GERMANY - Politicians in Berlin said they needed more time to decide how to replace an ageing fleet that must be nuclear capable. The Bundeswehr faces pressure to purchase European-made planes, though it favors American models. A German military plan to buy new US warplanes to replace the ageing Tornado fighter jet fleet was delayed by Angela Merkel's coalition partners, the center-left SPD, on Thursday. SPD's Wolfgang Hellmich, head of the parliamentary defense committee, said there was no rush to replace the Tornado fleet, as it is set to continue operating until 2035. "We don't have to make an immediate decision," he said. "This is a complex issue, and we must understand it fully," Hellmich said.
EUROPE - Europe needs Russia's potential and most importantly the country's market and natural resources in order to withstand such superpowers as China and the United States, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told the Spiegel outlet. "If we, as Europeans, want to survive politically and economically between [such] superpowers [as] the United States and China, we cannot do this without Russia's potential. We need the country's market and, first of all, its resources", Schroeder told the outlet in an interview released on Friday. According to the former German chancellor, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been trying to build the kind of relations with Western countries that would be based on equality and respect, but he has been repeatedly rejected when trying to reach out to Europe.
GERMANY - Some 5 million people in the EU's richest country lack the money for a nutritious meal every other day, according to new reports. And a third of people in Germany would struggle to pay unexpected expenses. Around 7.5 percent of Germans over the age of 16 — roughly 5.14 million people — said they didn't have enough money to regularly eat a proper meal in 2017. In a response to a parliamentary inquiry from the Left party, the Federal Statistics Office also reported that almost a third of unemployed persons in Germany are unable to regularly eat a nutritious meal. "Poverty is not a marginal phenomenon in Germany, but runs throughout the population," Left party social policy spokesperson Sabine Zimmermann told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung newspaper, which first reported the figures.
GERMANY - Migrant unemployment continues to be a problem in Germany, with government research revealing the majority of asylum seekers who arrived in 2016 are still unemployed. When Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the country’s borders in 2015, international media outlets and organisations including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) gushed that the move was sure to bring prosperity to Germany. But despite splashing out tens of billions of euros a year on newcomers from the third world, a large-scale study by the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), which interviewed 7,500 migrants, found that 65 percent are not yet in work. With government research from the Netherlands revealing that 65 percent of third world migrants who arrived in the 1990s are still living on welfare, datasets from a variety of European countries show non-EU migrants are a net drain on taxpayers, including in Britain, where they have been found to cost the treasury £16 billion a year.
EUROPE - If there’s one thing we’ve learned at POLITICO over the last three and a half years, it’s that every year in European politics is an important election year — in one country or another. Leaders emerge. Others fall. Power changes hands. Or it doesn’t. This year promises to be particularly exciting. That’s not just because the 2019 European Parliament election will feature voters from 27 countries casting the ballots that will determine the next crop of European leaders. It’s because the usually staid affair has actually turned into a contest with serious consequences.
EUROPE - Failure to strengthen the eurozone, demands for more sovereignty and contempt for voters are driving the European Union to its end, several scholars specialised in European policy have claimed as they forecast Jean-Claude Juncker's dream could come to an end "within 10 years".
UK - Brexit architect Nigel Farage warned that Britons will become “even more angry” with Brussels bureaucrats over their refusal to renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement. Speaking to euronews on Thursday, the independent Member of European Parliament described the “arrogance, intransigence, no shift and no give from Brussels at all” over Prime Minister Theresa May’s attempts to remove the Irish backstop from the agreement.
USA - The battle for America is not just about socioeconomic or politics. It’s a matter of good and evil! If one pays particularly close attention to the news it would be hard not to realize that there is a significant movement going on propagated by the left to devalue human life. Not only are American concepts of freedom and a civil society under assault, but the very humane respect for life is under siege. Recently when Governor Cuomo of New York announced that the state will legalize full term abortion, the literal murder of newborn babies, there were shouts of pure joy and celebration!
USA - All of the excessive, abusive tactics employed by the government today — warrantless surveillance, stop and frisk searches, SWAT team raids, roadside strip searches, asset forfeiture schemes, private prisons, indefinite detention, militarized police, etc — will eventually be meted out on the general populace.
GERMANY - As part of a series of conferences in Germany, Attorney Nati Rom, founder of the ‘Lev HaOlam’ organization, which fights against the global boycott of Judea and Samaria, visited Munich and Memmingen. There he gave lectures at conferences about the Jewish pioneers movement in Judea and Samaria and the importance of supporting Jewish communities against BDS [Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions a Palestinian-led movement].
Hundreds of participants attended the lectures where Rom detailed the historic connection of the Jewish people to Judea and Samaria and the fight against the BDS organizations that spread hatred and lies against Israel through false and distorted narratives. After the lectures, one participant noted that the actions of the BDS today are “like what happened in Germany 80 years ago where you couldn’t buy from Jews. This is a very bad movement.”
GERMANY - An official from the ministry confirmed that the F-35 is not a finalist in the competition, which seeks a replacement for the 90-jet fleet. The news was first reported by German site AugenGeradeaus. The move is not altogether surprising. Berlin for some time has officially favored an upgraded version of the fourth-generation Eurofighter Typhoon, built by a consortium of Airbus, Leonardo and BAE Systems, as the Tornado replacement. The main argument is to keep European companies involved in building combat aircraft and, perhaps even more importantly, staying clear of disturbing Franco-German momentum in armaments cooperation. However, the decision leaves open the question of certification for nuclear weapons. The Typhoon is not certified to carry the American-made nuclear bombs that Germany, as part of its strategic posture, is supposed to be able to carry on its jets.
USA - It’s a strange world of newspeak we live in. What was once a society devoted to logic and progress is now being herded into echo chambers of thought control and anti-critical thinking. Without the ability to examine an issue impartially and completely there is little hope of maintaining liberty and freedom, as history repeatedly demonstrated. Today, we find that thinking is a diminishing art, and in its place, sound bites and stop-thought terms are used to put the brakes on the mind. These terms are widely used as signals to prevent minds from looking too deeply at a topic or issue.
USA - I remember when a suspect was regarded as innocent until proven guilty in a fair trial. Today prosecutors convict their victims in the media in order to make an unbiased jury impossible and thereby coerce a plea bargain that saves the prosecutor from having to prove his case. In the United States law is no longer a shield of the people. Law is a weapon in the hands of prosecutors.
CHINA - Representatives of five major nuclear powers – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States or "nuclear five" met in Beijing on Wednesday. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said at the meeting that the level of potential conflict in the world has reached a dangerous point.
USA - A recent column in Reason magazine argues that homeschooled students are smarter and more tolerant than their publicly-educated peers. A recent column from Reason magazine contributor JD Tuccille makes the case that homeschooled students are brighter and more tolerant than their peers that attended public schools. Tuccille cites a study in an academic journal that focuses on school choice and homeschooling that makes the case that homeschooled students are the most willing to extend political freedoms to those with whom they disagree. The same study makes the case that public school decreases a student’s ability to accept opposing viewpoints. Although it seems counterintuitive, the research suggests that the homeschooling process creates students who are eager to learn from others and their diverse perspectives.
Disclaimer:
The views expressed in this section are not our own, unless specifically stated, but are provided to highlight what may prove to be prophetically relevant material appearing in the media.
“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!
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