PRAY FOR EACH OTHER

Harvard Epidemiologist: 50 Percent of Mexicans Tested for Coronavirus Are Positive

Despite the Mexican government’s claims about the improving Coronavirus situation, the nation nears 22,000 deaths and surpassed 180,000 confirmed cases. The figures place Mexico as one of the hardest hit with substantially fewer tests.

Undersecretary of Health Hugo Lopez Gatell released the most recent figures which show 180,545 confirmed cases and 21,825 fatalities. Despite the high number of cases, Mexico has only carried out 479,528 tests.

The figures rank Mexico seventh in fatalities, just behind Spain. Despite the rising cases and fatalities, Mexico appears to be decreasing testing.

Dr. Feigl-Ding’s comments clash with the model implemented by Lopez Gatell, which relied heavily on statistical extrapolation over broad, concrete testing. Weeks after implementing the plan, Lopez Gatell stopped releasing the estimates and focused solely on confirmed cases.

https://www.breitbart.com/border/2020/06/22/harvard-epidemiologist-50-percent-of-mexicans-tested-for-coronavirus-are-positive/

Destroying Syria: Congress Declares “I’m from Washington and I’m Here To Impoverish You”

Another round of sanctions, the ironically named Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, has taken effect in Syria. Through the magic of secondary sanctions, Washington will forbid everyone on earth from dealing with the Syrian regime. Even before the penalties took effect, noted the Washington Post: "they have already contributed to the collapse of Syria’s long-troubled economy."

Thus, the law will further impoverish the Syrian people and hurt them more than their government. However, no one in Washington appears to care that national reconstruction will be further impeded. All that matters is claiming to care.

Sanctions have become the U.S. government’s "go to" policy. Whatever the problem, Washington seems to respond by launching or intensifying economic war. And American policymakers are determined to conscript the entire world in their favorite crusades, using secondary and financial penalties to dissuade others from dealing with Uncle Sam’s enemy du jour.

The policy might make sense if Washington only targeted issues of vital importance to America, directed sanctions at nations posing a genuine threat to the US or the international order, and acted when success seemed likely. Instead, US officials presume that they possess heaven’s mandate to dictate most every issue, however minor, to the rest of the world. Moreover, the likelihood of success is irrelevant. Policymakers concentrate on feeling good about themselves, attacking most any people or government with which they disagree for whatever reason.

Last year Congress, at the instigation of Senators Ted Cruz and Ron Johnson, went after longtime American ally Germany for joining with Russia to build the Nordstream 2 natural gas pipeline. Cruz and Johnson said they didn’t like Berlin being dependent on Moscow for its energy so they threatened to destroy any European company involved in the project. The pipeline will now proceed without Europe’s participation. Cynical Europeans figured the legislators were actually acting to promote domestic natural gas interests. Perhaps so, though no one should underestimate the arrogance of US legislators who really believe they know best for the rest of the world.

https://original.antiwar.com/doug-bandow/2020/06/21/destroying-syria-congress-declares-im-from-washington-and-im-here-to-impoverish-you/

Pope Francis: Persecuted Christians Are ‘the Martyrs of Our Day’

ROME — Pope Francis spoke on Christian persecution Sunday, praising the witness of those who face physical violence and even death “merely for the fact of being Christians.”

One of the difficulties faced by Christ’s missionaries is “the physical threat against them, that is, direct persecution against them personally, to the point of being killed,” the pope told crowds gathered in Saint Peter’s Square for his weekly Angelus prayer. “Jesus’s prophesy is fulfilled in every age: it is a painful reality, but it attests to the faithfulness of the witnesses.”

As he has done on other occasions, the pontiff suggested that there are many more Christian martyrs in today’s world than in the first centuries of the Church, when Christianity was illegal in the Roman Empire.

“How many Christians are persecuted even today throughout the world!” he said. “They suffer for the Gospel with love, they are the martyrs of our day. And we can say with certainty that there are more of them than the martyrs of the early times: so many martyrs, merely for the fact of being Christians.”

The pope also went on to remind his hearers of Jesus’ teaching on the preeminence of eternal life, which has given Christians down through the centuries to confront persecution and even death with courage.

“Jesus advises these disciples of yesterday and today who suffer persecution: ‘do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul,’” Francis said. “There is no need to be frightened of those who seek to extinguish the evangelizing force with arrogance and violence. Indeed, they can do nothing against the soul, that is, against their union with God: no one can take this away from the disciples, because it is a gift from God.”

“The only fear that a disciple should have is to lose this divine gift,” he continued, “this closeness to and friendship with God, to stop living according to the Gospel, thereby experiencing moral death, which is the effect of sin.”

The pope also spoke of another, more subtle threat to missionaries, that consists in trying to make the message of Christianity more palatable, by diluting its moral message and accommodating Christ’s teaching to the values of the world.

This threat comes from those who would smother the Word of God “by sugar-coating it, by watering it down or by silencing those who proclaim it,” Francis said.

In this case, Jesus encourages the Apostles to “spread the message of salvation” he has entrusted to them in all its integrity, the pope recalled. What they have heard in darkness they are to proclaim “in the light” and “from the housetops.”

https://www.breitbart.com/faith/2020/06/22/pope-francis-persecuted-christians-are-the-martyrs-of-our-day/