It is important to remember - while watching this migration crisis, is the simple fact that anytime there are mass refugees, regardless of the underlying cause (war, natural disasters etc.), there will be disease spreading rapidly throughout the camps and to those in surrounding areas. There will also be famine associated with the refugee situation. Pestilence and famine are two of the birth pain signs that Jesus first mentioned in Matthew 24. The article below comes from the NYTimes:
There are more displaced people and refugees now than at any other time in recorded history — 60 million in all — and they are on the march in numbers not seen since World War II. They are coming not just from Syria, but from an array of countries and regions, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, even Haiti, as well as any of a dozen or so nations in sub-Saharan and North Africa. They are unofficial ambassadors of failed states, unending wars, intractable conflicts.
The most striking thing about the current migration crisis, however, is how much bigger it could still get.
What if Islamic State militants are not beaten back but continue to extend their brutal writ across Iraq and Syria? What if the Taliban continue to increase their territorial gains in Afghanistan, prompting even more people to flee? A quarter of Afghans told a Gallup Poll that they want to leave, and more than 100,000 are expected to try to flee to Europe this year.
There are between six million and eight million people displaced in Syria, along with more than four million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan.
Egypt’s five million or more Copts, the Middle East’s last remaining major Christian sect, are deeply worried about their future in an unstable and hostile country. Ancient minority groups like the Yazidis of Iraq are already homeless, as are many small communities of Assyrian, Nestorian and Chaldean Christians from northern Iraq.
While Yemenis have yet to abandon their homeland in substantial numbers, their plight is worsening daily amid wartime shortages of food and medicine and persistent bombardment by Saudi warplanes. Yemen is not much farther away from Europe than Eritrea, now the biggest source of African refugees, just across the Red Sea, and at some 25 million it is as populous as Afghanistan.
Nor is it only the Middle East and North Africa that European leaders need to consider. The Gallup Poll, based on data compiled from more than 450,000 interviews in 151 nations from 2009 to 2011, found that in Nigeria, which already has double the population of Germany, 40 percent of people would emigrate to the West if they could. And the lesson of 2015 — for them and much of the world — is that they can.
While the flow of migrants to Europe this year already represents the biggest influx from outside the Continent in modern history, many experts warn that the mass movement may continue and even increase — possibly for years to come. “We are talking about millions of potential refugees trying to reach Europe, not thousands,” Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, said in a recent Twitter posting.
There are now some two million Iraqi refugees, many bound for Europe. Among them are people like Muhammad Basher, a young Kurdish doctor from Iraq, who took his life savings of $2,000 and had spent nearly all of it by the time he reached the Croatian border — $1,200 just for a seat in a rubber dinghy on a dangerous sea crossing to Greece.
“At the same time, this is only the beginning of the crisis, because the conditions inciting people to flee their homelands will only worsen. And the E.U., many of whose members have the world’s largest and best-equipped welfare systems, appears to be overwhelmed by it — politically, morally and administratively.”
Those stresses pose a challenge for the future, experts say, because the flow is unlikely to ebb anytime soon.
“I don’t think this wave can stop,” said Sonja Licht of the International Center for Democratic Transition. “It can maybe from time to time be somewhat less intensive, we simply have to prepare. The global north must be prepared that the global south is on the move, the entire global south. This is not just a problem for Europe but for the whole world.”
Billy Graham is warning American Christians to prepare themselves for unprecedented persecution. It has been possible in the United States to profess Christianity without paying much of a price for that profession. Such freedom is unusual, both in the broader world and throughout history. That veil of protection around the American church is about to lift, according to Graham. From The Christian Post:
“As a whole, our nation does not know what privation is. We do not know what sacrifice is. We do not know what suffering is. Suppose persecution were to come to the church in America, as it has come in other countries,” wrote Graham.
“Since we have experienced little religious persecution in this country, it is likely that under pressure many would deny Christ. Those who shout the loudest about their faith may surrender soonest.”
Graham went on to list “five ways to fortify yourself so that you will be able to stand in that day.” These included making sure of one’s relationship to God, walking with God, regularly reading Scripture, praying always, and meditating on Christ.
“Today our nation ranks as the greatest power on the face of the Earth. But if we put our trust in armed might instead of Almighty God, the coming conflict could conceivably go against us,” continued Graham.
“History and the Bible indicate that mechanical and material might are insufficient in times of great crisis.”
Is it just me, or does it seem like we are moving inexorably towards a global confrontation?
China claims some islands in the South China Sea and we attempt to provoke a military response by sending a US warship within 12 miles of the disputed islands.
We accuse both China and Russia of cyber terrorism on regular basis, even though we released the Stuxnet virus into the Iranian nuclear facilities and have used mass surveillance against people around the world, including allied leaders.
We created ISIS as part of our grand strategy that included turning Iraq and Libya into lawless countries racked by civil war strife and religious zealotry.
We created the Syrian refugee crisis by funding militants against Assad because Saudi Arabia and Qatar want to build a natural gas pipeline through Syria to Europe.
We led the overthrow of a democratically elected, Russian friendly, government in the Ukraine, and have continuously provoked Russia in their own backyard.
We have covered up the true culprit in shooting down of the Malaysian airliner over the Ukraine.
We have colluded with Saudi Arabia to drive the price of oil down in an attempt to destroy the economies of Iran, Argentina and Russia. Putin has now called our bluff and entered Syria in full force, bombing the shit out of ISIS and proving the US had no intention of defeating these terrorists, because our military industrial complex depends upon having an enemy to fight. Now Obama is placing US troops in the line of fire between Russia, Syria, Turkey, Iran, and ISIS.
Europe was already bankrupt, using trillions in new debt to pay off the unpayable debt they already had. Now they are being overrun by Muslim hordes who will cause their societies to splinter and cause chaos, violence, and war.
Domestically, Obama has successfully splintered the country along the lines of race, religion, gun ownership, producers vs consumers, and wealth.
There are a multitude of fuses affixed to dozens of powderkegs and little kids with matches are on the loose.
I don’t know which of the fuses will be lit and which powderkeg will blow, but someone is bound to do something stupid, and then all hell will break loose.
Yesterday, a fund manager friend sent me a chart containing a conundrum. It has two lines. One shows the gold price over the last two years, and the other the CRB metals index. The CRB is down by 30%. The gold price has fallen by a third of that. He asked me why I thought that was. The answer might be partly the same as it usually is when gold moves separately to other metals, I thought. It has safe-haven characteristics, and so when markets are volatile, investors (such as those on the MoneyWeek staff!) buy.
Look more closely, said my friend. It isn’t private or institutional investors buying. It is Russia. Russia’s total reserves in US dollars have fallen recently (as you’d expect given the oil price collapse), but its holdings of gold are up by 30% since 2014. Russia now holds as many ounces of gold as the gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs) do. In June alone, it added 800,000 ounces – the equivalent of some 12% of global annual gold mine production according to seekingalpha.com. That’s a lot of gold – and a buying speed that looks ambitious given the implosion in the oil price.
So, two questions for readers. First, what happens to the gold price in the short term if Russia stops buying? That’s a rhetorical one. But second – and to this I don’t really know the answer – why is Russia dumping its other reserves for gold?
Or maybe it is just that, like most other central banks, whatever it might or might not say in public, Russia remains convinced that gold is the best form of money there is, and the one on which some future system will be based. Note that far from wanting to wind purchases down, the Russian central bank has said that it intends to increase its reserves to $500bn worth – that’s double what it holds at the moment.
Finally (and I hope this isn’t much of a part of the answer), maybe Russia is thinking of doing something that will bring the threat of sanctions back. Either way, it is something to watch.
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