A Continent in Revolt

Good morning,

Enormous, even violent protests engulfed cities across Europe over the past week. These movements aren’t coordinated, yet they all say the same thing: Life is too expensive, the government is delivering less, and people’s patience has run out.

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• Italy: In Milan, masked rioters hurled paving stones at police, looted shops, and set barricades ablaze around the city’s cathedral.
• Belgium: In Brussels and Liège, police turned tear gas and water cannons on students.
• Albania: Students joined ongoing protests, and rioters in Tirana fought police for more than eight hours, set fires, and damaged at least four ministry buildings.
• Portugal: Police clashed with protesters while clearing a housing camp in Porto; tens of thousands marched through Lisbon and pitched tents in Rossio Square over housing they can’t afford.
• Spain: In Madrid, protesters have occupied the Puerta del Sol for three weeks over housing costs.

France, the epicenter: French officials expected maybe 150,000 protesters on Saturday. More than half a million came. The marches began over fuel prices, living costs and crumbling schools. They ended in arson and looting across dozens of cities. By nightfall, the ornate 19th-century Limoges Town Hall was burning.

• The Interior Ministry counted nearly 2,400 arrests and almost 1,000 police, gendarmes and firefighters injured. Whole streets were devastated. Retailers reported about 1,500 shops damaged or looted. Rioters forced their way into a Paris district town hall. On Sunday the looters came back.

The common root cause, in Eurointelligence’s view, is that Europe’s social model, and even its democracy, is unsustainable. These nations simply don’t have the resources to pay for all the social welfare—and now the increased military spending.

• The whole model depends on economic growth, and that growth is gone. Core eurozone economies have stagnated for a decade, and productivity growth is near zero. To limit overborrowing, governments cut investment. So trains break down, schools decay, and the citizens suffer.
• Analysts call it “early signs of state failure.” Ultimately, what cannot be sustained or repaired ends. That is true even of democracy in Europe.

Who benefits? When a state cannot keep order, its citizens start looking for someone who can.

• In France, Emmanuel Macron cannot run again. Far-right candidate Marine Le Pen leads polling for April’s presidential election at around 35 percent. She is certain to lean into the law-and-order issue.
• Expect shifts, even convulsions, toward autocracy and authoritarianism across Europe.

Bible prophecy describes an end-time European power made of iron mixed with clay: “the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken” (Daniel 2:42). Europe today is exactly that. Its nations have a common currency but no common treasury; they have grand ambitions, but their streets are on fire.

Prophecy says crisis won’t break this union apart—it will drive it to unite under a strong hand.

• Daniel 8:23 warns of “a king of fierce countenance” who stands up “when the transgressors are come to the full.” Daniel 11:21 says he comes in peaceably, by flatteries. A frightened people will welcome him.

Watch Europe’s streets, because the flickering fires there foreshadow major political shifts that will fulfill some of the Bible’s most alarming prophecies.

Obama: Israel’s Founding Was an ‘Injustice’

Former United States President Barack Obama claimed during an interview last Tuesday in Belfast, Northern Ireland, that the State of Israel is illegitimate. He said the founding of the nation “took land off people and [the Arabs] were expelled. And those people understandably said, This is injustice and I want my land back.”

• Obama also claimed that Israel had “ceded moral ground” in its war against Hamas and had a rationale of “our security will depend on us simply doing whatever we need and taking whatever we want.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded on X: “Our land is not stolen land. This is our homeland. It’s called Judea. That’s where Jews come from. We’ve been attached to it for thousands of years.”

The true history: Britain conquered the Holy Land from Ottoman and German forces during World War i, soon after the Balfour Declaration dedicated the British Empire to reestablish a homeland for the Jewish people. The United Nations later used Britain’s plans as a basis for partitioning the land between Jewish and Arab states in 1948.

• The original partition plan gave Israel significantly less land than its internationally recognized borders today. Israel wasn’t supposed to control cities like Jerusalem and Beersheba. The Jews accepted the UN plan.
• The Arabs meanwhile rejected the plan. Neighboring Arab countries that weren’t even part of the process invaded the land with the goal of annihilating the Jews there. The Jews instead pushed their attackers out and used that land to form the State of Israel.

This is all common knowledge. Obama was not making his comments out of historical ignorance. Instead, he was continuing a narrative he promoted when he was president: From 2009 to 2017, he did everything he could to oppose Israel.

• He helped orchestrate a Muslim Brotherhood takeover in Egypt, turning Israel’s closest ally in the Arab world into an enemy.
• He created the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, bringing Israel’s greatest enemy into the international community, not only saving its economy and thereby its regime but also giving it a path to build a nuclear weapons program.
• Through diplomatic lobbying and action in the United Nations, he pressured Israel to make lopsided agreements with the Palestinians.

President Obama has genuine antipathy for the Jewish state and everything it represents. He hasn’t had the same platform to attack Israel as he had during his presidency, but his lobby against Israel all these years later is still worth watching. Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry explains why in Chapter 2 of his free booklet The King of the South.

UK Government Wrote BBC News Stories

The United Kingdom’s government planted staff in the BBC to influence coverage of its own policies. After the Telegraph exposed that dozens of civil servants had been temporarily reassigned from government departments to work in the bbc newsroom on October 17, the broadcaster paused the scheme yesterday.

• Since 2018, civil servants seconded to the bbc have written articles and fact-checked topics ranging from illegal small-boat crossings to the covid-19 pandemic. The writers were bylined and credited as members of bbc News and bbc Verify.

No surprise, the bbc has largely defended the UK’s government on those issues. Former director of bbc Television Danny Cohen said that the Telegraph’s findings were “further evidence that the bbc’s leadership is not in control of the newsroom.”

The ensuing widespread criticism about a “clear conflict of interest” and the erosion of public trust forced the bbc to cancel the program.

In our April 2022 Trumpet issue, we wrote regarding “Big Government, Big Pharma and Big Media”:

They are conspiring to “cast down truth to the ground” to amass wealth and power. You need to recognize this collusion and understand the spirit that empowers it. …

The ones who suffer are the everyday people. We pay the price, in taxation and in freedom, for elites who are motivated not by the truth but by money and power.

To learn how widespread this issue has been, read “Running on ‘COVID Money.’”

IN OTHER NEWS

Russia and China forging new Arctic axis: Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping are building a “new Arctic axis,” the Asia Times noted on Saturday. The two nations are deepening cooperation in shipbuilding, maritime education and research to help develop the Northern Sea Route and connecting corridors. Direct container services are also opening between Shanghai’s Yangshan port and Russian ports. The Arctic maritime partnership is a “blue driving force” in Russia-China relations, according to a statement from the Chinese. The emerging Arctic axis marks another step toward the rise of a biblically prophesied Russia-China bloc intent on reshaping global trade and ending American economic and military dominance.

Donald Trump endorsed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday on Truth Social. Israel holds national elections on October 27, and Prime Minister Netanyahu and his coalition have been struggling in polls over the past year. President Trump had refused to endorse Netanyahu for months now, despite being put on the spot by media and working with him to prosecute the war against Iran.