We are pleased to announce an improvement to our web site. Pointing and clicking on a new “View Booklet” icon next to each publication listed on our literature page causes the text of that publication to be displayed. This will be appreciated by those who want to read a booklet immediately. Of course we will continue to mail booklets to those who request them. Letters The world has changed in the last few days and we are now in perilous times as evil seems to be rampant (global) and there is no way out except the kingdom; we pray it will come soon and bring peace to a fear-filled world. I did not realize how much hate there was in the world and man's inhumanity to man. Our Lord only can bring peace and settle all the problems confronting all nations. We have to trust in him and I think he is letting mankind see the exceeding sinfulness of sin and what it brings. The truth has been a blessing and may we continue to pray, Thy Kingdom Come. I love my Heralds and look forward to each issue. May the Lord bless you in his service. —A reader in Louisiana World News Religious Editor's Note: Since 1999, we have consistently selected clippings describing the harsh rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan. With the war being waged by the U.S. there, it is interesting in hindsight to note the early signals to trouble almost two years ago by some observers such as the one following. While great effort has been made to avoid an attack on Islam, this and subsequent clippings suggest the difficulty of confining the war to Afghanistan, identifying all the enemies, and resolving the issue quickly. We may be seeing a permanent change in the religious environment of the world. Robert Kaplan visited the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and painted a disturbing picture of a region dominated by tribalism, ignorance, violence, and rampant religious fanaticism. The region's fundamentalist religious fervor crystallized in 1994 with the emergence of the Taliban, a militant group devoted to an extremely inflexible version of Islam. In 1996, the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan's government, and, as Kaplan observed during his April 2000 trip, it now continues to exert a powerful, destabilizing influence on the border regions of Pakistan. The Taliban embody a lethal combination: a primitive tribal creed, a fierce religious ideology, and the sheer incompetence, naiveté, and cruelty that are begot by isolation from the outside world and growing up amid war without parents. They are also an example of globalization, influenced by imported pan-Islamic ideologies and supported economically by both Osama bin Laden's worldwide terrorist network (for whom they provide a base) and a multibillion-dollar smuggling industry in which ships and trucks bring consumer goods from the wealthy Arabian Gulf emirate of Dubai through Iran and Afghanistan and on to Quetta and Karachi. —Atlantic Monthly, September 2000 There are some 7 million Muslims in the U.S. That's more than the number of Jews and more than twice the number of Episcopalians. Thirty years ago, the Islamic count was a mere 500,000. The number of American-born Muslims now far exceeds the count of immigrants. African Americans are among American's most observant Muslims. (The two other major American Muslim ethnic groups are South Asian Americans and Arab Americans.) —Time, 10/1/2001 The population of France stands at about 60 million; of whom six million are Muslims and 600,000 are Jews, the third largest Jewish community in the world. About 30,000 children are studying in 40 Jewish schools scattered around Paris. Only the number of new mosques can compete with the number of synagogues and kosher butcher shops. There is no other place outside of Israel where tension between Jews and Arabs runs so high. The Jewish community in France is also undergoing a process of religious and national radicalization. The weekly sermon of the chief rabbi, Joseph Sifruk, a penitent who became a “popular leader,” attracts hundreds of new admirers every time. What did the rabbi have to say after the terrorist attacks in New York (he spoke in fluent Hebrew)? “What happened there is part of Gog and Magog between Esau and Ishmael. We know the cause of the war—who takes Jerusalem.” President of the Representative Council of Jewish institutions in France, Roger Cukieman, said that everyone [in France] is against Israel now and things could easily take the form of anti-Semitism. Since the period of de Gaulle, he says, there has not been a foreign minister who was sympathetic to Israel. —Ha'Aretz, 9/26/2001 Social Afghanistan is poised to become the site of the worst humanitarian disaster ever, with 100,000 children likely to die this winter unless new aid gets into the country immediately, the UN said. The United Nations issued the warning as U.S. missile strikes and actions by the ruling Taliban have combined to endanger aid workers and children in the nation of 26 million, UN spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker said. Six million Afghan citizens depend on aid. Today the UN said that it is also under pressure to get aid into the country before next month's onset of winter weather in the landlocked country. Snow will cut off many Afghan valleys from the outside world. “We are going to need to deploy one of the largest operations ever,” to prevent those people from starving over the winter, said Eric Falt, another UN spokesman. —Bloomberg News, 10/15/2001 In China, few of the increasing number of people infected with the AIDS virus identify themselves publicly. If word leaks out that a person has contracted the virus, whether or not AIDS symptoms are apparent, dire consequences follow. School officials bar infected students from classes. Supervisors summarily fire infected employees. Close friends and neighbors join with local officials to expel the infected person and his or her family from the community. To add injury to monumental insult, physicians and nurses at many hospitals refuse to treat AIDS patients. This situation is a public health powder keg, says epidemiologist Konglai Zhang of China's Peking Union Medical College. The social vilification of AIDS sufferers and their kin amplifies the suffering caused by the disease while discouraging any large-scale efforts to prevent its spread, he asserts. Perhaps the most visibly stigmatized illness in the world today, AIDS is only one of a variety of health problems that turn people into social untouchables. In India, public health officials have until recently accepted the view of many citizens that only prostitutes, homosexuals, or intravenous drug users could contract AIDS. At the same time, officials largely ignored a dramatic rise in new AIDS cases among monogamous, married women. —Science News, 10/27/2001 Earlier this year, a giant solar flare ejected about ten billion tons of plasma (hot, electrically charged gas) in an earthward direction at an unfriendly speed of 700-800km a second. The full force of the storm arrived over the Atlantic, and so did no damage. If it had hit an inhabited area, though, it could have wrecked local power supplies. In 1989, a similar event blacked out much of Quebec's power grid. Such flares are symptoms of greater than average solar activity. Indeed, at the recent peak of its 11-year cycle, the sun's battering of the earth's protective magnetic boundaries with smaller versions of such flares caused the aurora borealis (northern lights) to appear as far south as the border between Texas and Mexico. —Economist.com, 9/13/200 For generations, lumbering, long-necked dinosaurs came to the flood plain of a river in what is now Argentina, laid eggs in shallow dirt nests, spread leaves over them and left. The dinosaur style of parenthood worked for millions of years—except when the river flooded, says Luis Chiappe, a Los Angeles dinosaur expert. The floods drowned the unhatched dinosaurs in their shells and buried them in mud. The mud then preserved and fossilized the embryos. Chiappe, lead author of a study in Science, says that at least six eggs contain nearly intact baby dinos and are providing the most detailed look yet at a dinosaur from the last and most massive of long-necked plant-eaters, the titanosaur family. Chiappe says the embryos are from a previously unknown species that lived 80 million years ago. —USA Today, 10/1/2001 Financial So far in 2001 there have been 32 bankruptcies of companies with liabilities of over $1 billion. This is more than the whole period of 1989-91, the low point of the previous business cycle, calculates Edward Altman of New York University's Stern School, which compiles a well-watched list of corporate debt defaults. About 7% of outstanding issues of junk bonds are in default. The all-time peak of 10.3%, which was set in 1991, may soon be topped. There are other differences between this bad-debt crisis and previous ones in the late 1970s, late 1980s and early 1990s, says Barry Ridings, managing director of the restructuring business of Lazard Frères, an investment bank. The problems are more widespread, not confined to particular firms that took on too much debt. Entire industries are in trouble, including movie theatres, nursing homes, steel and anything that ever came into contact with asbestos. In the past, firms that went bankrupt were often given years to try to work out their problems before liquidation was seriously considered. This year's model is Midway Airlines which, following the attacks on September 11th, declared bankruptcy and closed for good on the same day. —The Economist, 10/18/2001 The financial crisis that mushroomed in the wake of September 11 will have a lasting effect on political, social, and economic relationships globally. At the World Economic Forum's East Asia Summit 2001, business leaders and government representatives focused their discussions on ways to revive the Asian economies and restore stability to the region. Fiscally, Asia is in trouble. The export-lead Asian economies are largely dependent on the US market. After the 1997 financial crisis, Asian economies were able to recover largely due to the booming American economy, and not through much needed structural reforms. But as Simon S.C. Tay, an Associate Professor from the National University of Singapore, said, this repair mechanism has all but disappeared. No longer can Asian countries depend on the US market as a driver of the industrializing export based system. And this could spell trouble for political stability. “It is essential to see that our conception of security in the region is a comprehensive security that depends on the government being able to deliver forms of growth and basically of hope for people to come up from a very low base,” said Tat. While the Asian countries have officially expressed their support for the US, there are growing domestic tensions within some countries with large Muslim populations that threaten the stability of their governments. —The Earth Times, 10/29/2001 Civil The global rash of bioterrorism alerts has tended to obscure the fact that natural anthrax is still a health hazard around the world, infecting around 2,000 people a year. The disease occurs mainly in herbivores and spreads to humans who are exposed occupationally to cattle, sheep, and goats. Turkey is a hot spot with about 400 human cases a year, according to figures from the World Health Organization. However, worldwide incidence of anthrax has declined steadily over the past century as a result of campaigns to eradicate infection from animal herds. One hundred years ago there were several hundred thousand anthrax cases a year and thousands of deaths. Civil unrest can lead to upsurges in anthrax. By the end of the civil war in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, there had been some 10,000 human cases, compared with the previous normal annual rate of a dozen cases. The most sinister outbreak was in Sverdlovsk in the former Soviet Union in 1979, when 66 people died of inhalation anthrax—the most serious form of the disease—as a result of an accident at a secret biological weapons research center. —Financial Times, 10/23/2001 Number of
anthrax-related deaths [USA] in 2001 .....: 5 Number of people missing or dead in the World Trade Center attacks as of Nov. 21 according to city officials: ..... 3,682 —Time, 11/12 and 12/5/2001 At an annual security conference in eastern Saudi Arabia, Interior Minister Prince Nayef warned security forces against sympathizing with Islamists opposed to the regime. Nayef's remarks—unusually public for the notoriously secretive government—suggest that Riyadh doubts the loyalty of security forces. The government has reason for suspicion. Dissatisfaction with the royal family's extravagant spending has simmered just beneath the surface of Saudi society for years. In the southwest several seemingly unrelated incidents suggest growing unhappiness with the government in Riyadh and its relationship with the United States. Although a popular uprising in Saudi Arabia is unlikely, rebellion from within the security forces or organized Islamic militants from the southwest is possible. The government's strict control over all aspects of society has so far kept organized political opposition in check. But growing animosity among citizens toward Riyadh's relationship with Washington —evidenced by recent protests—has prompted the royal family to reconsider the basing of U.S. troops on Saudi soil. Splits within the royal family pose a political problem for the United States. But the emergence of radical Islamic opposition could force Riyadh's hand, resulting in the expulsion of U.S. troops and a drawdown in ties with Washington. —Stratford Intelligence Group report, 10/23/2001 The number of potential suppliers of weapons technology has expanded over the past decade. More than two dozen countries are thought to have built weapons of mass destruction, or else are trying to do so. Countries that were once dependent on outside help, mostly from Russia and China, are now going into business themselves. North Korea, for example, has created a thriving missile and technology export business with Iran, Pakistan, Syria and others in the Middle East. But there is no evidence that any of these governments has helped terrorist groups to acquire such weapons. Nevertheless, the prospect that some state could help a terrorist group overcome the significant hurdles to deploying a biological, chemical or nuclear weapon is frightening. Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against his own Kurdish subjects, but was too afraid to do so against American troops during the Gulf war because America had promised massive retaliation if he did. It is not clear whether states such as Iraq and North Korea, which operate largely outside international law, can be deterred from lending a secret helping hand to a group such as Osama bin Laden's if they believe they can do so undetected. —The Economist.com, 10/3/2001 Saddam Hussein has directed his top scientists to work exclusively on expanding his chemical and biological weapons arsenal, one of the regime's former senior scientists has told The Telegraph. He said Saddam has ordered the nuclear weapons program to be shelved because it had proved too expensive. The disclosures by the nuclear physicist, a recent Iraqi defector, will add to the alarm of Western leaders who last week issued a warning of the prospect of chemical attacks on European and American targets. Military experts said Saddam's decision could have been linked to the attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which investigators believe were planned years in advance. Over the past six months about 3,000 physicists and chemists have been working flat out on secret programs to develop both toxins and the means of deploying them for lethal effect, according to Dr. al Sabiri (not his real name). The scientist formerly worked at the Atomic Energy Organization in Baghdad, but defected because of his growing horror of the regime. —IMRA, The Telegraph, 10/1/2001 Critics view genetically modified foods as potential health hazards, arguing that not enough research has been done to determine whether they are really safe. But such food could be the answer to feeding the world’s hungry, according to the UN’s 11th annual Human Development Report. Crops altered to produce higher yields could revolutionize farming in Africa, Latin America and across the underdeveloped world, and the prolonged debate in the U.S. and Europe over safety “ignores the concerns of the developing world,” the report says. The report ranks 162 countries based on income, education, life expectancy and health care. Norway ranks first and the U.S. is in sixth place as the world’s best country in which to live. But if you are poor, you live longer in Sweden and Japan, according to the report. —Wall Street Journal, 7/10/2001 Vandals raided a Jewish cemetery in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, painting swastikas and epithets on the tombstones of 31 graves, police said. The vandalism is being investigated said Irina Uzhetskaya, a police spokeswoman in Krasnoyarsk, 2,100 miles east of Moscow. Several shots were fired at tombstones of the same cemetery about two years ago, according to the Russian news agency ITAR-Tass. Concerns about anti-Semitism in Russia have risen in recent years, with repeated cases of bombings and vandalism at synagogues and Jewish cemeteries, as well as attacks on Jews. —Associated Press, 8/22/2001 The number of state prisoners in the US fell during the second half of 2000, the first decline since 1972, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics said in a report. At the end of 2000, there were 6,243 fewer people in state prisons than after the first six months of the year. The total number of people in state and federal prison rose 1.3 percent last year, the smallest annual increase since 1972. At the end of 2000, one in every 143 US residents was incarcerated, either in state or federal prison or in a local jail, the report said. —Bloomberg News, 8/12/2001 “The reality in the German Democratic Republic is that people of a different skin color, of a different faith, or of a different nationality cannot feel safe anywhere in this country,” said Paul Spiegel, chairman of the Central Council of German Jews. He said that it is “open season” on minorities and foreigners in Germany’s streets. Spiegel blames all German political bodies for their minimizing the seriousness of the threat posed by rising xenophobic violence, a threat, he says, which is greater than any posed by Nazism since the end of World War II. Xenophobic violence in Germany has increased during the past year after a drop through the 1990s. There were 16,000 hate crimes committed in 2000, as opposed to 10,000 in 1999. —Arutz 7, 8/22/2001 Israel A Kiryat Gat factory that manufactures gas masks that only months ago was contemplating laying off employees is now working increased shifts and will soon be working round the clock. An additional 150 persons will be hired in the hope of reaching the new short-term goal of producing 1,000 masks daily. Factory officials explain European countries and the U.S. are ordering the masks. In the meantime, factory managers explain the first priority will remain local, explaining no masks will be sent abroad until the increasing local demands are met. —Arutz-7, 10/1/2001 Iraq's leader Saddam Hussein announced that there are over seven million volunteers, men, women, and children, ready to march towards the border of Israel. He stated they were all members of the Jerusalem Army for the Liberation of Palestine. —Israel National News, 10/1/2001 “A Palestinian state already exists—across the River Jordan, where three million Palestinians live,” National Union MK Benny Elon told a mass right-wing rally in downtown Jerusalem in October. “There will never be a Palestinian state in Israel!” The statement summarized the mood of the largest rally since Ariel Sharon was elected Prime Minister eight months ago, with an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 demonstrators gathering under the slogan “Throw out Arafat and Fight Terror.” Carrying posters with the pictures of the Palestinian leader and wanted arch-terrorist Osama bin Laden, with the words “The twins” written underneath, the rally included a conference call with New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. “New York and Jerusalem are closer than ever before,” the mayor said. “Both the US and Israel are seeking to defend and perpetuate the same values of democracy, freedom, respect for the law and human life.” —Jerusalem Post, 10/22/2001 American support for close US ties with Israel is stronger than ever following the September 11 attacks, a poll conducted by International Communications Research (ICR) shows. ICR, a leading American polling firm which does work for ABC News, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press, found that 92 percent of Americans endorse full cooperation between the US and Israel in combating terrorism, while 4% oppose such cooperation. Seventy-four percent of Americans favor either strengthening ties with Israel or maintaining the current, close relationship. Only 10% favor distancing the US from Israel. The poll was conducted under the auspices of the Institute for Jewish and Community research and the Center for Middle Eastern studies at the Hudson Institute. According to the sponsors of the poll, which was conducted between September 14 and September 18, “If one purpose of the attacks in New York and Washington was to drive a wedge between the American public and Israel, the results indicate the terrorists failed to diminish American public support for Israel.” —Jerusalem Post, 10/3/2001. |
