First, let's take a “pre-Feast” look at world trouble spots. Then we'll explore what is shaping up as the No. 1 political issue in the U.S. today. Finally, we'll examine the Western world's fastest developing health crisis (and what's being done to guarantee its further spread)”
Everywhere we look, nations and conflicting forces within nations are locked in deadly struggles for power. Civil wars rage and governments are overthrown. Veteran world affairs expert of the CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, Joseph C. Harsch, summed it up succinctly in his paper's August 28 edition: “Most world news last week continued to be made by people wanting, and willing, to use violence to achieve a larger share of space and goods.” How strikingly similar to James 4:1-2.
Some specifics: The war in Afghanistan will soon enter its sixth year. As estimated one million people in Afghanistan (out of a population of only 14 million) may have already lost their lives in the war against the Soviet Union, which is determined to turn what's left of the South Asian country into another “Outer Mongolia" puppet state.
In Sri Lanka, negotiations between the government and leaders of a Tamil separatist group have broken down. Observers glumly predict an intensified civil war leading to either a more repressive state, or partition of the island nation into separate minority Tamil and majority Sinhalese communities — a type of Asian apartheid, or Oriental Cyprus.
In the Far East, the Philippines are in deep trouble and could emerge, reports the April 19, 1985 NATIONAL REVIEW as “the crisis point of the 1980s for U.S. foreign policy.” President Marcos is under increasing pressure by a vocal, yet weak and divided, democratic opposition to "reform himself out of office,” so to speak. Yet he may run again, health permitting, in the 1987 national elections. He has said that neither bullets nor ballots can remove him until he decides to step down. The U.S. Congress recently altered its foreign-aid package to Manila, paring back the military side of it. This perturbed Marcos and his military men who are confronted with the biggest challenge of all the growing strength of the Communist New People's Army.
At stake for the United States is a key Asian ally — plus two huge, indispensable military bases. Says Dr. Claude Russ, a professor at the Naval Post-Graduate School in Monterey, California: “Subic Bay...is a vital center for command, control and communications. Clark Field, roughly the size of Singapore and home of the 13th Air Force, is capable of handling 400 air traffic movements per day.... These bases are home for some 17,000 American servicemen...and 25,000 dependents. These bases give direct employment to some 40,000 Filipino workers. The direct and indirect income from American use of Philippine bases may account for as much as 10 percent of the total GNP of the Philippines.” There simply is no replacement location for these two bases (and skilled local manpower) to be found anywhere in the Pacific.
Curiously, many Filipinos believe that should the Communists threaten to overrun the country the United States will be forced to intervene militarily. They cite U.S. self-interest, as well as provisions of the U.S.-Philippines mutual defense treaty. They overlook, however, Congress' penchant for weaseling out of unpleasant commitments.
And then there is Africa, a continent that William F. Buckley, Jr. describes as nearing “a state of decomposition." Just look at Nigeria, black Africa's richest and most popular country, which has been plagued with tribal conflicts and rival claims to power of civilian and military elites since independence from Britain in October, 1960. In the last week of August, the all-too-familiar cycle happened again, when the military government of Gen. Mohammed Buhari was toppled in a coup headed by Army Chief of Staff Gen. Babangida. On the last day of 1983 Gen. Buhari had ousted an elected government that had lasted only four months. He complained of government corruption and weakness. Foreign debts were mounting and oil revenues were dwindling. Someone had to get a grip on things, he said. Now, editorialized the September 4 WALL STREET JOURNAL, "A new clutch of army figures is saying about General Buhari the same sort of things General Buhari said about President Shagari."
In South Africa, so much in the news of late, the power struggle is becoming intense and complicated. And make no mistake about it, "The fight in South Africa is over political power, not the socioeconomic system called apartheid" (Smith Hempstone, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, August 23). The government is determined to proceed with cautious evolutionary changes — to "devote power,” it says, to the various groups. Some challengers to the government aren't satisfied with anything other than revolution now! Stephen Tshwete, a leader in one of the opposition groups, the United Democratic Front, recently shouted in a fiery speech, We are going to destroy everything in this country, and on the ashes of apartheid, we will build a new south Africa." Earlier he said, “Our struggle is a struggle for a birthright."
Jan Steyn, chairman of the Urban Foundation, crystallized South Africa's only three alternatives: reform, repression or revolution. In this regard, one must also watch for developments in the second category (repression) represented by a growing white backlash. The antireform Conservative Party, for example, led by Dr. Andries Treurnicht, is steadily gaining strength. Another movement and name that bears watching is the as yet very small Afrikaner Resistance Movement led by a firebrand speaker, Eugene Terre Blance. The movement's emblem bears resemblance to a swastika, composed of three representations of the number seven (said to be the antithesis of 666) painted in red, white and black. Some of the adherents are organized as jackbooted stormvalke (storm troopers). "I am not a Nazi," exclaims Terre Blanche. "I am an Afrikaner nationalist." The 41-year-old cattle rancher seems intent upon reconstructing a white fatherland along the lines of the two former Boer republics, Transvaal and the Orange Free State. He does not foresee, reported the August 20 NEW YORK TIMES, "political parties running these republics, but rather a movement led by a charismatic strongman.”
It is also important to note that there has occurred a division in the secret Broederbond society, with a new rightist split-off group, "The Volkswag" (People's Watch), being formed. It is said to be gaining strength among academics, civil servants and army police officers.
The call for sanctions in the liberal West feeds this swirling cycle of revolution and right-wing reaction. Nevertheless, President Reagan was forced by political circumstances on September 9 to enact several executive orders involving trade and investment restrictions in U.S. South African commerce. He did this against his better judgment in hopes that the U.S. Congress would back off of enacting tougher sanctions that he could not stop. But Congress won't give up; it will certainly push for more later. One strange footnote: When Senator Malcolm Wallop of Wyoming moved to apply the same kind of sanctions to the Soviet Union, Ethiopia and other Communist countries, the Senate rejected his motion by 57 to 37.
"A few weeks ago," reported the editors of the NATIONAL REVIEW (September 20), "everyone was calling terrorism 'our No. 1 enemy in the world today'!" But now, U.S. officials demand that the African National Congress, which conducts a terrorist campaign to make South Africa "ungovernable," be included in any political settlement in South Africa. Why, asked the editors of NATIONAL REVIEW, do Western liberals often end up supporting the same side as Moscow? Their answer:
Communist strategists divide the world into two zones — the "zone of peace" and the "zone of war.” The zone of peace is that which has already fallen under Communist rule; it is no longer to be contested. "What we have, we keep," said Leonid Brezhnev, explaining the Soviet version of property rights. The zone of war, of course, is everything else: Communism regards the non-Communist world as up for grabs”
...Pro-Western regimes are always eligible for liberal moral censure — especially, oddly enough, when they are also the sites of Communist insurrection. But as soon as a formerly pro-Western country enters the socialist camp is acquires a nearly total exemption from moral criticism. It becomes a "reality," beyond good and evil, and criticism becomes "cold-war rhetoric" — a liberal taboo. Liberal rhetoric directs morality at areas within the zone of war; it concedes "reality,” in this warped sense, to the zone of peace. In short, Communism supplies the guns, and liberals supply the moralism.... It is entirely predictable that if a Marxist-Leninist regime (already waiting in the wings) comes to power in South Africa, no amount of repression and bloodshed will touch the liberal conscience.
Protectionism: Forerunner of World Depression? "A tidal wave of protectionist reprisal on Capital Hill threatens nations exporting goods to the United States and may wrack havoc with President Reagan's relations with Congress.” so writes John McLaughlin in the August 9 NATIONAL REVIEW. President Reagan believes in free trade. He defends his economic policies by pointing to the millions of jobs created during his tenure in office. But many of these jobs are in the service area. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are fading from older manufacturing fields. Representatives of these fading businesses are putting the screws on their elected representatives. There now 180 trade protection bills under consideration in the House of Representatives and about 300 in the Senate (many dealing with only specific problem cases, but a few broader based.) Protectionism looms as the major 1986 off-year campaign issue. Many Republicans are succumbing to the pressure and are coming out for “fair trade” — the code phrase for protectionism.
The President is standing firm so far but the ground is beginning to crumble beneath him. He vetoed special protection for the ailing domestic shoe industry (which is down to less than a fourth of the U.S. market). But he did sign orders promising to retaliate against trade allies such as Japan, South Korea and Brazil unless they open the doors to certain U.S. products they allegedly restrict.
In turning back the shoe protection bill, Mr. Reagan evoked memories of the Depression-era Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act by saying, "From now on, if the ghost of Smoot-Hawley rears its ugly head in Congress, if Congress creates a depression-making bill, I'll fight it.” Just how disastrous the Smoot-Hawley bill was, and the devastating role it played in the Great Depression, is explained in the September 5 issue of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, in an article written by the editor, Robert L. Bartley. Here are key excerpts:
For nearly two generations a remarkable consensus dominated American thinking on foreign trade. Protectionism is bad. There was no debate; everyone agreed, but we have forgotten why. Today Congress is awash in protectionist schemes, and it takes an old man to recall the lesson was painfully learned. "Some of us remember the 1930s, when the most destructive trade bill in history, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, helped plunge this nation and the world into a decade of depression and despair," President Reagan told a radio audience....
The stock-market crash of 1929 came in the midst of debate in Congress over the tariff; it had spent the year adding item after item to the protection list. In mid-1930 the Smoot-Hawley Bill became law, with the highest tariffs in the nation's history. What might have been an ordinary correction — early 1930 showed a recovery in share prices and stabilization in industrial production — turned into the Great Depression. The economy fell until 1933, and fully recovered only with World War II....
[According to] Peter Fearon of the University of Leicester: “The origins of the great slump, which began in 1929, are to be found in the United States, which, by reducing its capital exports and imports of goods, placed an impossible strain...upon the world economy......
Even if Smoot-Hawley was not the cause, it certainly played a leading role in the ongoing contraction. When it passed, stocks were still above 1928 levels, for example.
But as the international accounts closed down, the world economy choked.... What is troublesome is to see the same politico-economic scenario working itself out today. International debts, falling primary prices, agricultural distress, an end to foreign lending and now rising clamor for protection. No one intends to write another Smoot Hawley, of course, but no one intended to write the first one.... As Mr. [Charles] Kindleberger (an internationalist writer of the 1920s] put it, “The congressional rabble enlarged protection from agriculture to primary products and manufacturers of all kinds.”....
If we toy with protectionism, we will be toying with another depression. But at least a 74-year-old man is around to remember, throwing an ironic cloak over “the age issue.” In facing the protectionist threat, we are singularly lucky to have an old and experienced president who lived through it the last time.
AIDS — The Scourge That Won't Stop “It could...become one of those infectious diseases that change history,” speculated the August 12 NEWSWEEK. The statistics are indeed alarming: over 12,000 cases reported in the U.S. alone, with half resulting in death. The number of cases is currently doubling every ten months. Experts believe that 300,000 Americans already are infected by the AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) virus and that if the present rate of spread continues, one million people will be infected within the next two years. They estimate that about 10 percent or 100,000 of those infected will develop AIDS. Similar sharp increases are being experienced in Britain and Australia. (Western Europe is about two and a half years behind the U.S.)
“Once infected, a person is infected for the rest of his life,” says William A. Haseltine of Boston's Dana-Farber cancer Institute. He adds, “Once a person is infected, a person is infectious” — meaning a person can spread the disease even though he or she shows no symptoms.
The politically powerful big-city homosexual communities — homosexuals represent the largest number of victims — are exerting immense pressure on politicians to expend vast sums of public money on a crash program to find a “cure” for AIDS. This despite the fact that research scientists claim that an AIDS-vaccine will be extremely difficult to devise since the virus that causes it is highly mutable, existing in at least 100 different forms. Immunologists would have to try to isolate enough common features of each to develop a vaccine.
The sympathic entertainment industry is scheduling huge fund-raising drives in New York (the Metropolitan Opera House) and Los Angeles. The entertainment industry is deeply concerned because, as UPI on July 27 reported, Hollywood has an “immense gay community,” both on-screen people as well as directors, producers, stagehands — top to bottom. The revelation that Rock Hudson, a long-time movie idol, has AIDS, is just the tip of the looming iceberg. (Look some day for AIDS to be renamed “Hudson's Syndrome” or “Rock Hudson's Disease.”)
Then there's the political action. The heavily homosexual West Side of Los Angeles, for example, was instrumental in forcing the Los Angeles City Council to pass on August 16 a far-reaching ordinance banning “discrimination” against AIDS victims. It prohibits schools from shunning AIDS victims or their siblings. It prevents restaurants from turning down customers with the disease or those merely suspected of having AIDS. And it bans landlords from evicting tenants with the deadly ailment or refusing to rent to AIDS sufferers. Dentists, doctors and other medical workers also are covered by the ordinance. Officials in 30 other cities have requested a copy of the Los Angeles ordinance with a view, obviously, to possible adoption.
Homosexuals with AIDS protest they are being discriminated against, claim they are being “treated like lepers.” Well, the disease is so relatively new that one would think that caution should prevail, that isolation and quarantine should be recommended, in fact, demanded by public health authorities. (One recent report mentions that the AIDS virus has even been isolated in human tears!)
There is a lot of double-talk about the disease. Some of the anti discrimination groups claim that AIDS is not a “gay disease” but one that threatens the entire population. True, but it is still primarily a sexually transmitted disease and is spread across the sexual barrier via bisexual males. Yet these groups refuse to confront the disease the way a contagion of this ravaging nature should be fought, using the tools of isolation and quarantine. Instead they advocate "education." In Los Angeles, a brochure using "street language” and provocative illustrations persuades homosexuals to engage in "safe sex." Another booklet, also partly paid for with public money, entitled “Shooting Up and Your Health,” advises drug addicts (another high-risk AIDS group) to make sure needles are clean!
"Gay activists," writes columnist M. Stanton Evans, "are not only out spoken in protesting any such constraints but actually sit in as consultants with the public health committees that make decisions about such matters. The political leverage of the gay community, in short, is overriding public health considerations."
Yet another example illustrating Matthew 24:12 — "And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold."
ON THE WORLD SCENE
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