Information Related to "World News and Trends - Jan/Feb 2003"
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How does the rest of the world view the United States? With decidedly mixed feelings, according to results of a survey of 38,000 people in 44 countries released in December by the Pew Global Attitudes Project.
"Despite an initial outpouring of public sympathy for America following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, discontent with the United States has grown around the world over the past two years," begins the report."Images of the U.S. have been tarnished in all types of nations," including longtime allies, poor countries "and, most dramatically, in Muslim societies."
While America and its citizens have a considerable reservoir of goodwill and are viewed favorably by a majority in most countries surveyed, compared to survey results from two years ago, favorable views of the United States have fallen in 19 of the 27 countries where comparable data are available. Critical views were especially strong in Germany and France, where huge majorities oppose U.S. military intervention to depose Saddam Hussein in Iraq (see "The Coming Clash Between Europe and America," beginning on page 16).
The report also notes that "true dislike, if not hatred, of America is concentrated in the Muslim nations of the Middle East and in Central Asia, today's areas of greatest conflict." Among supposed U.S. allies, 75 percent of Jordanians, 69 percent of Pakistanis and Egyptians and 55 percent of Turks held unfavorable views of the United States.
While the United States "is nearly universally admired for its technological achievements . . . in general, the spread of U.S. ideas and customs is disliked by majorities in almost every country included in this survey."
Many countries see the export of sleazy American culture, such as music, movies and other entertainment that wallows in violence, sex and materialism, as significant threats to their families and children, and this no doubt contributes to increasing negative views toward the United States. As Proverbs 14:34 tells us, "Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people."
Not coincidentally, the survey also found that 80 percent of Americans interviewed thought that moral decline was a significant problem for their nation.The big question is whether they have the heart and will to reverse it.
For a biblical perspective on these trends and where they are ultimately leading, please request our free booklet The United States and Britain in Bible Prophecy.(Sources: The Pew Research Center, Associated Press.)
Niall Ferguson, professor of political and financial history at Oxford University, set out a chilling scenario in Britain's Sunday Times.His opening words were: "As Chancellor [Gerhard] Schröder grapples with a seriously sick economy, he is making the same mistakes which led to the 1930s crisis that opened the door for Hitler."
Just how bad are Berlin's economic woes? In the last decade only Switzerland and Japan had poorer performing economies in the developed world. German unemployment is 8.3 percent in the workforce and predicted to reach one in 10.As an overall assessment The World in 2003[published by The Economist] said: "Germany, once the country of the post-war economic miracle, is acquiring a reputation as the sick man of Europe,with low growth,high unemployment and an unwillingness to contemplate the sort of changes that might get it out of its current difficulties."
Comparisons with the old financially disastrous Weimar Republic are rife in the British and European media."Hidden jobless[ness] takes Germany back to the level of the Weimar era,"wrote Tony Paterson for The Sunday Telegraph. He reported that "public fury has spilled into the streets of Berlin with demonstrations of health workers, teachers, builders and lorry [truck] drivers."
Bild (a German newspaper) ran a simple headline, "We've Had Enough,"expressing the frayed emotions of the unemployed. Part of the problem is high wages. Actually,"Britain's hourly labour costs are 30 percent lower than they are in Germany" (The World in 2003).
The Guardian's correspondent in Berlin reported that the "German tax rise evokes Weimar comparison." Another Guardian headline tells us that "Europe's most powerful banking sector is on red alert-German money machine grinds to a halt." The Mail on Sunday also calls Germany the "sick man of Europe"-talking of "debts, dole queues [welfare waiting lines] and industry in crisis."
In reality, conditions are nowhere near as bad as the skyrocketing inflation
that plagued the Weimar Republic in the late '20s and early '30s when
the proverbial wheelbarrow full of marks would not so much as buy a pound
of butter. Nonetheless, the German economy bears close watching. Totalitarianism
in the form of Hitler's Third Reich emerged out of economic frustrations.
(Sources: The Sunday Times, The Sunday Telegraph, The World
in 2003, The Guardian, The Mail on Sunday [all London].)
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The four horsemen of the Apocalypse are already riding roughshod over much of Africa. Sum- ming up, 28 million Africans find themselves HIV- positive-nearly 10 percent of the adult population. Corruption remains endemic in many African countries, stifling economic, social and political development. Thirteen million Africans face starvation. Drought is a continual crippler, and the continent is engaged in constant military conflict.
Six weeks ago the promise of peace among some of Africa's most deprived countries-the Congo, Sudan and even Burundi-seemed possible. But as The Scotland on Sunday observed: "Now all bets are off again. The Sudanese government has pulled out of negotiation . . . The Congo deal, like so many before it, is floundering . . . And in Burundi there is business as usual: shelling of civilian suburbs."
Africa is a lesson in how dreams can turn to dust. Even slavery survives and thrives in parts of this suffering continent, along with outbreaks of genocide in Rwanda, Burundi, Liberia and the Congo.
Commenting on Southern Africa's food shortage, The Economist stated that "bad weather, and bad rulers, are making millions of people hungry." Time magazine's Atlantic edition concurs: "War, bad government and AIDS are feeding a deadly drought across Southern Africa."
When it comes to bad governance, Zimbabwe takes the cake. Food aid goes to those who support the government, leaving opposing citizens in danger of starvation. White farmers who could help are deprived of their land by government edict. “Like a roaring lion and a charging bear is a wicked ruler over poor people,” Proverbs 28:15 reminds us.
It is hard to envision how anyone or anything except the coming Kingdom of God can turn Africa around. No wonder Jesus Christ told us to pray, “Thy Kingdom come.” (Sources: The Scotland on Sunday, The Economist [both London], Time, The Washington Times.)
Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has strongly suggested that after Iraq the United States should turn its attention to Iran.Though the Iraqi story tends to dominate the news, readers of The Good News should be alert to the activities of a Middle Eastern state that is clearly a part of the "axis of evil."
Philip Sherwell, the foreign-affairs correspondent of The Sunday Telegraph,has not neglected Iranian affairs. In a recent feature article,he tells us that "Iran has been supplied by Russia with powerful new technology and parts for long-range missiles that will put Israel and the whole of the Middle East-including British and US forces in the region-within its reach."Africa and parts of southern Europe will also be reachable.
Successful desert test firings were conducted this past summer with Russian and North Korean scientists in attendance.Western and Israeli intelligence has also established that China is making a crucial contribution to the Iranian missile program.We don't live in a world of friendly nations.
Much of end-time Bible prophecy will find its fulfillment in the Middle East. Predicts Dudley Fishburn, editor of The World in 2003, "With Saddam Hussein gone by the end of 2003, the Middle East will become a sharply better place."Yet in his general assessment Mr. Fishburn writes that 2003's headlines "will be dominated by war, the Middle East and recession."
The Mideast is destined to host Armageddon-an area that will be replete with armies and weapons of the deadliest kind-culminating in a great battle array that will bring Jesus Christ back to earth before we destroy ourselves (see Matthew 24:21-22; Revelation 16:14-16). To better understand what is coming, please write for our free booklets Are We Living in the Time of the End? and The Book of Revelation Unveiled. (Sources: The Sunday Telegraph, The World in 2003.)
Hostile kids who mistrust others are much more likely than their peers to develop physical symptoms linked to diabetes and heart attacks in the future, a pioneering new study [conducted at the University of Pittsburgh] suggests," says USA Today.
Psychology tends to affect biology. More and more scientific studies are affirming and confirming the commonsense proverbs and the Christian way of life found in the pages of the Bible. Solomon said: "A merry heart does good, like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones" (Proverbs 17:22). And the apostle Paul advises: ". . . Fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord" (Ephesians 6:4).
Behavioral pediatrician David Schonfeld of the Yale Child Study Center declared that "angry kids are often in a high-stress 'fight or flight' mode because they think people are out to get them." Frankly, many are taught to be angry by parental example.
On the positive side, teaching children how to manage their anger and resolve disputes by reason and diplomacy may well lengthen their lives. This is accomplished both by example and patient biblical instruction. Those who may want to follow up on this theme should request our free booklet Making Life Work. (Source: USA Today.)
Britain is far from the only Western nation to sell arms to some of the most unstable countries. However, a fairly recent investigative report by The Independent on Sunday revealed that the United Kingdom has unabashedly marketed its military hardware to nations embroiled in ethnic conflicts and civil wars.
For instance, "Britain sold arms worth tens of millions of pounds to India and Pakistan last year, before the Kashmir crisis reached boiling point."Angola and Kenya were also recipients of British military wares, as were several unstable former Soviet republics.
During a tour of the African continent earlier this year, Prime Minister Tony Blair commented:"We cannot ignore these conflicts because sooner or later they end up on your doorstep." Often overlooked, however, are that Western arms have been marketed to nations in which serious potential conflicts are already apparent.
The predictable comeback: "If we don't sell them these arms, other nations will." This is a good example of the conundrums countries get themselves into through greed and lack of foresight. International affairs have gone awry.We suffer if we do and we suffer if we don't.These are catch-22 situations.
Only God can sort out the world in its present state. Man has had his chance and failed miserably. Our free booklet The Gospel of the Kingdom shows how we will finally emerge from our great global problems. (Source: The Independent on Sunday [London].)
Perhaps America's most bothersome Achilles' heel lies squarely in the area of its sore neglect of the values set down in the pages of the Bible. So-called reality television programs seem to be in the process of gradually replacing the usual fictional fare on television. Somehow the viewing public thinks it needs to see real policemen in the dangerous act of arresting actual violent criminals or highway patrolmen corralling genuine reckless speed demons on the road.
Far more damaging, however, is the appetite for viewing scenes involving, as an example, real wives battling their husbands' mistresses on live TV with a moderator walking around with a microphone in his hand. Many other unspeakably repugnant exercises in human depravity could also be mentioned.
Once the public decides to go down this road, it will take an increasing amount of sleaze to satisfy viewers' base appetites. Remember King Solomon's observation that "the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing" (Ecclesiastes 1:8). Human beings tend never to be satisfied. When their attention is focused on depravity, the path downhill is swift and sure.
Human beings, made in the image of God, are asked to perform debasing stunts on television-some even involving public nudity-just to win prizes. Apparently five reality-TV shows have reached the top-20 list in popularity. Some of their scenes defy the imagination and should offend the sensibilities of any nation that calls itself Christian.
More than any other time in her history, America needs the support of the Ten Commandments-to rediscover their meaning as well as to rekindle the fear of not keeping them-to receive God's forgiveness made possible by Christ's sacrifice. A good start on an individual basis would be for every American to request a free copy of our 80-page booklet titled simply The Ten Commandments. Every home in the country should have a copy. Nothing threatens our national security more than our casual disobedience to the royal law of God. (Source: USA Today.) GN
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Keywords: American culture entertainment moral decline economy inflation Bible prophecy missile threat missiles military hardware
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