“The first thing to understand about the destructive mob riots sweeping the country is that they aren’t race riots. The death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25 while being arrested by the police is merely the pretext for the violence. The cause is hatred.
“Hatred of America, first of all, but ultimately hatred of civilized order itself.
“Many of the thugs looting and destroying property are white. So what we are witnessing is not a battle between black and white. It’s a battle between the forces of civilization, on the one hand, and the forces of anarchy, on the other.
“It is curious that the most egregious scenes of violence are taking place in blue states in cities run by left-wing mayors. Many of the mayors and chiefs of police are themselves black. In many locales, the police have been told to stand down as the mob rampages. The mayor of Minneapolis blamed “white supremacists” and “outsiders” for the violence.
“Unfortunately for that assertion, there are no white supremacists to be found, only members of Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and kindred groups. An Analysis of the ZIP codes of those arrested shows that they are overwhelmingly from the Minneapolis area.
“Meanwhile, various celebrities are encouraging lawlessness by cheering on the malefactors, publicly promising to post bail for them.” (“Those burning our cities aim to destroy our civilization,” Roger Kimball, the Epoch Times, 6/4/2020).
Mr. Kimball quoted Tucker Carlson who said: ‘What you’re watching is the ancient battle between those who have a stake in society, and those who don’t, and seek to destroy it.”
He added: “I should say a word about The Narrative. The official line is that police officer (now ex-police officer) Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for nearly nine minutes and asphyxiating him. The whole horrible incident was captured on video – Floyd can be heard piteously saying “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe” – so it’s an open and shut case.
“Except that there is a wrinkle. The preliminary autopsy report revealed “no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation.” The report went on to note that “Mr. Floyd had underlying health conditions including coronary artery disease and hypertensive heart disease. The combined effects of Mr. Floyd being restrained by the police, his underlying health conditions and any potential intoxicants in his system likely contributed to his death.”
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Black lives matter wants more family breakdown (Manifesto)
We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.
We foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise).
(Black Lives Matter. What we believe. https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/?fbclid=IwAR1ynQIlPCxVCMr2kfdfsM10RTHOW9CjwEsNcVpACMmkDSWyy1zDSNHAvUo)
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GERMANY – US TROOP REDUCTION COULD HARM NATO SECURITY
Germany’s defense minister suggested that U.S. President Donald Trump’s reported plans to take American troops out of Germany could weaken the U.S. as well as the NATO alliance. Trump is said to have signed off on a plan to reduce troops stationed in Germany from 34,500 to no more than 25,000. German Defens e Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said Berlin hasn’t been informed of any such move, but “the fact is that the presence of U.S soldiers in Germany serves . . . America’s own security.” (Lansing State Journal, 6/9/2020).
Independently of the Trump administration’s recent move in that direction, German government advisors are hinting of possible US troop reductions in Germany. In a current analysis of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), the author notes that, given the Corona crisis is inducing a drastic slump in the US economy and the national debt is likely to skyrocket to over 100 percent, it can be expected that Washington will have to set certain priorities in its military policy. The USA would focus more than before on the power struggle with China and possibly reduce its presence in Europe. The Trump administration’s relevant plans have been met with strong criticism in Washington and Berlin. If implemented it would be “a gift for Putin,” according to US politicians and German military officials. It would certainly not be easy for the USA to make major reductions in Germany, where its military installations are playing a key role in US wars. (German Foreign Policy, 6/9/2020)
The German government is using the Covid-19 pandemic to expand its strategic disengagement from the USA. According to reports, Germany is leading efforts to form a European “Vaccine Alliance,” together with France, Italy and the Netherlands to prevent the EU from losing out to the United States and China “in the geopolitical race for a Coronavirus vaccine.” The participating states are already negotiating with pharmaceutical companies, which would receive government research funds and purchase guarantees and in return organize the desired Covid-19 vaccine’s distribution according to their own concepts. It has previously been made known that the Trump-Administration, in return for billions in subsidies, had secured national priority access to the majority portion of a future vaccine. Now, the EU is planning billions in subsidies for pharmaceutical companies, in spite of the fact that they are already known for their huge profits. (German Foreign Policy, 6/8/2020)
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GEORGE FLOYD NOT A MARTYR
[Black] Conservative commentator Candace Owens lashed out at the emerging personality cult of George Floyd, whose death in Minneapolis last month first sparked protests and then riots.
“I do not support George Floyd and the media depiction of him as a martyr for black America,” she said in Facebook Live video on Wednesday.
Referring to the writings of African-American writer and filmmaker Shelby Steele, Owens said black Americans spend too much time defending criminals.
“We are unique in that we are the only people that fight and scream and demand support and justice for the people in our community that are up to no good,” she said.
. . . Owens noted Floyd’s prison record, and said that “I am not going to play a part of the broken black culture that always wants to martyr criminals, to pretend that they were upstanding human beings that just wanted to help society.”
“He has a rap sheet that was long and was dangerous,” she said. “He was an example of a violent criminal his entire life, OK, up until the very last moment.”
. . . Owens said no one who has the kind of criminal record Floyd had should be held up as a model citizen, but black Americans are doing just that. “We are embarrassing in that regard. This is why we have a cycle and a toxic culture because nobody wants to tell the truth in black America. It is so easy to be effective it is so easy to ask white people to bow down and apologize and do all these things for us. It is crap,” she said. (World News Daily, 6/9/2020)
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Thousands rally in Tel Aviv against Netanyahu’s annexation plans
Meretz MK says move would ‘replace an occupation . . . with an apartheid’; Joint List chief: Jews, Arabs who want peace must oppose extending Israeli sovereignty to parts of West Bank
Thousands of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv Saturday evening to protest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pledge to begin annexing parts of the West Bank next month. Police initially sought to block the rally but backtracked Friday after meeting with organizers, who urged participants to wear masks and adhere to social distancing guidelines. Dozens of officers were securing the demonstration after police said attendance would be capped at 2,000, though the Haaretz daily put turnout at 6,000 people in what appeared to be the largest protest in the country since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
The demonstration was organized by the left-wing Meretz party and the communist Hadash faction of the majority-Arab Joint List, along with several other left-wing rights groups. MK Nitzan Horowitz, the head of Meretz, told the crowd that annexation would be a “war crime” and cost Israel millions as the economy is already reeling due to the pandemic. “We cannot replace an occupation of dozens of years with an apartheid that will last forever,” shouted a hoarse Horowitz. “Yes, to two states for two peoples, no to violence and bloodshed,” he continued. “No to annexation, yes to peace.” (https://www.timesofisrael.com/thousands-rally-in-tel-aviv-against-netanyahus-annexation-plans/)
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SERBIAN CHURCHGOERS ROBBED BY MUSLIMS DURING SERVICE
“According to the latest update of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are currently 8,052 migrants in Serbia, the majority of them in 19 refugee centers across the country. Their stated countries of origin are Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iraq, Iran, Morocco and Palestine.”
Hmmm, what do all those countries (and “Palestine”) have in common? Could it be an ideology that holds Christianity in contempt and considers Christians “the most vile of created beings” (cf. Qur’an 98:6)?
Two migrants of unknown origin entered the St. Alexander Nevsky church in the Serbian capital Belgrade on Sunday and then robbed several attendants of the liturgy of their money and mobile phones. Those attending the church service managed to catch one of the thieves and hand him over to police responding to the scene, but the other got away. (Jihad Watch, 6/7/2020)
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The 100-year wound that Hungary cannot forget
by Nick Thorpe, BBC News, Hungary, 4 June 2020.
Exactly 100 years ago, in the Trianon palace at Versailles, two medium-ranking Hungarian officials signed away two thirds of their country, and 3.3 million of their compatriots. A new monument has appeared in the past weeks in front of parliament in Budapest, among many already erected by Viktor Orban’s government to Hungary’s past glories. For Hungary the 1920 treaty was a national wound that still festers to this day. Mr. Orban’s message to the world is that Hungary must now be respected. For his critics, he has dug deeper into that wound.
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What Hungary lost in the Treaty of Trianon
As the Austro-Hungarian empire fell apart at the end of World War One, historic Hungary was forced to cede what is now Slovakia, Vojvodina, Croatia, part of Slovenia, Ruthenia, the Burgenland and Transylvania to the new states of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, to a much-enlarged Romania, and even to Austria, a fellow loser in the war. (MORE: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europ 6/4/2020)
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How they see us: Racism, riots, and police brutality (The Week, 6 June 2020)
Suffocated to death for the color of your skin: That is “the terrifying reality of what it really means to be black in America right now,” said Piers Morgan at the Daily Mail (U.K.). The entire world has seen the video of the arrest and killing of George Floyd. For nearly nine excruciating minutes, white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin crushed the life out of the handcuffed, defenseless Floyd. “Even by the dreadful standards of police violence against black people in America,” this heartless murder was a new low. Of course American cities erupted in riots — how could they not? What might have quelled them was a president speaking with empathy and grace and pledging an end to police brutality. Instead, as America burned, Donald Trump “poured fuel onto the fire.” He actually threatened war crimes against his own people, tweeting, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Now he is ordering the U.S. military into the streets.
The hypocrisy is breathtaking, said the Global Times (China) in an editorial. Hong Kong suffered months of violent unrest last year, during which rioters caused hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage and injured countless police officers. China never sent in the troops, yet Washington still “arrogantly and unreasonably” accused Beijing of human rights abuses. Meanwhile, “the riots in the U.S. have lasted just a week,” and “efforts for reaching a peaceful solution have barely been made,” but already Trump is deploying soldiers. The U.S. may have the world’s strongest military, but its system of governance stands revealed as a failure. The COVID-19 epidemic there rages out of control, and now the social unrest “exposes the deep-rooted problem of inequality and a lack of justice.”
“Looted shops, burned-out office buildings, smashed ATMs, and wrecked police cars” litter American streets, said Alexander Gasyuk at Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Russia). Protesters burned the U.S. flag right outside the White House, as Trump hid inside, tweeting threats that he would unleash “vicious dogs” on his oppressed citizens. The demonstrators want justice for Floyd, but the U.S. justice system nearly always lets police who kill unarmed black men go free. The Ferguson, Mo., officer who shot Michael Brown six times in 2012 was acquitted because he supposedly “acted in self-defense.” That same excuse got George Zimmerman — not even a cop but a neighborhood watch volunteer — off the hook for the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
The U.S. has always reminded me of India, said Malachi O’Doherty at the Belfast Telegraph (U.K.). “Both are huge, rich countries with swathes of poverty and dereliction,” and in both it’s perfectly acceptable to stride past homeless beggars. “De facto segregation seems accepted as normal,” with black Americans relegated to an underclass. As in every caste system, state organs freely oppress those on the bottom. The entire world sees that clearly now. Until the U.S. lives up to its promise of equality for all, it can never be a model to the rest of us. (The Week, 6/7/2020) (Copyright © 2020 The Week Publications, Inc, All rights reserved)
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ANALYSIS: A rupture looms between Israel and the United States [over China]
As an American-Chinese power struggle ramps up, the Jewish state increasingly feels the fallout with US pressure to nix deals it deems detrimental to its security interests.
WASHINGTON (JTA) 3 June 2020 — Israel’s announcement last week that an Israeli consortium would build Sorek 2, the world’s largest desalination plant, surprised many who had been watching the deal: The contract had been expected to go to a Hong Kong-based company. But that was before the Trump administration ramped up pressure on Israel to diminish its ties to China. For years, Israel has been working to dramatically expand trade with China, one of the world’s largest markets. That push is suddenly running up against strong opposition from the White House, as the Trump administration pivots from the decades-old policy of increasing US engagement with China to treating the country as an increasingly bitter rival.
The Sorek 2 deal was widely seen as a bow to pressure from the Trump administration, which is pushing Israel and other key allies to curtail trade with China. But observers of this deepening dynamic say it may not be enough to head off a US-Israel crisis over China. A Chinese company, SIPG, is building a major port in Haifa and will control it for 25 years. The Trump administration, according to multiple insiders, wants Israel to roll back at least part of that deal. The Israelis consider it a done deal, even if they may have regrets over it.
“It’s a bit of a shock to the system,” Jonathan Schanzer, the vice president of a think tank, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, that has close ties with the Trump administration and with the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said of the looming crisis. “We had been hearing from the administration officials and even some Israeli diplomats about some of the complications arising from the intensification of the great power competition between the US and China.”
China has been building infrastructure in Israel since at least 2007, when the China Civil Engineering Construction Corp. brought in 300 workers to build the tunnel system linking the southern entrance to Haifa with the suburbs to the city’s north. That success has led to a thirst for Chinese construction, and there was talk of China building new rail links in Israel. China’s Bright Food Group owns a controlling stake in Tnuva, Israel’s preeminent dairy. Decoupling from China won’t be easy. Still, Israel’s willingness last week to cut China out of the Sorek 2 desalination deal shows it is ready to roll back engagement on some fronts.
(https://www.timesofisrael.com/breaking-china-a-rupture-looms-between-israel-and-the-united-states/)
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TO THE POINT
- Cecil Rhodes: Councillors demand Oxford Uni statue removal by Michael Race, BBC News, 9 June 2020 – A group of councillors has backed the campaign to remove a statue of imperialist Cecil Rhodes and called on Oxford University to “decolonise.” Twenty-six Oxford city councillors signed a letter saying the figure at Oriel College was “incompatible” with the city’s “commitment to anti-racism.” A protest by the “Rhodes Must Fall” campaign as part of the Black Lives Matter movement will be held later. (MORE: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-52975687)
- Billions More Desert Locusts Devour Crops from India to Africa, Adding to Farmers’ Pandemic Woes by George Thomas, Christian Broadcasting Network, Inc., 28 May 2020 – From India and Pakistan to Africa and the Middle East, farmers face a perfect storm. Already struggling with crippling coronavirus lockdowns, they face billions of locusts devouring crops and putting millions at risk. The scenes out of parts of northern and central India this week were alarming to watch as billions of desert locusts descended on several states. And it’s only going to get worse. Heavy rains and the cyclone season in June are expected to see the swarms multiply.
- Why Hong Kongers may get path to UK citizenship — Britain will change its immigration rules to allow millions of people from Hong Kong “a route to citizenship” if China passes controversial new national security laws, Boris Johnson has said. In an article for The Times, the prime minister warns that the new controls would “dramatically erode” Hong Kong’s autonomy, which would breach the terms of China’s Joint Declaration treaty with the UK. Johnson says he is willing to make one of the “biggest changes in our visa system in British history,” by allowing up to three million Hong Kong residents extended visa-free access to Britain and the opportunity to pursue citizenship. (The Week, 6/3/2020)
- Antifa is an extremist movement that demands nothing less than the destruction of America and its democratic system of government. (Clarion Project, 6/3/2020)
- “As it rises in prominence, the issue of defunding police will divide the Democratic Party more than the GOP. For while the hard left sees cops in ideological and class terms as racist and fascist, the right, by and large, sees the police as the last line of defense against the anarchy we saw erupt when there were not enough cops in New York and D.C. to control the mobs looting Fifth Avenue and Georgetown.” (PB, 6/9/2020)
- Racist — a person who shows or feels discrimination or prejudice against people of other races, or who believes that a particular race is superior to another. (Google Dictionary)
- Authorities in Antwerp removed a statue of Belgium’s King Leopold II after it was vandalised during anti-racism protests. Between 1885 and 1908 Leopold ran Congo as his fief; millions are estimated to have been killed under his regime. In Britain, London’s mayor announced a review of the capital’s statues. On Sunday protesters toppled a statue of Edward Colston, a slave trader, in Bristol. (The Economist, 6/10/2020)
- Germany warns Israel against West Bank annexation plans Jerusalem – Germany’s foreign minister on Wednesday warned Israel that its plan to begin annexing parts of the West Bank would violate international law, but he declined to say how Germany or Europe would respond. The Jerusalem visit comes weeks before Israel intends to extend its sovereignty over Jewish West Bank settlements. Critics say the annexation plan would destroy any hope for establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel. The Palestinians seek all of the occupied West Bank for an independent state. (Lansing State Journal, 6/11).
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AFTERTHOUGHT
LEARN TO LET GO!
A significant change has taken place in the last couple of weeks. Now , Antifa and Black Lives Matter have the upper hand; while the police are vilified.
How long can our civilization last? How much longer does the US have?
Daniel 2:44 says: “And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.”
At the end of all this is the Kingdom of God, which Christians have been praying for throughout the generations. We need to understand something about the Kingdom of God. It cannot come until the fall of all the kingdoms and republics that exist in this world at this time. That includes the United States.
Over 40 years ago, my wife and I lived in Rhodesia, a country that does not exist any more. As the threats to Rhodesia became more serious, there was a tendency for Christians to become more political. They were attempting to save the country, their homes and their livelihood. It was futile. Rhodesians had to learn to let go and let God fulfill His purpose.
Daniel 2:21 shows us that God is behind the rise and fall of nations. “And He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and raises up kings; He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding.”
The establishment of the Kingdom of God may be nearer than we think. We’ve all been praying for it for decades. Let us now pray fervently that God will establish it soon.
MR 
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