Watching the World
UN Head Sees “Apocalypse”
● “Apocalypse is today not merely a biblical depiction but it has become a very real possibility,” warned UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar in his inaugural speech. “Never before in human experience have we been placed on the narrow edge between catastrophe and survival.” Noting that the world’s military budgets have reached $600 thousand million annually, the secretary-general stated: “The arms race today extends into the oceans of the world and into outer space. In fact, it is ironic that the accumulation of arms is one of the few expanding industries in a period of economic depression and gloom.” Illustrating this expanding commitment to arms is the fact that “some 500,000 scientists all over the world are devoting their knowledge to the search for weaponry more sophisticated and more deadly.” Of course, the biblical war of the “Apocalypse” will not be initiated by men, but by God.—Revelation (Apocalypse) Re 16:14-16.
World War Now
● Few people realize the total extent of wars being fought worldwide right now. “At a rough count about 701,600,000 of the world’s people are involved in wars of one kind or another,” reported the Toronto Star at midyear. “That’s about one person in six across the face of the globe and a figure that falls not far short of the numbers directly involved in World War II. About 250,000 combatants and up to 2,000,000 civilians are dying in these ‘little forgotten wars’ every year.”
Advertising Death
● Recent highly publicized wars have given the victors a big boost in selling ‘battle proved’ military wares. Some sixty international military magazines carry ads such as one placed by Israel Aircraft Industries: “We learned the hard way. Combat.” Or the one by Marconi of Britain for a night-vision weapon used in the war with Argentina: “Now the enemy can’t even rely on the cover of darkness.” The Wall Street Journal observed that even “leading neutral nations, often given to preaching against war, are well represented among military advertisers.” Among the examples the Journal cites is “Switzerland’s Mowag [who] offers a light tank called the Piranha that ‘deals with its enemies within a few seconds. Leaving them no chance.’” And a Swedish artillery maker boasts: “We put 100-mm. performance in a 57-mm. shell.” According to one military magazine official, by placing such ads the arms makers “hope maybe someday a defense minister will ask for [the weapons] by name.”
Biggest Count
● Almost six million men and women swarmed across mainland China for a planned ten days in July to count the largest population on earth—over one billion. In the first census since 1964 the country’s enumerators asked nineteen questions that will give the government an improved profile of its people to help in planning for the future. Twenty-nine computers will replace the abaci for registering “people mouths,” which is what the Chinese word for population literally means.
India’s Dowry Dilemma
● In New Delhi alone, about 400 young Indian brides reportedly died in suspicious fires last year, and burnings continue to occur at a similar rate. “No amount of civilised debate can take away from the savagery of the traditional Indian marriage,” says India Today. Why such “savagery”? The girls are “victims of their in-laws’ lust for more and more dowry,” answers the periodical. The Hindu explains that the customary Hindu dowry “is a deeply entrenched evil in the feudal Bhumihar and Rajput castes and parents demand and receive fabulous dowries for their sons.” If the girl’s family cannot make good on the promised dowry, the in-laws often resort to legally outlawed “bride burning” or “dowry death” to free their son for a better-paying bride. Very few are prosecuted for the murders.
In some parts of India, extravagant dowry demands have produced a turnabout. Parents who cannot afford the dowry hire outlaw gangs called marriage mercenaries to kidnap a groom and bring him to the altar at gunpoint. “It is much cheaper to employ toughs to secure eligible bachelors than pay an exorbitant dowry,” one girl’s father told a reporter for The Hindu. The gang’s protection after the wedding is available at extra charge. Hundreds of such kidnappings are said to occur, with little interference from police.
Thought in the Womb?
● In a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association, two doctors presented the results of their research on fetal mental activity. They explained that when fetal heart rate was monitored and compared with fetal movements, “it was noted that fetal heart rate usually began to increase before fetal movement.” The doctors observed that the heart rate began rising about six to ten seconds before movement. “This pattern parallels that of human adults, where heart rate accelerates during the contemplation of action, before the action itself is executed,” wrote the doctors. “Whether this indicates conscious thought and planning, on the part of either the fetus or the adult, . . . [is] an intriguing [question] that merits further exploration.”
Kenya Purges Witch Doctors
● Kinyugie Rayasi recently pleaded guilty before a southern Kenyan court to practicing outlawed witchcraft. However, reported the Daily Sketch of Ibadan, Nigeria, he asked for leniency, “saying that he had been a witchdoctor for 30 years and knew no other line of work.” The court still took a dim view of his activities and sentenced the fifty-year-old man to twelve months in jail and “ordered burned his tools of trade, including giraffe tails and dark-coloured powders,” said the report.
The High and Mighty
● Catholic newspaper columnist Bill Reel wrote in the New York Daily News about a recent visit of Mario Luigi Cardinal Ciappi, personal theologian to Pope John Paul II. Upon emerging from his limousine, wrote Reel, the cardinal “extended his hand, and important laymen stooped to kiss his ring. Then everybody went inside for cocktails and lunch.” The columnist went on to describe his reaction: “I love the Catholic Church—I’m a happy member of it, in fact—but I was intimidated and put off by all the pomp and self-importance surrounding this princely churchman or churchly prince. It was awkward and embarrassing . . . ordinary people can’t identify with anybody who rides around in a limousine and gets his ring kissed. No matter how holy he might be, such a man is too remote, too aloof, too ethereal. He has too many servants, maids, cooks, coat-holders, boot-lickers. He has nothing in common with the rest of us, so he can’t tell us anything.”—Compare Matthew 23:5-12.
First Jet-powered Flight?
● Butterflies keep their wings folded for a third of their flight time, according to a Russian scientist writing in Soviet Weekly. No other insect or bird does this, she maintains. “I took high speed photography slowing down the butterfly’s wings a hundred times, to show scientists at the Soviet Severtsov Institute how the insect does it.” Her explanation is that when the insect’s four wings fold, the two rear ones form an oval tunnel that, as they continue to close, force air in the tunnel out the rear as a jet stream aimed slightly down. This was said to give butterflies a jet-propelled lift and forward drive—until the next flap of the wings.
Ousting Surplus “Gods”
● Chinese gods and goddesses without proper credentials are reportedly on their way out in Taiwan. Taipei’s director of civil affairs has appointed experts to verify all temple deities, noting that some of the hundreds of Buddhist and Taoist temples “exist only because their workers must earn a living, and their gods are usually heroic characters from classical novels.” He said that “in this way men create gods only to fool ignorant people,” and he added, “Chinese people should know whom they worship and why. Here and in China today, many temple priests themselves do not know who the gods really are.”
Volcano Fells Jets
● A Singapore Airlines passenger jet flying at 30,000 feet (9,100 m) recently ran into a seven-mile-high (11-km-high) ash discharge from Java’s Galunggung volcano. Three of the aircraft’s four engines stalled, causing it to fall thousands of feet before sufficient control was regained to make an emergency landing in Jakarta, Indonesia. A few weeks previously dust from the same volcano fouled the engines of a British Airways jet, resulting in a drop of 19,000 feet (5,800 m) before recovery. Before a recent series of eruptions the volcano had not been active for a century.
Nations in Debt
● Third World nations are now about $700 billion in debt. Some are still paying on their debts, some are falling behind. In 1979 seventeen countries were in arrears on their loans from commercial banks. That number jumped to twenty-six in 1981 and continues to grow at about the same rate. Another rapidly growing group of nations is asking for rescheduling of their debt payments to governments and aid agencies. The Toronto, Canada, Sunday Star noted that such indebtedness is causing “fears of global economic chaos” among economists.
Strange Mixture
● Florida’s Miami Herald reports that politicians in the city must now reckon with the large group of “santeros, followers of an African religion practiced under a veneer of Catholicism and brought here from Cuba.” Some political office seekers drum up support by attending santería rituals. Roman Catholic priest and anthropologist Juan Sosa describes santería as “the worship of African gods as Catholic saints.” The Herald’s report adds: “In Cuba, two Catholic saints are particularly identified with santeria worship, according to Sosa. They are St. Lazarus, whose African counterpart is Babalu Aye, a god of sickness and health; and St. Barbara . . . who is identified with Chango, a god of thunder.”
Similarly, according to the Orlando Sentinel, “Voodoo and folk religion, strong forces in Haiti, have been transplanted [to Miami] to some extent.” For example, notes the newspaper, the priest at Our Lady of Haiti parish said “he still teaches parishioners to believe in one God, but has incorporated some of voodoo’s cultural aspects, like drums, into his services.”
US Prisons at Peak
● There are almost 385,000 prisoners in the United States’ state and federal prisons, an increase of nearly 14 percent in a year. The number of women imprisoned has lately been increasing at more than double the rate for men.