Illegal Immigrants–Entire System Broken
USA Today wrote on March 31:
“Along the Texas border with Mexico – from El Paso to Eagle Pass to the Rio Grande Valley – masses of migrants have been crossing the border in unprecedented numbers, overwhelming federal holding facilities and sending local leaders and volunteers scrambling to deal with the relentless waves of people. Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said… that the border had hit its ‘breaking point’ and urged Congress to come up with legislative solutions to the problem. Border Patrol officials were on pace in March for more than 100,000 apprehensions and encounters with migrants – the highest monthly tally in over a decade, he said. Around 90 percent of those – or 90,000 – crossed the border between legal ports of entry… ‘The surge numbers are just overwhelming the entire system,’ McAleenan said.
“President Donald Trump recently declared a national emergency at the border to secure funding for a proposed wall, despite Congressional opposition. On Friday, the president in a tweet threatened to close the U.S.-Mexico border if Mexico didn’t stop undocumented migrants from coming. But not even Trump’s proposed wall could stop the wave of migrants overflowing shelters in the Rio Grande Valley, where the vast majority are turning themselves in to apply for asylum, McAllen Mayor Jim Darling said. A wall would go up on levees about a mile from the winding Rio Grande, which is the U.S.-Mexico border. Migrants will just have to cross the river to be in U.S. territory and seek asylum, he said…
“Once in the U.S., the migrants – mostly families from Central America – are crowding into facilities designed to hold single adult men… Increasingly, smugglers are bringing larger numbers of families together and delivering them across the Rio Grande, knowing they’ll overrun facilities and be released until their immigration court date… Under U.S. law, Border Patrol is not supposed to hold any migrant for longer than 72 hours. Usually, Border Patrol hands them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which can detain families for up to 20 days. But all of those facilities are overcrowded…”
Breitbart wrote on March 31:
“… at current projections of illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border, Catch and Release levels, and visa overstays, the nation is set to admit and resettle about one million to 1.5 million border crossers and illegal aliens this year.
“… Center for Immigration Studies Executive Director Mark Krikorian compared the flood of illegal immigration to the European migrant crisis, which remains ongoing, where the continent saw nearly 2.5 million illegal crossings into the Mediterranean in 2015 and 2016. ‘We are seeing an Angela Merkel-style disaster on the border caused by loopholes in our laws that the Democrats refuse to even consider changing,’ Krikorian told Politico.”
For decades, the USA has been struggling unsuccessfully with its broken immigration system. This will not change.
Trump on Track for Huge Landside Victory in 2020
Politico wrote on March 26:
“U.S. President Donald Trump has a low approval rating…
“But if the election were held today, he’d likely ride to a second term in a huge landslide, according to multiple economic models with strong track records of picking presidential winners and losses. Credit a strong U.S. economy featuring low unemployment, rising wages and low gas prices — along with the historic advantage held by incumbent presidents.”
Gun Glorification
The Sun wrote on March 29:
“Millennials are flooding Instagram with snaps of themselves brandishing deadly guns… The trend follows an alarming rise in gun violence and mass shootings, with latest figures revealing there were 39,773 gun deaths in the US in 2017 – the highest on record in the country – and more than 2700 this year alone. Last year there were 340 mass shootings, including a spate of bloody school gun attacks.
“The grim statistic prompted CNN to claim that at one stage in 2018, there was the equivalent of one school shooting per week… Yet despite the gun violence epidemic, a growing number of young Americans are ‘glorifying’ firearms by posting ‘countless’ pictures and videos to hundreds of thousands of followers… Thousands of people post gun snaps each day…”
There will come a time when people’s fascination with guns will cease, and when they will destroy their guns or beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.
Sex Outside Marriage Just Fine?
npr wrote on March 29:
“Until this week, sex between unmarried people in Utah was technically illegal, a vestige of earlier times. That changed Wednesday, when Gov. Gary Herbert signed a bill that decriminalizes sex outside of marriage in the state… Utah’s 1973 fornication law designated sex outside of marriage as a class B misdemeanor. The act carried a possible penalty of up to six months in jail or a maximum fine of $1,000. Utah was among only a few states that retained these laws.
“State Senate Minority Leader Karen Mayne sponsored the bill… ‘You hear all over the U.S. how you have antiquated laws about horses in the streets and all kinds of things, so we wanted to make them modern-day, in the now,’ Mayne says… State Rep. Paul Ray called the 1973 fornication law unenforceable…”
We are not addressing here the aspect of criminal prosecution, but it is clear that God condemns fornication and sex outside marriage, including adultery. Even though a sin is a sin and every sin can be forgiven upon genuine repentance, fornication in all its different forms and adultery are not light transgressions or petty offenses, but serious and destructive violations of God’s law.
Brexit Disaster
Deutsche Welle wrote on March 29:
“The Conservative government lost its Brexit vote in the House of Commons on Friday by a margin of 58 votes, on the day the UK had been scheduled to leave the EU… The result means the UK has failed to meet a 2300 UTC deadline and thus loses the automatic extension of the Article 50 negotiating period until May 22, which the EU had offered last week. The British government now has to propose a new way forward to the EU by April 12 — or revoke the Article 50 it triggered to leave the bloc. Otherwise, the UK will have left the EU without a deal…
“The European Commission [stated] a ‘No-deal scenario on 12 April is now likely,’ adding that the benefits of the Withdrawal Agreement would not be replicated under such circumstances. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas echoed the Commission’s comments: ‘We are running out of time to prevent a disorderly Brexit,’ he wrote on Twitter on Friday. ‘The British must decide before April 12 how to proceed. Otherwise, it is a No-deal Brexit, as tough as that would be. Germany and the EU are well prepared in any case.’”
No More Brexit Delay?
Daily Mail wrote on March 30:
“Theresa May faces an insurrection after more than half of Conservative MPs demanded that Brexit should not be delayed by more than a few months. A letter calling for Britain to leave the EU soon, even if it means a no-deal Brexit, was signed by 170 of the 330 Tory Members of Parliament and sent to the Prime Minister after her withdrawal deal was rejected for a third time on Friday. As many as 10 Cabinet ministers… and 20 other members of the Government are believed to have signed the letter…”
Brexit Disaster Deepens
The Sun wrote on April 2:
“BRITAIN’S squabbling MPs tonight plunged the country into further Brexit chaos by voting against every possible way forward – AGAIN. The House of Commons rejected four different Brexit options leaving the UK more deadlocked than ever…”
Newsmax added on April 1:
“The European Parliament’s Brexit coordinator, Guy Verhofstadt, warned that a no-deal Brexit was looming unless Britain changed course. ‘The House of Commons again votes against all options,’ he tweeted. ‘A hard Brexit becomes nearly inevitable…”
In Case of a No-Deal Brexit
The EUObserver wrote on April 3:
“EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker on Wednesday (3 April) ruled out another short extension to the Brexit deadline in a speech to MEPs, if the Brexit withdrawal agreement is not adopted by British lawmakers by 12 April. Juncker said that British MPs – if they want to have another short extension – first need to vote to pass the deal already negotiated between the UK government and the EU.”
The EUObserver wrote on April 4:
“MEPs Thursday approved a law allowing British citizens visa-free travel to the EU’s Schengen passport-free zone for 90 day trips, under a no-deal Brexit. The waiver will depend on Britain providing the same rights to EU travellers. The bill was passed after EU countries, supporting Spain, pushed the EU parliament to remove a British MEP from the file, which describes Gibraltar as a ‘colony of the British crown’…
“[All EU-27 members agreed that the] EU will immediately introduce customs checks and collect import duties [for incoming goods] in the event of Britain leaving the bloc without a withdrawal agreement on 12 April…”
Brexit and Merkel as Holy Roman Emperor?
The Week wrote on March 29:
“What if there are not enough votes for an extension, though? Or if the E.U., which has already granted a delay till April 12, refuses to play ball? (I for one hope for the latter, if only to imagine German Chancellor Angela Merkel triumphing once more in the autumnal twilight of her reign as the greatest Holy Roman Emperor since Frederick II.)
“What would a no-deal Brexit actually look like? Who knows. It is to this unknown country that many Brexit hardliners wish to venture and never return. It is difficult to believe all the metropolitan liberal horror stories about food shortages and the end of air travel and mobs of St. George Cross-waving thugs roaming the streets burning cafés and gelaterias… It is also difficult to believe that the whole thing will not be a logistical nightmare…”
Even if we were to accept the concept of Merkel fulfilling the role of a Holy Roman Emperor, she would not have been the first since Frederick II, as Napoleon and Mussolini fulfilled that role as well… and the last personification and manifestation of a Holy Roman Emperor will arise soon on the world stage.
Trump Can’t Wait
Breitbart wrote on March 29:
“President Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton has offered some words of assurances to the British people… ‘We’re standing here waiting to make a trade deal with a United Kingdom independent of the European Union,’ Mr Bolton continued, in an optimistic note… ‘President Trump is eager for the will of the British people to be carried out and he is even more eager to do a trade deal…’
“At the time of the historic 2016 vote, and since, President Donald Trump has been a supporter of Brexit and the prospect of a strong U.S.-UK bilateral trade deal… ‘He thinks that the EU rules discriminate against American trade, and he wants a free, fare, and reciprocal trade with Great Britain.’… ‘Britain had a referendum, the Leave vote won in what everybody agrees was a free and fair election; doesn’t the will of the British people get to be carried out?’”
It would be interesting to see if the prophesied Brexit will lead to a closer collaboration between the USA and the UK against the wishes and interests of the EU.
The Humiliation of Britain
The New Statesman America wrote on March 27:
“We are reduced to this. A humiliated, supplicant British prime minister sitting alone in a Brussels side room for six hours while the rest of the European Union discusses our fate. A government no longer capable of governing. A country that has become a byword for chaos and dysfunction.
“A sundered ‘United Kingdom’. Hundreds of thousands of Britons seeking citizenship in other EU states. Industry howling in rage and frustration. MPs needing police protection. People stockpiling food and medicines. The public discourse poisoned. Families split. Friends riven. The military on standby in case of civil unrest…
“It is… an epic act of self-harm brought about not by some war or disaster but by our own stupidity. And the true ‘enemies of the people’ are… those whose lies, zealotry, and political recklessness have all but broken Britain…”
Ongoing and Deepening Tensions between US and German Relationship
Deutsche Welle wrote on April 1:
“The news that Germany won’t meet defense spending targets set by NATO plays badly in the US, even among friends of the country. It is just the latest in a string of issues fueling tension between Berlin and Washington.
“There arguably would never have been a good moment for Berlin to renege on its planned increase in defense spending. But to do it in the run-up to NATO celebrating its 70th anniversary in Washington is particularly bad timing. Germany’s latest projection that it now won’t even meet the 1,5 percent mark it set itself was met with dismay.
“‘There is very little understanding in the United States, quite frankly — whether among Republicans or Democrats — for the German government’s reluctance to meet the 2 percent of the GDP spending target,’ said Jeff Rathke, president of the American Institute for Contemporary Studies at Johns Hopkins University, ‘and even less understanding for the current wobbliness with respect to the 1.5 percent of GDP target which Chancellor Merkel and other German leaders just a few months ago affirmed.’
“Republican Senator Rand Paul, a member of the foreign relations committee, lashed out on Twitter at Berlin’s projected military spending, writing that ‘Germany expects the US to pay for their defense.’…
“[Germany’s] move threatens to chip away at the public perception that Germany is a reliable player at a time when trans-Atlantic ties are challenged by a US president who is deeply skeptical about Washington’s European allies and especially Germany…
“Complicating matters further, Berlin’s defense spending is only the latest among a range of contested issues between the US and German governments: President Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on German cars, US opposition against the planned Nord Stream 2 pipeline and against allowing Chinese telecoms giant Huawei to build Germany’s new 5G network — all have increased the friction between Washington and Berlin…”
These tensions will continue.
Germany’s Lacking Defense Spending
Deutsche Welle reported on April 4:
“Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen repeated the government’s pledge to spend more on defense, albeit in smaller increments than Washington would like. Germany plans to increase its defense spending to 1.5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) by 2024 and will then try to hit NATO’s 2 percent target at an unspecified point in the future… The comments came… amid hefty criticism from US President Donald Trump and others in his administration over Germany’s contributions. ‘It is simply unacceptable for Europe’s largest economy to continue to ignore the threat of Russian aggression and neglect its own self-defense and our common defense,’ Vice President Mike Pence said on Wednesday.
“Despite attempting to dispel doubts about Berlin’s commitment to the military alliance, the German government suffered an embarrassing slip-up on Thursday when a NATO motion [calling for strengthening the military alliance as the backbone of European and trans-Atlantic security] barely passed through parliament…
“Germany is hurting its credibility by not holding to its pledge to significantly increase defense spending, said Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who took over from Merkel as the head of the Christian Democrats in December. The low rate at which Germany has upped its defense spending is ‘one of the biggest political open flanks that we have in debates with the United States,’ Kramp-Karrenbauer told the Heilbronner Stimme newspaper.
“Germany’s opposition, on the other hand, is reluctant to hold to the 2 percent spending target…”
Bild Online reported on April 4 that more and more Germans are against Germany’s membership in NATO. In 2019, only 54 percent of Germans are in support of membership in NATO, while 68 percent expressed support in 2017. In addition, only 31 percent of Germans would be in favor of defending the USA, while 41 percent would be against it. Finally, the EUObserver wrote on April 4 that “Turkey and Germany have defended their ties with Russia following strident criticism by the US at a Nato event in Washington.”
Fox Business Network Critical of Pope Francis
Newsmax wrote on April 1:
“Fox Business Network host Elizabeth MacDonald took a sharp jab Monday at the spiritual leader of more than 1 billion Catholics, chastising Pope Francis as ‘weak’ on communism, socialism, and border walls… [It] came a day after the pope told reporters that those who build border walls would ‘become prisoners of the walls they put up,’ adding: ‘This is history’…
“Fellow Fox Business Network host Stuart Varney interpreted the pope’s Sunday admonition as a shot at President Donald Trump, with MacDonald calling it an example of the pope getting ‘political.’ MacDonald later added that her point was the pope is failing to criticize ‘the governments that cause these migrant outflows.’…
“During the 2016 presidential election, Pope Francis said it was ‘not Christian’ for a person to think ‘only about building walls.’ And Trump responded by calling the remarks ‘disgraceful.’”
Anti-Semitism Outbreak because of Measles Outbreak
The New York Times wrote on March 29:
“A measles outbreak in this suburban New York county… has also intensified long-smoldering tensions between the rapidly expanding and insular ultra-Orthodox Jewish community and secular society… Hasidic leaders said they feared not only a rise in anti-Semitism but an invasion of their cloistered community by the authorities under the guise of public health. On Tuesday, county officials took the extraordinary step of announcing a state of emergency, barring unvaccinated children under 18 from public places, including restaurants, shopping centers, houses of worship [including churches and synagogues] and schools…
“About 31 percent of the population is Jewish, according to the state, and includes one of the largest concentrations of ultra-Orthodox Jews in the country… fear of vaccines has spread around the world in recent years, with childhood vaccination rates reportedly declining in several countries as a result. Nothing in the belief system of Orthodox Jews makes them any more likely to oppose vaccines, and several Orthodox rabbinical organizations have called on parents to vaccinate their children. But Hasidic Jews… and some ultra-Orthodox rabbis have come out against vaccines…
“Steve Gold, the chairman of the Jewish Community Relations Council for the Jewish Federation of Rockland [was] saying the move by county officials risked exacerbating the anti-Semitism that already existed in the area before the measles crisis…
“The anxiety over the outbreak has spread from the aisles at the kosher supermarkets where women in head-coverings pushed shopping carts laden with babies and goods for the coming Passover holiday, to the ritual bathhouses or mikvahs. In children’s clothing shops, mothers buying Sabbath finery traded stories about friends with sickened children. Near a strip mall that sold religious candelabra and fur hats, a group of teenage boys tugged at the prayer threads that hung at their waists, discussing whether they would hang out with unvaccinated friends…
“The anti-vaccine movement is rooted in a belief that the inoculations are linked to autism… A group called Parents Educating and Advocating for Children’s Health, or Peach, has also released an anti-vaccination handbook directed at Hasidic Jews… Fault lines have appeared within the Orthodox community as well, where its leadership has been struggling not only to push those who fail to immunize their children to get vaccinations, but against the false perception that Hasidim as a whole are against vaccination…”
We have purposefully omitted quoting from the article the typical stereotype but unfounded support for vaccinations and the polemic against those refusing vaccinations. But the hype and hysteria advocating vaccinations have led to mean antagonism against those who refuse to do so. Note the next article.
Frightening–Arizona’s Violation of Parent’s Rights
The Independent wrote on March 30:
“With guns drawn, the police officers broke down the door of the suburban Phoenix home in the early hours of a February morning. ‘Come out with your hands up!’ an officer yelled, with the dark front porch and foyer inside suddenly flooded with light from the officers’ flashlights. The target of the raid: an unvaccinated 2-year-old boy with a high fever. Video from the officers’ body cameras that was released on Thursday shows that moments later, the child’s father emerges, walking out backward with his hands over his head. The boy’s mother then comes out, too, cradling her young son in her arms. The boy was whisked away to a hospital, and since that raid on 25 February, he and the couple’s two other children, aged 4 and 6, have been in the state’s custody. The parents have been charged with child abuse…
“Under Arizona law, parents may decline vaccinations for their child based on personal, religious or medical exemptions. But that law is in opposition to the ‘parens patriae’ theory, a centuries-old principle that empowers the state to look after the interests of children and others unable to care for themselves… Police records show that on 25 February, Ms Beck had taken her 2-year-old boy to a clinic, where his temperature was recorded at above 100 degrees. The child’s doctor became concerned that he could have meningitis, after learning that he was lethargic and had not been vaccinated. Ms Beck was told to take him to an emergency room. ‘I called the doctor back and said, “Hey, I’m not sure how you got this 105 reading, my son’s acting fine,”’ Ms Beck told a local TV station. ‘”This doesn’t really seem like a medical emergency.”’
“The child’s doctor, after learning Ms Beck had ignored the recommendation to take the child to the hospital and having follow-up phone calls to the family go unanswered, then contacted the Arizona Department of Child Safety. Asked to do a welfare check, police officers later arrived at the family’s door, but were not allowed in… An emergency court order was issued, allowing police to take the child into custody…
“The boy was eventually found to have a respiratory illness. A judge has told the child’s parents that the state wants them to regain custody of their children, but it was unclear when that would happen.”
So, the overzealous doctor whose pride had been hurt, was wrong; the overzealous welfare department was wrong; the overzealous court was wrong; the overzealous police, following the court’s decision, were wrong; and the overzealous prosecution was wrong. Still, the children were taken away from the parents who have been charged with child abuse. Now, a judge, after recognizing the error of the state’s ways, wants the parents to regain custody, but it is unclear whether and how the state will cooperate.
We should remember that this is even happening in a state which allows refusal of vaccinations (which had really nothing to do with this case anyhow, except for the overzealous players in this affair) for personal, religious and medical exemptions. Please view our most recent StandingWatch program, “The DangerousVaccination Paranoia.”
Erdogan Suffers Defeat in Ankara and Istanbul
BBC wrote on April 1:
“The party of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has lost control of the capital, Ankara, in local elections, in a blow to his 16-year rule. The main opposition is also slightly ahead in the contest for mayor of Istanbul. But the president’s AKP party is challenging the result in both cities…
“With most media either pro-government or controlled by Mr Erdogan’s supporters, critics believe opposition parties campaigned at a disadvantage. Mr Erdogan’s rallies dominated TV coverage.
“The opposition pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) said the elections were unfair and refused to put forward candidates in several cities. Some of its leaders have been jailed on terrorism charges, accusations they reject.”
US Halts Delivery of Equipment for Fighter Aircraft to Turkey
Reuters reported on April 1:
“The United States has halted delivery of equipment related to the stealthy F-35 fighter aircraft to Turkey, marking the first concrete U.S. step to block delivery of the jet to the NATO ally in light of Ankara’s planned purchase of a Russian missile defense system… Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has refused to back down from Ankara’s planned purchase of a Russian S-400 missile defense system that the United States has said would compromise the security of F-35 aircraft.
“The disagreement over the F-35 is the latest of a series of diplomatic disputes between the United States and Turkey including Turkish demands that the United States extradite Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, differences over Middle East policy and the war in Syria, and sanctions on Iran…”
It was also stated in the press that this development represents a major escalation in the relationship between Turkey and the USA.
Asteroid Killed the Dinosaurs
The Washington Post wrote on March 29:
“Sixty-six million years ago, a massive asteroid crashed into a shallow sea near Mexico. The impact carved out a 90-mile-wide crater and flung mountains of earth into space. Earthbound debris fell to the planet in droplets of molten rock and glass.
“Ancient fish caught glass blobs in their gills as they swam, gape-mouthed, beneath the strange rain. Large, sloshing waves threw animals onto dry land, then more waves buried them in silt. Scientists working in North Dakota recently dug up fossils of these fish: They died within the first minutes or hours after the asteroid hit... ‘You’re going back to the day that the dinosaurs died,’ said Timothy Bralower, a Pennsylvania State University paleoceanographer who is studying the impact crater…
“The killer asteroid most famously claimed the dinosaurs. But the T. rex and the triceratops were joined by hordes of other living things. Freshwater and marine creatures were victims, as were plants and microorganisms, including 93 percent of plankton…
“Four decades of research buttresses the asteroid extinction theory, widely embraced as the most plausible explanation for the disappearance of dinosaurs. In the late 1970s, Luis and Walter Alvarez, a father-son scientist duo at the University of California at Berkeley, examined an unusual geologic layer between the Cretaceous and Paleogene periods. The boundary was full of the element iridium, which is rare in Earth’s crust but not in asteroids…
“After the asteroid struck, seismic waves from a magnitude 10 to 11 earthquake rippled through this sea…”
The Daily Mail added on March 30:
“… a paleontologist has finally confirmed something he’s long suspected – in the heart of North Dakota lies a prehistoric ‘killing field’ that may be the best evidence yet of the events that occurred during Earth’s most notorious mass extinction. Fossilized fish, vegetation, mammals, insects, marine reptiles, and even part of a Triceratops lay piled atop one another, preserving for eternity the moment a 30-foot wall of water pummelled the landscape and buried all living creatures in its path… it’s the first ‘mass death assemblage’ of large lifeforms that’s ever been found from the dinosaur extinction event.”
Without addressing the accuracy or inaccuracy of the estimated time of the crash, it is clear that huge catastrophes caused the extinction of ALL animals on earth, making it “void and empty,” followed by the recreation of the surface of the earth and the creation of man. Please read our free booklets, “The Theory of Evolution—a Fairy Tale for Adults?” and “Heavens and Earth… Before and After the First Man.”
Acknowledgement and Disclaimer
These Current Events are compiled and commented on by Norbert Link. We gratefully acknowledge the many contributions of news articles from our readership. The publication of articles in this section is not to be viewed as an endorsement or approval as to contents or accuracy of the selected articles, but they are published for the purpose of pointing at worldwide developments in the light of biblical end-time prophecy and godly instruction. Our own comments are provided in italics.
