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World News and Trends

An Overview of Conditions Around the World

The British election: What next?

Many were stunned at the magnitude of the Labour Party victory in the British national election May 1. After 18 years in office the Conservatives were buried by a Labour onslaught that dramatically altered the political balance of power.

“So vast has been the earthquake that it will inevitably take time to adjust to the incredible changes it has wrought in our political landscape.” So says Christopher Booker’s controversial “Notebook” in The Sunday Telegraph. He continues: “But even now, as we peer through the fog into the future, it can be predicted that, in one sense, by the time of the next election that landscape may have changed even more fundamentally.”

The results of this election portend major implications for Britain’s participation in the European Union. Consider also a sound bite from The Daily Mail’s preelection editorial: “Our very survival as an independent nation is at stake in this election. All other issues pale into insignificance.”

The last massive majority the Labour Party had was just after the conclusion of World War II in Europe in 1945. The party promised much, but as The Daily Mail pointed out, “In less than two years the ‘New Jerusalem’ had turned into a dismal, oppressive reality of huge housing lists, rationing more severe than in wartime, and the cramping of individual freedom by a state bureaucracy.”

The new prime minister will get his opportunity to govern. His majority is incredible–nearly 180 seats (659 total). One pauses, however, to meditate on the experience factor. Few of the new Labour cabinet ministers will have any actual experience in governing. More than 200 new Labour Party members will enter Parliament for the first time. Such inexperience coupled with almost unlimited Labour power is a dangerous combination. Britain now has a government of novices–that could be a new beginning or matters could go badly awry. (Sources: The Sunday Telegraph, The Daily Mail.)

Christianity wanes in Europe

The growth of secularism persists in Europe. In spite of impressive flurries of interest in matters spiritual here and there, the downward trend has continued unabated the last 20 years. In that time almost every branch of Christianity has felt the reality of this decline.

According to a recent study, only 35 percent of Europeans believe in a personal God and only 31 percent in a resurrection. In Western Europe only one in five of those 18 to 24 years old believes in the resurrection. Christians, especially those under 50, have shrunk to a minority.

Further, a headline in London’s Sunday Times (May 11) predicted that Muslims will soon outnumber Anglicans attending church in England: “A study by a research charity shows there will be 4,000 more regular worshippers of Islam than there are Christians attending Church of England services by the year 2002.” (Sources: The European, The Sunday Times.)

World fish stocks threatened

The last five years have been marked by headlines such as “World Fishing Fleets Face Ruin as Catches Disappear,” “Too Many Fisherman, Too Few Fish,” “Fishing Crises in World’s Oceans” and “The Madness That Threatens Our Oceans.”

Here are three of the latest warnings: “North Sea Cod Gone in Two Years, Say the Scientists,” “Battle of the High Seas for Remaining Catches” and “Ecologists Warn of Impending Disaster as Overfishing Threatens the Survival of Species Such as Cod and Hake.”

One particular quotation that pretty well sums up this whole difficulty: “Environmentalists warned that such a dramatic fall would spell disaster for many fishing towns. Canada has already suffered such a catastrophe. In the early 1990s cod stocks in Newfoundland collapsed. Fisheries were closed and 40,000 jobs lost. Vanishing stocks in other fishing regions have provoked clashes between international fleets.

“The problem has been exacerbated by modern fishing practices. The indiscriminate catching of young fish before they have spawned is common . . . The quantity of fish discarded has also increased, and by the time they are thrown back they are usually dead . . . Current estimates are that up to 50 per cent of cod and haddock caught is discarded.” (Source: The European.)

World health picture not encouraging

Because we are on average living much longer lives than did many of our forebears, the quality of those lives is sometimes marred by the unwelcome presence of disease. Increasingly people live with some type of severe disability. The following synopses are newspaper extracts from a recent report by the World Health Organization (WHO).

“A global epidemic of cancers and other chronic diseases was forecast yesterday by WHO. The rate of smoking induced-lung cancer among women is expected to rise by a third over the next eight years. Prostate cancer among men is set to increase by 40 per cent . . . Heart disease and strokes are the biggest killers, with 15 million victims a year. The rate is worst in Britain and other industrialised countries and is becoming more common in poorer countries. Diabetes will double by 2025 and dementia will become more widespread.

“Cancers, which kill 6.3 million people a year, are expected to double in the next 25 years. Lung cancer is the leading killer, claiming one million lives a year.”

Further: “About 1.5 million died of AIDS worldwide in 1996. Tuberculosis killed 3 million. Diarrheal diseases claimed 2.5 million. Malaria killed between 1.5 and 2.7 million people.” This is not utopia! (Sources: Knight-Ridder News Service, The Express (London), World Health Organization.)

German-American ties unraveling?

The relationship between Germany and America that held the Atlantic alliance together for nearly 50 years is in a sad state of disrepair, according to diplomats and politicians. Trade disputes and differences over how to deal with Russia and troublemaking states like Iran appear to be symptomatic of greater differences in agendas and interests between the formerly close allies.

With the Cold War over, some Germans see a major shift in priorities leading to loosening of bonds between their country and the United States. “NATO and the alliance with the United States no longer have the same influence on German grand strategy. Germany will remain in the alliance, but European integration–further development of the EU and close cooperation with France–is increasingly important,” wrote former chancellor Helmut Schmidt in a recent issue of Foreign Affairs.

“The United States must understand that in the next century Germany will not automatically take its side in disputes between Washington and Paris,” he continued. “Germany’s vital interest dictates that it not become isolated or insulated from its European neighbors, and France is the most important.”

As the United States expands trading and commercial ties with Asia and Latin America, its political leaders seem disinterested in Europe’s strategic value. This is reflected in the number of troops stationed in Germany. Where they once numbered 350,000, there are now fewer than 100,000, with additional cuts likely. (Sources: Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post.)

U.S. crime peril ahead?

According to a recent report from Washington, D.C., “America is bracing itself for a storm of criminal violence that, if some experts are to be believed, will sweep the country on a scale unprecedented in the nation’s history.”

Right now crime rates are decreasing in most American cities. Washington, D.C., is a major exception. “But gloomy demographers warn the fall in crime will soon end. Over the next decade, they say, some 52 million sub-teens will expand the base of 15- to 19-year-olds–the prime source of armed thuggery–by 15 per cent.”

“Make a chain,” wrote the prophet Ezekiel, “for the land is filled with crimes of blood, and the city is full of violence” (Ezekiel 7:23). One crime would follow another just like links on a chain. No prophecy of your Bible is any more up to date than this one. (Source: The Sunday Times.)

America exports lethal lifestyles

Skyrocketing deaths from cancer and heart disease can be blamed in part on bad habits and unhealthy lifestyles promoted in and by the United States, according to this year’s World Health Organization annual report. Particularly harmful are smoking and fatty diets, which are often emulated in other countries looking to the United States as a role model.

As a result of people following such unhealthy trends, deaths from cancer are expected to double in many poor countries in the next 25 years. The report predicts that in 2020 some 15 million cases of cancer will be diagnosed worldwide, with many of those in poor countries already burdened with killer diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis.

Diabetes, another disease often linked with diet and lifestyle, is expected to increase from its current 135 million cases to 300 million by 2025, according to the report.

While many poorer nations are gaining the upper hand in overcoming the effects of malnutrition and infections, they face the grim prospect of chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer, common killers in more-developed nations. (Source: Knight-Ridder News Service.)

Some good news

“W.H. Smith is to stop selling pornographic magazines in its high street (downtown or main street) branches. Britain’s biggest chain of newsagents is to remove four soft-porn titles that it stocks in 450 stores.” Instead, these shops are slated to experiment with a new line of sandwiches and snacks. (Source: The Times (London).)

–John Ross Schroeder and Scott Ashley

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