VATICAN - Nations do not build themselves, they “are built by migrants, just as migrants built Europe,” Pope Francis told a group of missionaries this week. “Europe was not just born like that,” the pope told a delegation of Scalabrini missionaries in off-the-cuff remarks in the Vatican Monday. “Europe was made by many waves of migrants over the centuries.”
USA - The migrant caravan heading north to the US from Central America is further evidence that the old world is dying and the new struggles to be born. There is much the ancient world can teach us; and one of its most salient lessons is that mass migration – the product of conflict, societal collapse and/or extreme poverty – is capable of destroying the most powerful of empires. Consider Rome, whose legions bestrode the ancient world like a colossus for a thousand years, and whose great and cruel, and most illustrious names – Caesar, Pompey, Augustus, Nero, Hadrian, Vespasian, Constantine, et al – still induce awe and wonder despite the passage of millennia. At its height, it would have been the very acme of insanity to claim that an empire that stretched from the Italian peninsula all the way across Western Europe and down into North Africa and the Middle East, could possibly be erased from the pages of history.
ITALY - Italy could be preparing to "volcanically" threaten the European Union and trigger a new Eurozone crisis should its Eurosceptic Government opt-out of the bloc, British businessman Jim Mellon claimed. The British businessman also suggested the European Union is exploiting the Brexit negotiations to avoid having to address the "volcanic" threat Italy poses to the bloc.
USA - The $13 billion Gerald R Ford aircraft carrier, the US Navy’s costliest warship, was delivered last year without elevators needed to lift bombs from below deck magazines for loading on fighter jets. Previously undisclosed problems with the 11 elevators for the ship built by Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc add to long-standing reliability and technical problems with two other core systems - the electromagnetic system to launch planes and the arresting gear to catch them when they land. While progress was being made on the carrier’s other flawed systems, the elevator is “our Achilles heel,” Navy Secretary Richard Spencer told reporters in August without providing details.
USA - A series of large earthquakes has rattled California over the last 24 hours, and scientists are telling us that the shaking was the result of “movement along the San Andreas Fault system”. In recent months there has been an alarming amount of seismic activity all along “the Ring of Fire”, and there have been times when the number of global earthquakes has been way above normal. Could it be possible that all of this unusual seismic activity is leading up to something? Experts are telling us that we are overdue for the “Big One” to hit California. And when it does eventually strike, it could be far worse than most people would dare to imagine. We have been witnessing unusual seismic activity all over the world, and it has become very clear that our planet is becoming increasingly unstable.
USA - It is the beginning of the San Andreas fault, where experts fear 'The Big One' could begin. But a small, bubbling pool of mud that stinks of rotting eggs near the Salton Sea is causing concern. Dubbed 'the slow one', experts studying the phenomenon say it is similar to a 'moving sinkhole' - and is speeding up, destroying everything in its path. Imperial County officials studying the muddy spring say it has been increasing in speed through - first 60 feet over a few months, and then 60 feet in a single day.
RUSSIA - The World Jewish Congress co-organized this week the Second Moscow International Conference on Combating Antisemitism, Xenophobia, and Racism, under the leadership of the Russian Jewish Congress, with 600 delegates from more than 35 countries, including government representatives and law enforcement officials, as well as international experts in the field. Conference participants released on Tuesday an official declaration emphasizing that it is “our duty to develop an effective system of measures to combat any and all manifestations of racial, ethnic, and religious intolerance. There is only one short step from appeals inciting interethnic and sectarian strife to murder and pogroms. A shattering example of this is the horrible Pittsburgh shooting," reads the declaration.
USA - CNN's Don Lemon doubled down Wednesday on his comment earlier this week that the "biggest terror threat in this country are white men." Lemon said Wednesday that the "evidence is overwhelming" that the statement is true. The CNN anchor's comments have been condemned on the right, a fact Lemon noted during his Wednesday show.
USA - A vast postal surveillance system is tracking every piece of mail you send. Moreover, the US Postal Service (USPS) frequently shares data about mail with law enforcement. In particular, the USPS photographs the front and back of every envelope, postcard, and package it ships. The USPS also regularly shares images of mail with law enforcement, Fast Company reveals. In fact, law enforcement needs no warrant to track mail if the Postal Inspection Service does the tracking. Furthermore, a program called the mail cover lets any law enforcement agency get information about your mail from the Postal Service. Ultimately, everything you mail or receive through the mail is being tracked by a vast postal surveillance system.
USA - The United States is pumping record amounts of oil, vaulting over Russia to become the world’s biggest producer of crude. The Energy Information Administration said Thursday that the US produced more than 11.3 million barrels a day in August, a 4 percent increase over the old record set in July. Russia’s energy ministry estimates that country pumped 11.2 million barrels a day in August. OPEC reports Saudi Arabia pumped 10.4 million barrels a day. It’s the first time since 1973 that the US leads the world in oil production. Several states hit record production in August including Texas, which accounts for about 40 percent of US crude. The energy agency says pipeline bottlenecks in Texas and New Mexico are causing more use of trucks and rail cars to haul oil.
USA - The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters! In short, every major political institution has been increasingly discredited as Brazil has spiraled deeper and deeper into a dark void. And from the abyss emerged a former army captain and six-term congressman from Rio de Janeiro, Jair Bolsonaro, with the slogan “Brazil above everything, God above everyone,” and promises to fix everything with hardline tactics.
GERMANY - Every Friday in Chemnitz, Germany, a crowd of far-right activists gather to denounce immigrants. “What do we with foreigners?” a man calls into a megaphone. “Out out out!” the protesters reply. We went to Chemnitz to witness the weekly demonstrations, which began last August when two refugees from Syria and Iraq allegedly stabbed a German man to death. The crime became a rallying cry for the far right and others who oppose migrants. And it has resulted in real violence, including numerous attacks on immigrant businesses.
EUROPE - Professor Christopher Layne concludes that ESDP (the European Security and Defense Policy), was instead “envisioned as the backbone of an independent European security policy, one developed by Europeans without US input.” If that was not enough to unsettle US leaders, Layne notes, at their November 2000 meeting, the European Union’s defense ministers “gave ESDP concrete expression by announcing plans to create a sixty-thousand strong Rapid Reaction Force (RRF).” The ESDP and RRF plans triggered a pronounced disagreement between the United States and the EU about how far the “Europeanization” of the Continent’s defense could or should go. Creating a capable European security organization to handle purely European contingencies makes sense. Developing such a capability also would transform Europe into a true ally instead of a glorified US protectorate, which could prove crucial if it becomes necessary to confront a menace to the entire transatlantic community.
GERMANY - Angela Merkel’s decision to stand down as party leader is the end of an era – and not just for Germany. She embodied the idea that there should be power behind a European throne, yet much of Europe is now in revolt against that very concept as voters turn to parties who value the nation state.
SWITZERLAND - We are pushing our planet to the brink. Human activity — how we feed, fuel, and finance our lives — is taking an unprecedented toll on wildlife, wild places, and the natural resources we need to survive. On average, we’ve seen an astonishing 60% decline in the size of populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians in just over 40 years, according to WWF’s Living Planet Report 2018.
“Just what is an APOSTLE?”
Today we find the Church of God in a “wilderness of religious confusion!”
The confusion is not merely around the Church – within the religions of the world outside – but WITHIN the very heart of The True Church itself!
Read online or contact email to request a copy
