By 2020 Two-Thirds Of Wild Animals Will Have Been Wiped Out Over A 50 Year Period As Mass Die-Offs Accelerate All Over The Planet - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

By 2020 Two-Thirds Of Wild Animals Will Have Been Wiped Out Over A 50 Year Period As Mass Die-Offs Accelerate All Over The Planet

Posted: 18 Apr 2017  Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

It has been called “the long extinction”.  Our planet is in the process of dying, and as you will see below, this process of death and destruction appears to be accelerating.  According to a report that was put out by the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London, the number of wild animals around the globe appears to be decreasing at a rate of about 2 percent a year.  2 percent may not sound like a lot to you, but over 10 years that would mean that 20 percent of all wild animals in the world would be gone.  And according to that same report, it is being projected that the total loss of wildlife during the 50 year period from 1970 to 2020 will be a staggering 67 percent…

The number of wild animals living on Earth is set to fall by two-thirds by 2020, according to a new report, part of a mass extinction that is destroying the natural world upon which humanity depends.
The analysis, the most comprehensive to date, indicates that animal populations plummeted by 58% between 1970 and 2012, with losses on track to reach 67% by 2020. Researchers from WWF and the Zoological Society of London compiled the report from scientific data and found that the destruction of wild habitats, hunting and pollution were to blame.

In other words, we are watching a global slow-motion extinction event which will ultimately claim hundreds, if not thousands, of species.

And as I mentioned above, this slow-motion extinction event appears to be accelerating.
In recent years, mass die-off events have been popping up in the headlines with startling regularity.  Fish, birds and animals are dying off all over the planet in absolutely frightening numbers.  One website that tracks these things says that there have been 152 mass death events in 48 different countries so far this year.

When something happens on the other side of the world, most Americans don’t seem to care very much, so let me share with you just a couple of examples of this phenomenon from inside the United States.  This first example comes from Atlanta…

Someone, or something, is killing thousands of birds in Atlanta. Since spring, the death toll began rising every week.
For Atlanta office workers, the dead birds are a sad sight at their doorstep. Now, Audubon Society volunteers are tracking and finding the dead or dying birds, many of them in Sandy Springs, Dunwoody and Buckhead.

If the death of thousands of birds in Atlanta does not get your attention, perhaps the death of millions of fish on the west coast will.  The following comes from Natural News…

As the salmon are dying by the millions, the government issued an emergency order along the western U.S. coast to cancel the spring king, or Chinook, salmon fishing activities. According to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, salmon runs have dropped to record levels. Experts predict that the return of spawning Chinook salmon to the Klamath River will hit its lowest point ever this fall. It will be a huge challenge and difficult year for ocean salmon fishermen, especially in Oregon and California, reported the Council Chair Herb Pollard.
“We’ve been in a period of low productivity, not just on the Taku, but on several rivers up and down the coast,” said Juneau Area Management Biologist Daniel Teske, who expects a second-straight year of record-low salmon returning to their birthplace. Teske added that he is almost certain that the increased die-off must be happening in the ocean since all four rivers are being affected by low returns of the Southeast king salmon.

Of course the cold, hard reality of the matter is that everything around us is in the process of dying and deteriorating, and this even includes the human race.

If you don’t believe this, you may want to consider research from Cambridge University that found that human bodies are “significantly smaller” than they were thousands of years ago and that human brains are also smaller than they once were…

An earlier study by Cambridge University found that mankind is shrinking in size significantly.
Experts say humans are past their peak and that modern-day people are 10 percent smaller and shorter than their hunter-gatherer ancestors.
And if that’s not depressing enough, our brains are also smaller.
The findings reverse perceived wisdom that humans have grown taller and larger, a belief which has grown from data on more recent physical development.

On top of all that, scientists have known for a very long time that the human race is heading for an inevitable “mutational meltdown”.  The following is an excerpt from a study that was originally published by Gerald H. McKibben and Everett C. McKibben…

Geneticists have long worried about the impact of mutations on the human population, and that at a rate of one deleterious mutation per person per generation, genetic deterioration would result. Earlier reports were based on estimates of mutation rates considerable lower than what we now know to be the case. Findings going back to 2002 show that the human mutation rate is at least 100 mistakes (misspellings) per person per generation. Some scientists believe the rate is closer to 300.
Even a rate of 100 has profound implications, and the mutation rate is itself increasing. Furthermore, most, if not all, mutations in the human genome must be deleterious.  “And nothing can reverse the damage that has been done during our own generation, even if further mutations could be stopped.”  It would appear that the process is an irreversible downward spiral that will end in “mutational meltdown”.

If you didn’t grasp all of that, let me break it down for you very simply.

The human race is on borrowed time, and at some point our DNA will be so full of harmful mutations that we will no longer be able to continue.

If all of what I have just shared was not enough, scientists have also discovered that the entire universe is actually in the process of dying.  The following comes from CNN…

The conclusion of a new astronomical study pulls no punches on this. “The Universe is slowly dying,” it reads.
Astronomers have believed as much for years, but the new findings establish the cosmos’ decline with unprecedented precision.

The experts that conducted this study found that the universe is only producing about half as much energy as it once did.  As the amount of energy continues to decline, all of the lights will slowly go out until none are left.  Or as one scientist put it, the universe “is about to nod off for an eternal doze”…

“The universe has basically sat down on the sofa, pulled up a blanket and is about to nod off for an eternal doze,” said astronomer Simon Driver, who led the team.

We can certainly do some things to try to prevent the mass animal extinctions that are happening all over the planet, but nothing that we can do can stop the deterioration of human DNA or the slow death of the entire universe.

Hopefully what I have shared here will help many to understand that everything around us is just temporary.  Our world and everything in it will pass away, and perhaps we should spend the little time that we do have on this planet focusing on the things that really matter.

Like Jews Before Them, Iraq’s Christians May Face Extinction after Jihadist Invasion

Like Jews Before Them, Iraq’s Christians May Face Extinction after Jihadist Invasion

By Staff Writer  June 27, 2014   BREAKING ISRAEL NEWS

“The fear of the Lord leads to life, and whoever has it rests satisfied; he will not be visited by harm.” (Proverbs 19:23)

The abandoned Saint Elijah’s Monastery—the oldest Christian monastery in Iraq—located in the Nineveh Province, just south of the city of Mosul. (Photo: Doug/ Wikimedia Commons)

By Sean Savage/JNS.org

For most Westerners, Iraq is a foreboding and dangerous place that is filled with extremists and daily violence. Yet as little as 75 years ago Iraq was a vibrant country that was home to many different ethnic and religious minorities, including large Jewish and Christian populations.

But the latest round of violence spearheaded by the jihadist terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), which is driving through the heart of Iraq to the capital of Baghdad and inflicting medieval-style Islamic justice on anyone in its path, might be the last gasp of Iraq’s ancient Christian community, which faces extinction like Iraq’s Jewish community before it.

“Iraq used to be a beautiful mosaic made of many different faiths, including Judaism,” Juliana Taimoorazy, founder and president of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council, told JNS.org.

Like the Jewish people, the Christians of Iraq have a long and storied history that can be traced back to the very foundations of human civilization.

Most Iraqi Christians belong to an ethnic group known as the Assyrians. The Assyrian people consider themselves to be direct descendants of the numerous ancient Mesopotamian civilizations such as the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians.

“The Assyrians, also known as Chaldeans and Syriacs are the children of Sumerians, the original people of Iraq,” Taimoorazy said.

Mentioned numerous times in the bible from Genesis and onward, the peoples of Mesopotamia were key in formation of Judeo-Christian history. It is the land from which the biblical patriarch Abraham hailed. And later on, the Assyrians played a notable role in Jewish history, as they conquered the northern Kingdom of Israel and expelled the Jewish people to Mesopotamia. That led to the creation of Iraq’s Jewish community, which continued until the 20th century. Additionally, the Mesopotamians’ successors, the Babylonians, were the ones who later destroyed the First Temple in 587 BCE.

Christianity was first brought to modern-day Iraq by Jesus’s Apostle St. Thomas during the 1st century CE, making it one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. Christians formed the majority of the country’s population until the 14th century. The region’s Christians have subdivided since then into a number of churches, with the Chaldean Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East forming the largest denominations.

Today, the Assyrians are based in northern Iraq’s Nineveh plains, where they have fought to preserve the customs, culture, and languages of the area’s past, despite facing numerous waves of persecution, mass killings, and expulsions since the invasion of Islam in the 7th century CE.

“For hundreds of years Christians have been marginalized in the Islam-dominated part of the world. After the fall of Saddam the situation has been devastating for Christian Assyrians and other minorities such as Mandeans and Yezidies,” Nuri Kino—a Swedish-Assyrian Christian who is an independent investigative reporter, filmmaker, author, and Middle East and human rights analyst—told JNS.org.

“More than 60 churches have been attacked and bombed. Rapes, kidnappings, robberies and executions [are all prevalent],” Kino added.

Kino, who has been in constant communication with friends on the ground in Iraq, said that these attacks are all a part of daily life for Assyrians “who don’t have their own militia or any neighboring country to back them up.”

According to Taimoorazy, who has also been in regular contact with a number of people in Iraq, the situation has deteriorated rapidly since the jihadist invasion.

Taimoorazy said that “water and electricity have been cut, there is a shortage of cooking gas, clean water is running out and there is a fear of an outbreak of illness where the refugees have fled.”

“This is a complete disaster for the wellbeing of our nation,” she added.

Before 2003, it was estimated that around 130,000 Christians lived in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, but only about 10,000 remained before the recent ISIS invasion a week ago. Now, residents say around 2,000 Christians remain in the city. Many have gone to the surrounding countryside or to Kurdistan. Additionally, many are seeking to flee the country altogether.

The flag of the jihadist terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), which is driving through the heart of Iraq to the capital of Baghdad and inflicting medieval-style Islamic justice on anyone in its path. (Photo: Wiki Commons)

“Mosul is also very important for Christians, the prophet Jonah is buried there and also Abraham is supposed to be born in that part of Iraq,” Kino said,

“I have spoken to more than 20 Assyrian refugees [in recent days]. They are all saying pretty much the same thing: ISIS is a radical Sunni Islamic group who preaches and demands Sharia laws. That means that Christians have to pay a certain tax for protection, convert, or die,” she said.

The latest attacks are nothing new for Assyrian Christians and other minorities. They have faced nearly a century of continuous assault on their way of life.

“We lost 75 percent of our nation during the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek genocide from 1914 through 1918,” Taimoorazy said.

This has accelerated over the last decade, where nearly two-thirds of Iraq’s 1.5 million Christians have fled the country since 2003.

As the jihadist invasion continues, Iraq’s Christian leaders fear that this may very well be the end of Christianity in Iraq.

“After more than 2,000 years, during which we have withstood obstacles and persecutions, Iraq is today almost emptied of its Christian presence,” Chaldean Auxiliary Bishop Saad Syroub of Baghdad said in an interview with the international Catholic charity group Aid to the Church in Need.

“We fear a civil war. If the various different opposing internal parties do not succeed in finding an agreement, then we must expect the worst. Another war would mean the end, especially for us Christians,” added Syroub.

The modern persecution and expulsion of Iraq’s Christian and other minorities draws many parallels to the waves of attacks on and eventual expulsion of Iraq’s Jewish community during the mid-20th century, when nearly 135,000 Jews were forced to leave from 1948 onwards. Overall, nearly 900,000 Jews were expelled from their homes across the Middle East, many settling in Israel, Europe, and North America.

Similar to Iraq’s Jews, who were targeted for their success and accused of supporting Israel, Christians in Iraq are also being targeted for their relative success and supposed ties to the West, especially the United States.

“The history of Jews and Christians in the Muslim dominated part of the world goes hand in hand. Massacres and atrocities to the members of the two religions have been going on for centuries,” Kino told JNS.org. “It is very sad that the colorful and very cultivated Jewish community of Iraq vanished.”

For Iraqi Christians—as well as those in Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and elsewhere in the Middle East—their ancient communities may soon also vanish, as many flee for safety in Europe and North America.

“At the current rate, with the mass exodus which is being witnessed by the world, the number of Christians left in the Middle East will be slim to none,” Taimoorazy said.

Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/17228/like-jews-iraqs-christians-may-face-extinction-jihadist-invasion/#WHwr3PbeM2u6oGvO.99