Herbert W Armstrong

As indicated in our column in the February 1, 1985 PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, the on-again, off-again idea of creating a fixed English Channel link between Britain and the Continent has been given new life. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Mitterrand of France gave it a push in their November, 1984 bilateral summit. Now both governments have given their official approval to the project. What remains now, reports the March 22, 1985 DAILY TELEGRAPH, is the selection of the engineering model to be used, plus final assurance of private financing.

Approval for a tunnel or bridge between Britain and France was given by the two governments yesterday.... Rival groups must submit detailed schemes by October 31, and the Government will issue guidelines in the next fortnight. The choice of builders will be made by the year's end but no scheme will be considered unless its promoters can convince governments they have enough cash to complete the task without taxpayers' aid....

Work could begin next year and take four or five years if all went well. In addition to the possible 50,000 workers involved on either side promoters say it could later mean 8,000 extra permanent jobs in each country. Against this is a possible loss of jobs on the ferries though trade has been increasing so much that a tunnel or bridge could cope with only a fraction.

The leading British groups involved are the Channel Tunnel Group and Euroroute. The former would build a seven-metre twin-bored rail tunnel costing more than 2000 million pounds [$2 billion]. It would carry road vehicles on trains and both British and French railways are proposed to pay rent.... The Euroroute scheme is far more ambitious and double the cost. It would have two two-lane carriageways for road vehicles and two rail tracks. The railway would be in coast to coast tunnel but the roads would go out on viaducts to man-made islands before diving into a tunnel for the central section. A third island would have to be built in mid Channel for ventilation.

The following article from the March 10 SUNDAY TELEGRAPH reveals how serious and detailed the engineering studies have been for the past two months. Both the British and French seem committed to seeing the project through to completion this time.

A fixed traffic link between Britain and France across the English Channel must guarantee adequate protection against terrorist attacks, prevent the spread of rabies [which Britain has been able to do so far], combat travellers' anxiety and last 120 years, says a report by the Anglo-French working group...consisting of a dozen civil servants from both countries....

The group was very concerned with the safety of a cross-channel structure which would have to stand the test of wind, rain, snow and ice in the case of bridges and tides, currents and wave action for tunnels. The possibility of collision with shipping requires measures to "at least preserve the structure if there is a collision involving any vessel travelling at a speed of 17 knots. Other components, other than those which are easily replaceable, should be able to last for 120 years, the report says. The prospect of a fire in a tunnel has been considered together with the more routine problems related to the difficulty of keeping a long tunnel (up to 30 miles) ventilated.

Finally, the January 31, 1985 ASSOCIATED PRESS carried a brief history on the various tunnel attempts of the past, focusing on the doubts the British have had toward the project:

Although the two governments are talking seriously about the project for the first time in a decade, doubts persist, given the tunnel's checkered history, the uncertain economic future and traditional British-French animosities. Today's opponents range from ferry operators fearful of being put out of business to the Englishwoman who told a radio call-in program that the English Channel had saved Britain from invasion "and we want to keep it that way."

As Winston Churchill, a tunnel enthusiast, wrote in 1936: "There are few projects against which there exists a deeper, and more enduring prejudice than the construction of a railway tunnel between Dover and Calais. Again and again, it has been brought forward under powerful and influential sponsorship. Again and again it has been prevented."...

Historians credit a French mining engineer, Albert Mathieu, with the first tunnel plan. In 1802, he disclosed a scheme using stagecoaches drawn by horse relays changing at an artificial island in mid-channel. Napoleon liked the idea, possibly as a convenient invasion route, but he never got it going. Since then, work on a channel tunnel has been started twice, and the British canceled it both times. In 1883 it was because of fears the French would use the underwater passage for a sneak invasion. And in 1975, after a few hundred yards of tunnel had been dug on both sides of the channel, the British prime minister, Harold Wilson, scrapped the project unilaterally because of worries over the world oil crisis....

Generations of would-be tunnel builders have been foiled by the British attachment to being an island people separated from a continent they've squabbled with for a thousand years. "Britain is a very proud, isolated island, and we were very glad there was no link during the Napoleonic Wars," Sir John Osborn, chairman of the British Parliament's All-Party Channel Tunnel Committee, said. "There is still very strong right-wing opposition, still unaware that we've lost an empire."

A new-found enthusiasm became evident when Mrs. Thatcher and Mitterrand held talks in Paris this past November.... The French have always been more enthusiastic, and Mitterrand has backed the idea since before his election in 1981. Last October he said he was unreservedly for the project. "If London tells me it agrees, it will be done quickly," the Socialist French leader said....

Mrs. Thatcher, the more recently converted, now believes that it is possible that private capital will take on the project.... "She is quite taken with the romance of a great industrial project, like the opening of the railways," said one aide in London....

The French, suspicious of Britain's attachment to Europe despite a decade's membership in the Common Market, see a channel link as "one of the surest means of mooring Great Britain to the European Community," Premier Laurent Fabius, then France's minister of industry, said a year ago. "I am an ardent supporter of the channel tunnel.... If we don't do it, future generations will have grounds to reproach us," Fabius said.

Israel's Painful Pullout

In mid-1982 the Israeli army overran much of the southern half of Lebanon with the objective of clearing out the hated forces of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. As a result of its "Operation Peace in Galilee," Israel largely succeeded in breaking the back of the PLO. But at the same time it created other enemies during its nearly three years of occupation. In particular, the once cooperative Shiite communities north of Israel's border have become bitter foes of Israel. Some experts predict the border region will be even more troublesome to Israel than when the PLO held the region in its grip.

In an effort to root out the worst of the opposition on their current retreat south — for retreat it is — the Israeli army has been conducting a grimly thorough, house-to-house operation dubbed "Iron Fist," further alienating the local population. One cannot help but wonder whether the Israeli government stopped to consider all the possible ramifications of its Lebanon invasion. Jerusalem, it would appear, was so fixed on rooting out the PLO, even waiting for the right moment and pretext to act — which was provided by the shooting of the Israeli Ambassador in London — that it seemed blinded to other problems that could erupt in Lebanon. To explain Israel's apparent miscalculation and new security problem, Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of THE NEW REPUBLIC, wrote an article in the March 22, 1985 LOS ANGELES TIMES, entitled "Shias Feel the Iron Fist, Israelis Feel a New Enemy":

"We must take into account, in the implementation of the redeployment, a perception of the future as well: How will we live along the northern border with reasonable security for our settlements?" So said the Israeli minister of defense. In May, 1982? No, in March, 1985. Yitzhak Rabin uttered these unbearably sad words last week. They nothing less than the final admission of the futility of the Lebanon war.

"Operation Peace in Galilee" failed in many of its objectives: Syria was not humbled, it was heightened, and the reconstruction of Lebanon that Ariel Sharon was supposed to produce in a busy week looks now (as, to some, it looked then) like the most irresponsible of illusions.... [Now] the Shias of southern Lebanon are aroused and ambushing Israelis....

For years the Shias were their allies, represented by Maj. Saad Haddad; the invading Israeli battalions of June, 1982, were warm­ly welcomed.... The warm welcome of 1982 was simply the sensible and self-interested hospitality of the liberated for the liberators. The PLO had occupied southern Lebanon, and the Israelis had put an end to the occupation. But an Israeli occupation is another occupation, and nothing else....

Something simple and staggering happened in the Shia world since the good old days of the Christian Maj. Haddad and his friendly Shia force. It was the Iranian revolution, and that is what Israel now faces. The most catastrophic consequence of the war in Lebanon may well be that it has created a border between Israel and Iran — a much more dangerous arrangement than the border between Israel and the PLO. The Palestinians had murderers who wished to kill; the Shias have murderers who wish to die....

Nor is that all. The PLO in Lebanon was a state within a state.... There could be a solution in expulsion. The Shias, however, are at home; they cannot be expelled.... At present, Israeli soldiers are in Lebanon, as the U.S. Marines were in Beirut, on the most abject mission of all: for the sole purpose of defending themselves.... Once again the Israeli government is worrying about the northern settlements. That is not much to show for more than 600 dead.

Israel invaded Lebanon in May 1982 with a proud "high hand." Defense Minister Sharon was confident his forces could do the job. Now the Israelis are retreating albeit slowly and steadily so as not to give the impression of being forced out. Meanwhile, Israeli families mourn the loss of over 600 dead soldiers. All for what?, many Israelis ask. Judah has certainly suffered a "wound." Whether it's the wound prophesied in Hosea 5:13 remains to be seen.

South Africa: Radicals Foment Violence

All last week (March 18-22) the late-night American news program on the ABC network called "Nightline" reported directly from Johannesburg, South Africa. It was a rather remarkable achievement both technologically and politically. Despite a few glimpses of objective analysis here and there, the tone of the week-long series was, as South Africa's State President P.W. Botha said in a taped half-hour interview on the last evening, "one-sided and negative." It really took on that tone on the Thursday evening segment after the eruption of violence in a black township called Langa, near Uitenhage in the eastern Cape region. There, a demonstration held on the 25th anniversary of the so-called "Sharpeville Massacre" of 1960 got out of hand. Nineteen people were killed by police after an estimated 250 protestors surged forward out of a mob of 4,000, threatening less than 20 police with bricks, pipes and knives. One of the mob leaders declared, "You won't stop us today."

Also at Uitenhage, about 500 stone-throwing rioters burned down buildings and vehicles belonging to appointed black town council officials and black policemen, who are increasingly attacked for being "stooges" of the government. This is a strategy of intimidation that radical leaders are employing with increased effectiveness. Then they demand that the white government negotiate with the so-called "authentic leaders" of the people — a tactic as old as that employed by Korab, who professed to speak "for the people" of Israel.

The timing of the riot leaders was perfect: 25th anniversary of Sharpeville, plus a direct TV pipeline back to the U.S. The ABC crews, predictably, fell for it hook, line and sinker. "Police violence, " "oppression by the white-minority government," "nothing in South Africa has changed since Sharpeville" — the cliches came rolling out, one after another.

The last night, as mentioned earlier, State President Botha expressed his displeasure at the tone of the ABC programming, specifically challenging some skewed statistics as well as long-held misperceptions. "It is totally wrong to create the impression in the United States that we are a bad lot of Nazis denying people their rights," he said, rather indignantly. "No white minority anywhere in the world has done more to raise the standard of living of black communities as we did over the years."

In reply to an assertion by Koppel that the government was "paternalistic" to blacks and pursued an allegedly outdated policy of "white man's burden," Mr. Botha said he viewed it not as a burden but as a challenge. "I don't believe you must leave your fellow beings living in squalor like Harlem and some big cities of the United States" he said. With regard to South Africa's blacks, he continued, "They can't raise themselves up without our help. The proof of that is the rest of Africa." Later on he asserted that his nation was "the hope of the subcontinent."

As to the nature of recent violence in his troubled country, President Botha said that black dissident groups, such as the outlawed African National Congress and the recently formed United Democratic Front, were unwitting pawns of Soviet-backed communists. "The ANC get their instruction from the communist party...under the leadership of Soviet Russia. We've put the ANC so far in its place.... Now they've started infiltrating...the UDF. Many of the actions of the UDF are communist-inspired, to over throw the state...to make this country ungovernable."

Four days later, President Botha made a televised appeal to Parliament and the entire nation for all South Africans to work together for peace and to isolate those who, he said, "want to see the country go up in flames." He ordered tough measures to "restore and maintain law and order." Mr. Botha further said that it "saddens me that certain people under the guise of moral and religious conviction should take the lead in fomenting disobedience, violence and destruction. " There is no doubt that Botha directed these remarks to several prominent liberal clerics who the day before had led an anti-government march on Parliament in Cape Town.

Mr. Botha emphasized repeatedly that he is still committed to gradual reform to "broaden democracy and improve the living conditions of all South Africans regardless of race, color or creed.... It is ironic that now, at exactly the time that we have taken new initiatives that encompass cooperation on so many levels and in so many spheres, people of ill intent instigate demonstrations and marches that result in arson, violence and death."

Meanwhile, in Pretoria, Deputy Foreign Minister Louis Nel charged that "It has become clear that the strategy of the rioters and the people inciting the riots is to destroy any potentially successful democratic structure. " He said radicals could not afford the creation of a moderate black majority and "so they continue to threaten, intimidate and murder any of their black brothers who show a willingness to work towards peaceful reform."

The news media generally conveys the impression that the majority population in South Africa is united in a program to achieve political power. Nothing could be further from the truth, as reported, in this instance quite factually, by correspondent Michael Parks in the February 3, 1985 LOS ANGELES TIMES:

So great is the bitterness among rival anti-apartheid groups now that they disrupt each other's meetings, sabotage each other's activities and even fight openly. Members of the Azanian People's Organization clashed last month with youths from the Congress of South African Students demonstrating outside one of their meetings in Tembisa, a black township 20 miles northeast of Johannesburg. Knives, clubs and other weapons were used, five people were seriously injured and police had to halt the fighting. The Azanian People's Organization and its affiliates mounted most of the demonstrations that met the South African visit, sponsored by the rival United Democratic Front, of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) last month. The prospect of a violent clash between the groups prevented Kennedy from delivering his final speech here....

The United Democratic Front and Inkatha, a black political group whose members come mostly from the Zulu tribe, fought running battles in Natal province much of last year, with at least 15 people killed and scores injured. A war of words continues between the groups, often with sharper criticism of each other than of the minority white regime.... The factions are numerous, the issues diverse, but the growing divisions among South Africa's 24 million blacks mean there is no unity on a strategy for ending apartheid, no agreed interim goal, not even a common vision of a future South Africa.

The fundamental split is between "progressive democrats," most of whom belong to the multiracial United Democratic Front, an umbrella grouping of 645 organizations with 2 million members, and those in the "black consciousness " movement, which includes the Azanian People's Organization and its affiliates in the National Forum. There are further differences with the Zulus' Inkatha, which both black consciousness and progressive democrat groups believe cooperates far too closely with the government on many questions. Finally, there are differences among all these groups, on the one hand, and officials of the black townships, who often have been elected by only 8% or 10% of the voters, and the leaders of the tribal homelands, who are largely reviled in their own community as traitors for collaborating with the regime.

The conflict between progressive democrats and black consciousness, however, is the most important.... Progressive democrats... believe that whites have an important role both now and in the future.... Those in black consciousness groups, however, oppose white participation in the anti-apartheid struggle...and insist that blacks must repossess the land as the basis for a future political and economic system in a country they call Azania.... For AZAPO (Azanian People's Organization), the problem is white people, and the solution is black people....

In addition to the dispute over the role of whites in South Africa now and in the future, there are major differences over whether the country should remain capitalist or become socialist. The Azanian People's Organization, which describes apartheid as "racist capitalism," is "unashamedly socialist," as one AZAPO official put it. The United Democratic Front believes, however, that this question should be left to the future....

It should be obvious to all — except committed Western liberals and civil rights activists — that any sudden relaxation and transformation of power in South Africa would surely lead to almost unspeakable chaos. Early this week I had occasion to talk to South Africa's Consul General in Los Angeles, Mr. Leslie Labuschagne. Everyone talks about "rights" these days, he told me, but no one seems to be much interested in responsibilities. True. The media gives the impression that anything is permissible in the pursuit of "freedom," even the wild ravings of a mob-acracy.

— Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau