EU: How is Europe faring on violence against women?

58% per cent of the 87,000 women murdered in 2017 were killed by intimate partners or family members.

Read more at:
https://www.euronews.com/2019/11/18/watch-how-is-europe-faring-on-violence-against-women

EU - Christian Community Wake-up Call - Trump visit - Join and encourage protests against Trump's visit to the EU and show that Christian revolutionary compasion is still alive and well

Bozo is in town, Please give him a "warm" welcome

Many historical scholars will tell us that Jesus Christ can be considered a revolutionary leader, even today. 

In the sense that he refused to be a narrow political leader that would just make Judea (todays Israel) politically powerful.  

His mission was worldwide to benefit all mankind; leveling the importance of power and wealth.

He was equally compassionate and attentive to: women, tax collectors, foreigners inclusing Roman Centurians, Lepers, those crippled, those blind, insane Gentiles, Samaritans, Pharisees (though he brought some of them up short for their hypocrisy), Sinners, Rulers of the Synagogue, and very rich people, including Nobility.

Unfortunately today his doctrine is only given "lip service" in many Christian Churches around the world, in particular  the US and Europe.  

What has happened to the revolutionary Spirit of compassion and involvement Jesus spoke about ? 

Case in point. When in recent weeks the US government’s abusive and widely condemned policy of separating migrant children from their families was publicly criticized, the attorney general Jeff Session of the Trump Administration responded, by quoting the New Testament writer Paul, who in the book of Romans calls on people to obey the laws of the government. Really?.

That this would have ruled out the actions of Jesus himself, was seemingly lost on Sessions, as indeed was the fact that Jesus’s family were forced to escape across borders. 

Or the fact that Psalm 202.28 states: "The children of your servants shall dwell secure; their offspring shall be established before you", and as we read in Mark 9:42: "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea".

But the Sessions incident highlighted the problem that Christianity has and the problems that are still being created. 

To put it bluntly: in the 2016 presidential election a majority of practicing Christians in the USA voted for the most racist and misogynistic candidate going, and in so doing helping Donald Trump to the position of the most powerful person in the world. 

Against such a background it’s easy to forget that the movement from which Christianity emerged was one that shared possessions in common, renounced war and at least in some ways modelled more progressive understandings of gender than was generally accepted in those days  To use some words that weren’t around at that time in history; human rights, democracy, pacifismt and pro-feminism.. 

It is easy and quite hypocritical in a way, to externalize modern day problems as happening a long way away, or to personalize them in the name of political leaders; but when injustice is being justified in the name of one of the worlds largest faiths, professed by most of the EU population, it is important for us to voice our protest.

Trump’s ‘America First’ ideology has many similarities with those of  other dangerous nationalist- populists around the world..

Trump has also not attempedt to conceal his admiration for other populist movements around the world. He openly supported the Brexit movement, and populist Marianne Le Pen's campaign in the French Presidential election against President Emmanual Macron. He also hails authoritarian 'strongmen' like Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, and Vladimir Putin.  He obviously, secretly, envies their freedom of action, and probably wonders why the restraints of this "bourgeois democracy" continuously tie his hands behind his back. 

In the relatively short time period the current Trump administration has been in power,Trump pulled the US out from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Paris agreement on climate change and the Iran deal. He also withdrewn the US from the United Nations' top human rights body and plans to end NAFTA -- while his recently announced tariffs affecting the EU, China, Mexico and Canada, are on the verge of starting a global trade war.

These International actions, however, are only the top of the Iceberg, in comparison to the changes his administration has already made on the home front, negatively affecting peoples health, immigration policies, taxes,  and personal freedom.

And now.... Donald Trump has arrived in Europe, arrogant and cocky as ever.

Check out your local press and social media for additional details of the Donald Trump visit to the EU, and where demonstrations will be held in your area---and please attend.

Trump's program which starts this afternoon July 10 in Brussels, where Trump will meet with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, before participating in high-level sessions with the 28 allies on Wednesday July 11. and Thursday July 12th at the NATO headquarters.

On the 13th of July he will be in Britain where he will meet Prime Minister Theresa May, Queen Elizabeth II and business leaders, before heading to the Trump resort in Scotland on Friday evening, where he’s expected to play some golf over the weekend.  

The US president is due to spend his first and only night in London at the US ambassador’s official residence, Winfield House, in Regent’s Park. Over the weekend he will be going to Scotland for some golf and probably stay at his luxury hotel he owns in Ayrshire, the Trump Turnberry  

On Sunday evening July 15, Trump will fly further north to Helsinki, Finland for a one-on-one meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Given the backdrop of international trade tensions following Trump’s tariff increases; the litany of retaliatory measures announced by U.S. allies including the European Union (EU); Trump’s criticism of NATO; and close scrutiny of his administration’s links to Russia — some of these encounters are bound to be less congenial than others.

The role that we as individuals can each play is to join in demonstrations, wherever they may be held in in Europe. 

You might feel this does not add up to much, but together it can add up in disrupting the US president’s hoped-for, and loved media PR opportunity, by showing an alternative to what he stands for. 

But that is only a first step. The bigger job is, after acknowledging the problem, to dismantle the scaffolding of structural racism, and economic inequality,  that allowed Trump to get where he is today, and which allow comparable policies to happen in Europe and around the world. 

If you live or have family or friends in the areas where Trump is visiting please pass this article along and encourage them to demonstrate. 

Make Trump understand his Administrations policies are not acceptable in the EU.

EU-Digest

Christianity: Where is the faith, love, and compassion today, displayed by Christians during the Constantinople plague? - by RM

Constantinople during  the Justinian Plague (541-542)

The Plague of Justinian (541–542) was a pandemic that afflicted the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, especially its capital Constantinople, the Sassanid Empire, and port cities around the entire Mediterranean Sea.

One of the greatest plagues in history, this devastating pandemic resulted in the deaths of an estimated 25 million (initial outbreak) to 50 million (two centuries of recurrence) people.

The outbreak in Constantinople was thought to have been carried to the city by infected rats on grain ships arriving from Egypt. To feed its citizens, the city and outlying communities imported massive amounts of grain—mostly from Egypt. Grain ships may have been the original source of contagion, as the rat (and flea) population in Egypt thrived on feeding from the large granaries maintained by the government. The Byzantine historian Procopius first reported the epidemic in 541 from the port of Pelusium, near Suez in Egypt.

Two other first-hand reports of the plague's ravages were by the Syriac church historian John of Ephesus and Evagrius Scholasticus, who was a child in Antioch at the time and later became a church historian. Evagrius was afflicted with the buboes associated with the disease but survived. During the disease's four returns in his lifetime, he lost his wife, a daughter and her child, other children, most of his servants, and people from his country estate.[

Remarkable at that time, when Constantinolep was ravaged by the plague, was that instead of fear and despondency, the Christians expended themselves in works of mercy that simply dumbfounded the local pagans and made many convert to Christianity

For the Christians of those days, God loved humanity; and in order to love God back, one was to love others. God did not demand ritual sacrifices; or having "infidels" heads cut off.  Instead he wanted his love expressed on earth in deeds of compassion.

This love took on very practical, concrete forms not only in Constantinople (todays Istanbul), but also in Rome,where  the Christians buried not just their own, but also pagans who had died without funds for a proper burial.

They also supplied food for 1,500 poor on a daily basis. In Antioch in Syria (today in Turkey), the number of destitute persons being fed by the church had reached 3,000. Church funds were even used in special cases to buy the emancipation of Christian slaves.

During the Plague in Alexandria( Egypt) when nearly everyone else fled, the early Christians risked their lives for one another by simple deeds of washing the sick, offering water and food, and consoling the dying. Their care was so extensive that Emporor Julian eventually tried to copy the church’s welfare system. It failed, however, because for the Christians it was love, not duty, that motivated them.

The first Christians not only took care of their own, but also reached out far beyond themselves. Their faith led to a pandemic of love. Consequently, at the risk of their own lives, they saved an immense number of lives. Their elementary nursing greatly reduced mortality. Simple provisions of food and water allowed the sick that were temporarily too weak to cope for themselves to recover instead of perishing miserably.

Pagans could not help but notice that Christians not only found the strength to risk death, but through their care for one another they were much less likely to die. Christian survivors of the plague became immune, and therefore they were able to pass among the afflicted with seeming invulnerability. In fact, those most active in nursing the sick were the very ones who had already contracted the disease very early on but who were also cared for by their brothers and sisters.

In this way, the early Christians became, in the words of one scholar, “a whole force of miracle workers to heal the ‘dying.’” Or as historian Rodney Spark puts it, “It was the soup [the Christians] so patiently spooned to the helpless that healed them.”

In the midst of intermittent persecution and colossal misunderstanding, and in an era when serving others was thought to be demeaning, the “followers of the way,” instead of fleeing disease and death, went about ministering to the sick and helping the poor, the widowed, the crippled, the blind, the orphaned and the aged.

Consequently the  citizens of the Roman Empire started to admire their works and dedication. “Look how they love one another,” was often heard on the streets. In a way it became contagious.

So much seems to have changed from then to now, as to how the Christian Community functions as a part of the society at large, and, unfortunately, this change has not always been for the better. 

All we have to do is look at the refugee crises the EU is facing today and see how self-centered and hypocritical  most "so called"  Christian politicians are responding to this crises.

We can certainly learn from those early Christians. 

EU-Digest