can only be achieved when women and racial minorities are empowered. This narrative completely overlooks the tremendous leaps forward taken by Western science, free markets, and technology. Modern prosperity was fueled by the West, and Oxford played a pivotal role in the story, as the home of the Merton calculators — who achieved scientific breakthroughs by applying mathematics to philosophical questions in the 1300s.

The West’s leadership has more to do with a culture of charity and innovation arguably inspired by Christianity than with anything racial, but left-leaning academics often see racism behind any effort to give the West credit for modern prosperity.

If Oxford develops the first coronavirus vaccine, that would be something to celebrate, and the British should take pride in the achievement. Indeed, Oxford’s coronavirus vaccination trial started on Thursday, with the first volunteers receiving the experimental vaccines. Let’s hope the university that spawned the Merton calculators can achieve another tremendous scientific feat, whatever it means for identity politics.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/oxford-grad-student-fears-white-males-at-her-university-might-develop-the-coronavirus-vaccine/

Politicians within the German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party have expressed their displeasure with the recent admission of 47 migrants from Greece, according to Junge Freiheit.

Several CDU members of parliament have expressed their dissatisfaction that adolescent men arrived in Germany on a chartered flight instead of what was supposed to be a number of unaccompanied young women.

“Germany is getting stiffed by the UNCHR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees],” said Hessian CDU member of the Bundestag Hans-Jürgen Irmer while critiquing the agency. “Before Germany accepts more such migrants, other countries are now obliged to do so.”

According to Irmer, there are hardly any unaccompanied girls between eight and 14 years old on the Greek islands.

The federal government announced in mid-March that it would fly minors from Greece to Germany and a handful of other EU countries. It was supposed to be about children who were seriously ill or unaccompanied and younger than 14. Irmer said that the proposal at the time was to send Germany mostly girls.

Migrants wearing offensive T-shirts upon arrival

A group of 47 migrants landed in Hanover on Saturday, but only four girls were among the 47 children and adolescents. One of the migrant teenagers getting off the plane wore a T-shirt that said “Istanbul 1453”, which is the same year Constantinople was conquered by the Ottomans.

Migrants were also previously brought to Luxembourg where one of them was spotted wearing an “ACAB” T-shirt, which stands for “All Cops Are Bastards”.

According to Irmer, such T-shirts are “more than irritating.”

The CDU politician is now demanding that if further admissions of migrants are made, German officials from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees would have to make the selection on site, which has not been the case up until now.

“Now is the end,” emphasized Irmer.“I personally advocate that there is a medical age determination before alleged young people come to Germany.

In addition, the admitted must sign that they are really alone and unaccompanied, so that they contact or meet up with other family members” once they arrive.

There have also been concerns in the past that migrants have lied about their age in order to facilitate entry into Europe. For example, an incredible 84 percent of “child migrants” who were tested by Swedish government were actually adults aged 18 or older, according to a report from the BBC.

Many migrants arrive in camps without any documentation about their identity, allowing them to obscure their age and country of origin.

A number of German politicians have voiced concern over accepting migrants, including other members of the CDU.

For example, the CDU’s executive director, Michael Grosse-Brömer, criticized previous calls for Germany to admit 5,000 child refugees, saying, “If we admit 5,000, an additional 50,000 will make their way. Don’t raise false hopes!”

rmx.news/article/article/anger-grows-in-merkel-s-cdu-over-germany-s-acceptance-of-47-migrant-minors-from-greece

Germany’s export industry is in free-fall with forecasters predicting figures to plunge to the lowest rate ever recorded amid the current coronavirus pandemic. Despite being one of the strongest in the world, Germany’s economy has been hit hard by the COVID-19 outbreak. Although Germany’s death toll has not reached the levels experienced in Italy and Spain, the Institute for Economic Research (IFO) lowered the export market expectations from -19 to -50 in April. The number is now at the lowest value ever measured.

The IFO said: “The coronavirus crisis is striking the German economy with full fury.

“Demand for industrial products has collapsed.

“Companies have never been so pessimistic about the coming months.”

The institute also revealed last week the business climate index of firms from across the economy dropped to 74.3 in April.

This represents two horrific drops in the country’s business climate index over the last two months.

In February, the index stood at 96 before it dropped to 85.9 in March as the virus began to take hold of Europe’s largest economy.

Due to the lockdown across the country, the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) said unemployment in the country is set to rise by 520,000 and will exceed three million this year.

The country’s stock market, the Dax performance Index is still recovering from a monumental fall in February.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1274385/angela-merkel-latest-news-Germany-economy-eu-news-update-coronavirus-deaths

Over two dozen members of Die Linke, Germany’s leftist party, signed a letter asking Chancellor Angela Merkel and Interior Minister Horst Seehofer demanding the state to not only grant €1,500 in anti-coronavirus aid to each person illegally staying in Germany but also to offer them all amnesty.

“Even people without papers are part of the German population,” Der Spiegel quoted leftist MP Lorenz Gösta Beutin, who initiated the letter and believed that illegal migrants must get full state aid for humanitarian reasons.

Moreover, the signatories demand the German government to legalize these people.

The MPs call on the government to provide an “immediate general amnesty for all illegal residents” and want all deportations to be suspended.

“The coronavirus crisis has created a new situation. People without papers have no access to the healthcare system, but are very at risk,” Die Linke leader Bernd Riexinger explained.

The letter, signed by 27 of the 69 of the leftist party’s MPs, also says: “Because of the increased police presence on the streets, people without papers hardly dare to leave their homes, which further increases their marginalization in society”.

Die Linke estimates that there are between 200,000 and 600,000 illegal immigrants in Germany. The party demands an end to all deportations as well.

In recent years, the number of deportations has been decreasing. At the end of 2019, the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees reported around 250,000 asylum seekers who should leave the country.

Germany already pays enormous sums for migrants in the country, including social benefits, housing, and education.

The German government recently released figures highlighting just how much Germany has spent on migrants, including a record €23 billion in 2018, including rent subsidies, jobless payments and other benefits.

Cities have also been on the hook for additional billions, with Hamburg alone spending €5.35 billion on migrants between 2015 and 2019.

In terms of workforce integration, a significant study released by German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) about a year ago found that 65 percent of the 7,500 migrants they interviewed were still out of work.

Germany’s Die Linke party has been active in calling for the country to accept more migrants, but it is far from the only one. Prominent politicans across the political spectrum say that Germany has more room to take in migrants despite Germany being one of the most densely populated country in Europe.

rmx.news/article/article/germany-should-pay-illegal-migrants-1-500-in-coronavirus-aid-and-grant-them-amnesty-demands-leftist-party-mps