March 8

Page Two

Terrorism has become headline news. What actually is this new form of warfare? What is back of it? Will it eat civilization alive? Can indiscriminate violence actually remove oppression and bring about a just treatment of minorities? Or is it the result of misguided idealism? What is really the hope for all oppressed peoples today?

Terrorism​—A War Within 3

How Some of the Seeds Were Sown 4

When Will the Terror Cease? 9

Realistic About Government 10

Terrorism​—A War Within

SINCE World War I mighty colonial empires have been shattered. New nations, formed out of the fragments, struggle for sovereignty. They are seething and churning within themselves, changing in political and social character from one extreme to another. Latin America is a caldron of internal strife. Compare a map of Africa of 1914 with a map of Africa today. Gone are the vast colonial empires. In their stead are more than 30 nations, many of them suffering from turmoil within.

As wars within nations grow more sinister, fear grows that nations may disintegrate into nihilism. At his trial in Israel, a Japanese Red Army terrorist told his prosecutors: “We know [that wars within nations] will become more severe than battles between nations.”

Terrorist or Freedom Fighter?

‘One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.’ Left-wing terrorists point to George Washington. Did he not lead revolutionary armies to throw off British rule? “George Washington was a terrorist,” declared a Red Army Faction defendant on trial for his life in a West German court. “To describe a man as a terrorist is a term of honor.”

To Americans, describing George Washington as a terrorist might sound revolting. Yet Americans once acclaimed Fidel Castro as a heroic freedom fighter. That was when, with a band of guerrillas, he brought down the army of dictator Batista. Later, due to the form of government he set up, Castro came to be viewed by the United States in the same light as the revolutionaries who bombed Czar Alexander II to death and set in motion the Russian Revolution.

Some see in terrorism a fury that society brings down upon itself. Others see it as a cancer in civilization​—gangs or movements, large or small, violently bent on restructuring this or that system of politics, economics, even religion.

Tactics of Terrorists

The modern terrorist robs, steals, burns, bombs, kidnaps and kills. To him his deeds are not crimes in the general sense. He sees himself doing what nations do to one another in war. His acts are acts of war. He wars against a social order.

As a rule, he joins himself to blood comrades. They operate in tiny cells. They hit and run. They are guerrilla fighters, skirmishers. Sometimes their forces grow into armies. Fear of them jars nations into wars, invasions, counteratrocities. How would the United Nations, for example, write a neutral history of modern Lebanon​—battleground of Palestinians, Syrians and Israelis? And, granting that all outside forces are moved outside of its borders, how does Lebanon unite its internal factions intermixed with Maronite Christians, Sunni, Shiite and Druze Muslims? Would violence by one faction against another be terrorism? The answer depends on the one you ask.

To recount what terrorism has done to shape the course of nations would call for a review of much of world history for the past 50 years. Storm signals of expanding terrorism, agitated and manipulated by opposing forces within and without, burn a fearful question into the minds of world leaders: How will the “wars within” figure in the fate of nations?

[Blurb on page 3]

‘We know that wars within nations will become more severe than battles between nations’

How Some of the Seeds Were Sown

DURING the 1940’s the Nazis occupied Europe. Underground resistance was organized. Movements were supported by Allied governments operating through Britain. The British Royal Air Force dropped illustrated pamphlets over Europe in numerous languages on how to prepare ambushes, sabotage railways, harass an army of occupation, kill informers. Underground groups were supplied machine guns, grenades and plastic bombs. The Nazis might have called them terrorists. Their compatriots respected and honored them. Their exploits became heroic deeds to the Western world.

This bit of flashback has been cited by some to illustrate how an insurgent spirit may be born out of what appear at the time to be lofty ideals and noble motives. But the cancer of terrorism is no respecter of victims. It devours the very ones who first champion it. West Germany, France and Italy today are hotbeds of terrorists of left, right and other persuasions. A generation of freedom fighters spawned offspring bent on the violent overthrow of the very social order that threw off Hitler’s rule.

Stirrings of Revolution

Fidel Castro ignited a revolutionary spirit that spread in left-wing circles throughout Latin America. During the early 1960’s insurgent movements proliferated through Brazil, Guatemala, Peru and other countries.

“I was born in Argentina, I fought in Cuba, and I began to be a revolutionary in Guatemala,” wrote Che Guevara, a disciple of Castro. This Spanish-Irishman, a wandering missionary of revolution, was finally killed in 1967 in Bolivia. He gained a sort of “knightly aura” the world over as “a social reformer in arms who fought only with the support of the oppressed people.”

Frantz Fanon, a black doctor, was head of the psychiatric department of Blida Hospital in Algiers when the Arabs began fighting for liberation from the French in 1952. In writings, such as his book The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon helped crystallize the thinking of left-wing intellectuals. For too long, he contended, colonial powers had exploited the masses of Africa, Asia, Latin America or wherever, through deportations, massacres, forced labor and slavery. There was a terrible reckoning due. Violence, he preached, ‘frees the exploited one and restores his self-respect.’ Fanon’s dictums prompted a pattern of thought among intellectuals of this persuasion in the West.

As the anticolonist wars in several parts of the earth came to an end in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the concept of a Third World of poor and miserable countries evolved. It attracted the compassion of young intellectuals. Wealthier countries, they argued, should do more to help less fortunate peoples. Men like Castro, Che Guevara and Fanon became heroes in the universities. Students in Europe and America got caught up in the literature of subversion.

Berlin-born Herbert Marcuse, professor of political thought at the University of California, in concord with intellectuals at Free University in West Berlin, Trento University in northern Italy and other centers of the new thinking, nurtured a trend in revolution. It transferred the insurgency of Latin America, Africa and other Third World areas to the well-to-do countries. There, students disgusted with ‘comfortable consumerism and ostentatious wealth,’ saw reason to revolt, to overthrow the established order.

The Revolution Spreads

“In West Germany most of the early supporters were found in the ranks of clergymen, doctors, professors and journalists,” according to Christopher Dobson and Ronald Payne. In their comprehensive study, The Terrorists, these journalists trace the revolutionary development (in West Germany) among middle- and upper-class men and women. (Half the 28 most-wanted urban guerrillas on the police list in 1979 were women.)

Freed from the burden of military expenditures, following World War II West Germans enjoyed a flush of prosperity while most of the world suffered from want. Some young, idealistic Germans protested loudly. The spirit caught flame in other countries. In Paris, French students marched under the red flag of communism and the black flag of anarchy. Students won some reforms in the “overcrowded and archaic universities” of France and Germany. But when they called on workers to march the streets and barricade factories, the great crusade to overthrow capitalism fizzled.

Revolt, however, was fueled by other fires. In 1967 the Shah of Iran visited West Germany. Demonstrators marched in protest, and a policeman killed Benno Ohnesorg, a mild-mannered student from Hannover. In 1970 students at Kent State University in Ohio protested American invasion of Cambodia. National Guardsmen opened fire. Four students were killed and 10 wounded. Everywhere, radical students saw established authorities as violent oppressors.

Reactionaries struck back when German radicals set fire to a Frankfurt department store​—“to show the comfortable burghers what the horrors of war in Vietnam were really like.” To defend themselves they acquired weapons. To pay for weapons they robbed banks. From bank robbing the very momentum carried them headlong into more violence. It was a process that earned young students a fearsome label: terrorists.

It led some to a life-style of communal living, mate swapping, marijuana smoking, sensual pleasures. Mixed and mingled in it all was an illusion of upholding high-minded ideals. Sense-drowning incitements attracted recruits even from among young women of aristocratic backgrounds. But the lure of excitement and rewards also attracted some who were common criminals with little more idealism than a brute.

Do Terrorists Mirror Bad Governments?

Historian Henry Steel Commager blamed the ‘crisis of violence’ rising in America during the 1970’s on the bad example of government. The United States, he said, was dropping nine times as many bombs on Indochina as had been dropped in all the South Pacific during World War II. “Of what use is it for the President to authorize and perpetuate this violence in his capacity as commander in chief,” questioned Commager, “and then to deplore violence on the campus in his capacity as President?”

Following the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, the National Commission on Violence issued a study of worldwide civil strife. Out of every 1,000 Americans it found that 11 took part in civil strife between 1963 and 1968. Americans ranked first among 17 Western democracies and 24th among the 114 larger nations and colonies of the world. Yet for all their antigovernment demonstrations and race riots, Americans have yet to organize for violence along the lines of hard-core terrorist groups that operate in Western Europe. Not that this can’t happen, the study concluded, because “Americans have always been a violent people.”

What Do They Say for Themselves?

Underground or aboveground, there are movements organized to wage guerrilla warfare in any way they can, each for its own cause. For the Palestinians the cause is nationalism​—they want a homeland of their own. ETA (The Basque Homeland Party) seeks an independent state composed of four predominantly Basque provinces in Spain and three in France. The Irish Republican Army fights to throw off British rule and establish a form of Irish independence.

Left-wing terrorists in Italy want to reorder Italian society along lines more extreme than the “soft” communist mold. Right-wing groups want to turn Italy back to fascism.

West German and Japanese terrorists advocate all-out world revolution in favor of a radically new order. Others, like Muslim insurgents in the Philippines and the Warriors of Christ the King in Spain, fight for religious emancipation. Others appear to have goals fused of politics and religion. The soldiers who shouted “Glory for Egypt, attack!” as their gunfire mowed down President Anwar Sadat in Cairo, were executed as part of a terrorist cell of religious zealots accused of wanting to create a fundamentalist Islamic state in Egypt. Then there are those labeled terrorists whose motives appear to rise no higher than the profit they reap from crime.

But, for the most part, those viewed and feared by others as terrorists see themselves as idealists, visionaries, revolutionaries. “Let us be clear about one thing. We will export our revolution everywhere, to every country that opposes us.” That declaration is attributed to Libyan ruler Muammar el-Qaddafi. In Western eyes he is viewed as a fundamentalist Muslim who calls for a “holy war” against Zionism and dreams of uniting the world’s 160 million Arabs under his leadership. With billions of dollars of oil money at his command, Colonel Qaddafi is taken seriously by United States political leaders. They believe that he is capable of infiltrating a country with trained revolutionaries. But Qaddafi does not see himself as a terrorist. The terrorists, he says, are elsewhere. “Israel is terrorizing the Arabs with its nuclear program. The West German people are terrorized because the United States is putting missiles there. We in Libya are terrorized by the presence of the American fleet in the Mediterranean. This is real terrorism.”

[Blurb on page 6]

‘Of what use is it for the President to perpetuate violence in Indochina and deplore violence on the campus?’

[Picture on page 5]

‘One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’

[Picture on page 7]

An increasing number of women take part

[Picture on page 8]

Some claim that World War II sowed the seeds of present-day terrorism

When Will the Terror Cease?

IN COUNTRIES like the United States where organized terrorism seldom shows its hand, there are, nevertheless, human time bombs primed to explode in race riots, youth revolts or other forms of social anarchy. These upheavals shake social and political structures even in strong nations. They fear that professional agitators might seize control of rioters and lead them on in organized terrorism.

In some countries terrorists are armed with modern weapons. These range from sophisticated fast-action machine guns, high-explosive bombs, Russian-made SAM’s and hand-held antiaircraft missiles to the air-and-ground paraphernalia of war possessed by the PLO in its war with Israel. In most countries chemical weapons capable of poisoning a city’s water supply are available. But, most of all, nations dread the day some terrorist group might come into possession of a nuclear bomb. Could it then hold entire countries hostage? Or fool nuclear nations into thinking one had attacked another?

Fear is the ultimate weapon of terrorists. Fear of death makes hearts faint in the mightiest of nations. When a rumor spread that Colonel Qaddafi (American leaders view him as a terrorist) was sending “hit men” to the United States to kill President Reagan and others (whom Qaddafi views as terrorists), a Washington news bureau reported that “nothing like the Libyan scare ever has descended on this city, at least not in peacetime.”

To All Men Bitter in Soul

Is there no way to banish fear? No power to meliorate the distrust, the hatred, the bitterness that poison the hearts of men? Maybe they were hoping for such a blessing when men graced a wall opposite their United Nations building with these words from the Bible:

THEY SHALL BEAT THEIR SWORDS INTO PLOWSHARES, AND THEIR SPEARS INTO PRUNINGHOOKS: NATION SHALL NOT LIFT UP SWORD AGAINST NATION, NEITHER SHALL THEY LEARN WAR ANY MORE

Two contemporary prophets, Isaiah and Micah, recorded those words more than 700 years before Christ. (Isaiah 2:4; Micah 4:3, Authorized Version) In their terrible enmities, some nations and some men might scorn anything from the Bible. But the Bible is not a “Jewish book,” any more than it is a “Christian book.” Look farther back in history before there were any Jews. Look back some 2300 years before Christ​—to Noah’s son Shem. The God of the Bible is “Jehovah, Shem’s God,” states Genesis 9:26. True, Shem was grandfather to Eber, the ancestor of the Jews. But Shem, according to Bible scholars, was also forefather of the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the Elamites, the Aramaeans and the Lydians. Those ancients occupied parts of what are now Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey. The time was when Jehovah, Shem’s God, had His witnesses in those lands.a

He has His witnesses in those lands today. They are in fact over all the earth. Millions of Jehovah’s Witnesses are joined in a global peace. Many of them were once like those who fled to young David when he himself was a fugitive from King Saul of Israel. “All men in distress and all men who had a creditor and all men bitter in soul began to collect together to him, and he came to be a chief over them.” On two occasions some encouraged David to assassinate Saul. In time David became king, but not by terroristic tactics.​—1 Samuel 22:2; 24:4-6; 26:8-11; 2 Samuel 5:1-3.

Men who hope in the United Nations may not realize that what they etched on the UN Plaza wall is a divine prophecy. It is bound to be fulfilled, not in the fashion of the meliorist​—one who believes that the world naturally tends to get better and, especially, that it can be made better by human efforts. The prophecy points to the coming of God’s Kingdom. Men do not set God’s Kingdom up for him by political means. The Almighty brings in his Kingdom from heaven through his Son, the heir to “the throne of David.”​—Luke 1:32; Isaiah 2:2-4; Daniel 2:44; 7:13, 14.

Before that Kingdom exerts full power over the earth God has his witnesses announce it as a testimony to all the nations. The people who heed that good news are demonstrating already that by God’s power they can melt their war spirit into a spirit of peace. They are learning war no more.

Two other Bible prophets, Ezekiel (38:21) and Zechariah (14:13), foretold that in the winding down of the world it will go into its finale with each man’s hand against his neighbor. Who knows what role the terroristic “wars within” may play in that? But this world’s way of releasing the bitter animosities and hurts in men’s hearts only by draining their lifeblood need not be your way. In whatever land you live, no matter what your circumstances, why not share with Jehovah’s Witnesses in the accurate Bible knowledge through which our very nature is transformed into a new personality “created according to God’s will in true righteousness and loyalty”?​—Ephesians 4:22-24, 31, 32.

[Footnotes]

[Blurb on page 9]

People who heed God’s Word are learning war no more

Realistic About Government

“Our weapons were cudgels, lead-lined clubs, chains and guns,” relates Stelvio, who in the 1970’s was a political activist in southern Europe. At clandestine military-like camps he had learned how to organize mobs and carry on city warfare.

But after some years a change came. One of Jehovah’s Witnesses visited Stelvio’s home, teaching the Bible. The effect? “It opened my eyes to see that nationalism and political factions divide men. I learned from the Bible that God made out of one man every nation of men, to dwell upon the earth. (Acts 17:26) This realization is a unifying force. It freed me of hating others just because their political ideas were different.”

This formerly violent activist adds: “I keep asking myself: How can man ever resolve his problems by politics, since politics itself has caused divisions of mankind? For men to get together, the reasons for divisions must disappear. I have seen among Jehovah’s Witnesses blacks and whites getting baptized in the same water, former Protestants and Catholics in Ireland stop hating one another, Arabs and Jews meeting together during the Six-Day War. I have learned to love those that I had hated.

“Nobody can say that God’s Kingdom, which Jehovah’s Witnesses long for, is a mere Utopian dream, because there is already an international community united under that Kingdom. Applying Bible principles has brought results that no other religious, political or social group has achieved.

“To those who, like me in the past, struggle to bring justice, peace and social order, I say: ‘Be realistic and admit that man has been unable to bring them. Look, though, at Jehovah’s Witnesses. Have they not overcome problems with war, political divisions, racial discrimination, peace and unity? Men trust in men and have problems. Jehovah’s Witnesses submit to God’s Kingdom and have resolved the main problems of living.’”

Word-Search Game

Twenty-one kings sat on “the throne of David” in Jerusalem until the destruction of that city came in 607 B.C.E. The names of these kings are hidden in this letter maze. The names may read forward, backward, up, down or diagonally. They are always in a straight line, and letters are not skipped. The scriptures listed below will provide you with the names of each of these kings, in alphabetical order. How many of the kings do you know without looking up the scriptures?

CLUES

1. 1 Kings 15:1, 7.

2. 2 Kings 16:2.

3. 2 Kings 8:26.

4. 2 Kings 14:18.

5. 2 Kings 21:19.

6. 1 Kings 15:11.

7. 1 Chron. 11:3.

8. 2 Kings 18:1.

9. 2 Kings 23:31.

10. 2 Kings 12:2.

11. 2 Kings 24:8.

12. 2 Kings 23:36.

13. 2 Kings 8:23.

14. 1 Kings 22:42.

15. 2 Kings 22:1.

16. 2 Kings 15:36.

17. 2 Kings 21:1.

18. 1 Kings 14:21.

19. 1 Chron. 29:23.

20. 2 Chron. 26:1.

21. 2 Kings 24:18.

Creationism​—Is It Scientific?

THE controversy between those who expound an evolutionary origin for man and those who hold to the Biblical origin by creation has not ceased to simmer or boil for over a hundred years now. Last year it boiled up again in a federal court trial in Little Rock, Arkansas. The point at issue was a state law requiring that “creation science” be taught in the public schools along with evolution. The law was held to be unconstitutional, and the decision was widely hailed as a victory for evolution.

Scientists, theologians of various denominations, schoolteachers and the American Civil Liberties Union joined hands in assailing the law. It was defended by other scientists, theologians, schoolteachers and the state attorney general. The trial and the ensuing decision were widely publicized in the news media, attracting international attention.

The claims and counterclaims by witnesses ranged from established facts to absurd opinions. It is understandable that the average person might be left confused as to what the outcome means. Did the judge’s decision mean that evolution is now a fact? That the human race is millions of years old? That the Bible is wrong? That we should no longer teach children that God created man?

Before drawing any such conclusions, let us look into the issues involved. What is this “creation science” that was on trial? Is it scientifically based, or, as its detractors assert, is it a facade for sectarian religious dogma?

What Is Creation Science?

Supporters of creationism wrote a definition that was incorporated in the Arkansas law and inserted in the judicial opinion. It includes the scientific evidence that there are limits to the changes within the kinds of living things that were originally created, and that mutations and natural selection do not suffice to change one species into another. It also asserts that the earth and everything that lives on it are the result of a recent act of creation, and that all the geologic strata with their fossils resulted from a single worldwide Flood.

The framers of the law were careful to omit any reference to God or the Bible, in order to avoid constitutional bars against teaching religion in the schools. However, their writings and the testimony given at Little Rock revealed that the creation and the Flood referred to are those described in the Bible book of Genesis. Furthermore, although the time of creation was not spelled out in the law, they acknowledged that “recent” means perhaps 6,000, in any case not more than 10,000, years ago.

Evolution’s Faults Shielded

Unfortunately for the creationists, their efforts in the trial to expose the weak points of evolution were frustrated. Such shortcomings have long been apparent to open-minded students. We mention them only briefly here.

The evidence from experiments on mutations was not emphasized in the trial. Overwhelmingly, the results of such research are that mutations lead only to degeneration of the genetic pattern, producing defective specimens. They do not create new organs or new functions. They never lead to new species. The facts are contrary to the evolution theory and support the corollary principle of creation, stated in Genesis, that every kind of plant or animal can produce only its own kind. But this strong argument was neglected.

Furthermore, the geological record does not contain the continuous gradation of fossils from one species to another, which Darwin’s theory would require. Rather, it shows that new species appear suddenly, in the sedimentary column, without any connection to older forms. Even the evolutionists are currently embroiled in arguments about a new theory, called punctuated equilibrium, which admits that the long search for missing links has failed.

The sudden appearance of new species is really strong evidence for creation and against evolution. But it was not a factor in the trial. Why did the creationists not use it to advantage? They could not because they do not associate different geologic strata with different epochs of creation, but profess that they were all formed at the same time, when Noah’s Flood subsided. Being fettered by this non-Biblical doctrine, the creationists could use the fossil evidence only to tear down evolution. But they were reminded that it was not evolution that was on trial; it was creationism.

Creationism’s Faults Exposed

It was this aspect of the creationists’ thesis, tied to their doctrine of recent creation, that got the spotlight in the trial and in the news about it. Their teaching that the earth and even the universe are less than 10,000 years old contradicts all the findings of modern science. They are so far out of step that they invite ridicule from scientists.

Geologists can point to their measurements of geologic processes that extend far beyond that narrow time frame. Ocean sediments have accumulated over far more than 10,000 years. The time to build mountains and wear them down is measured in millions of years. For continents to drift apart and form oceans takes hundreds of millions of years. To say that all of this goes back only 10,000 years is simply absurd in the eyes of geologists.

Astronomers are equally outraged. They are accustomed to think not only of planetary cycles that take days or years but also of long aeons of time for stars and galaxies to form. They deal with such vast distances that even light, traveling at 186,000 miles (300,000 km) a second, takes billions of years to reach their telescopes. They estimate the distance to the Magellanic Clouds in the southern skies, our nearest neighboring galaxy, to be over 100,000 light-years. If this were created only 10,000 years ago, as the creationists hold, we would still be waiting 90,000 years for the first glimmer of light from it to reach us. In the northern hemisphere, on a dark night good eyes can make out the Andromeda nebula, the light of which takes 1,500,000 years to reach us. Obviously it must have been there longer than that. No wonder the American Astronomical Society went on record in January with a resolution applauding the Arkansas decision.

Physicists also protest that it is impossible to squeeze their studies into a time span of a mere 10,000 years. They point to radioactive elements like uranium and thorium that have lives measured in billions of years. The accumulation of distinctive isotopes of lead, which are the end products of radioactive decay, shows that some of the oldest rocks in the earth’s crust must have lain undisturbed for as much as 3 or 4 billion years. And their interpretation of the red-shifted light from distant galaxies, out at the edge of the visible universe, sets its beginning from 10 to 20 billion years ago.

Is This Science?

How can creationists reconcile such evidence with their dogma that everything started just a few thousand years ago? When God created the rocks with uranium in them, did he also put in the right amount of the special isotopes of lead that would make them look a billion years old? When he made the Andromeda galaxy, did he also fill the path to the earth with light waves, all along its 10 thousand million billion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) miles, so we would not have to wait to see it in the sky? Would the God of truth purposely insert such illusions in his creation just to deceive us?

Such reasoning reminds one of the story told of the little old Fundamentalist lady who was being shown through the Dinosaur National Monument in Utah. She did not believe the park ranger’s speech about the huge reptiles that had once lived there and whose fossilized bones she was seeing. She offered another explanation for them: “The Lord put them there to fool you.”

Speaking of dinosaurs, where do they fit into the creationists’ scheme of things? In their view, human beings and dinosaurs and every other kind of animal, extinct or extant, lived on earth at the same time before the Flood. They were all swept away together in a grand mélange by the Floodwaters. How, then, do they account for the orderly sequence of fossils in sedimentary rocks, starting with simple forms of life in the lower strata and followed by increasingly diverse and complex creatures in higher strata? They can only offer a set of implausible and contradictory theories as to how all kinds of plants and animals could have been sorted out of the potpourri of carcasses and laid down in separate layers.

Trying to defend their arbitrary structure of “creation science” with such weak, strained hypotheses, they were soundly rebutted by the scientists’ testimony at Little Rock. They were left without any credible claim to being scientific.

Creationism Discredited

The best-known scientist who testified for the creationists was Chandra Wickramasinghe, who was brought from Wales to appear at the trial. He and the British astronomer Fred Hoyle have advanced an unorthodox theory that rejects the doctrine that life evolved on earth. They say that life started in outer space and fell to earth on comets or meteorites. He testified that the complexity of genetic patterns makes it impossible for them to have formed by chance. So, he concludes, they must have been designed by an intelligent Creator. But his testimony boomeranged on the creationists when he said that no rational scientist could believe the earth is less than a million years old.

Based on the testimony given, both by the challengers and the defenders of the law, the judge could hardly do otherwise than find that creationism is not scientific. It was clearly exposed that its proponents do not arrive at conclusions by the scientific method of gathering all the evidence and then fitting it to a hypothesis. Instead, they start with a fixed sectarian interpretation of Genesis and seek evidence to support that. Contrary evidence they try to ignore, or, when they cannot, they invent unlikely explanations for the evident conflict with hard facts. The Arkansas law was an ill-advised effort to get their views of creation into the public-school curriculum.

Then does the failure of creationism mean that creation is only a fiction? Does it mean that the Bible is not true, or does it mean, rather, that a narrow, misguided interpretation of the Bible is wrong? We shall discuss the difference between creation and creationism in the next issue of Awake! in an article entitled “Evolution, Creation, or Creationism​—Which Do You Believe?”

[Pictures on page 12, 13]

Did it all happen in six 24-hour days?

Unwanted Aliens​—What Is the Solution?

AT 10:00 p.m. one night a Mexican youth with 11 others crawled through a hole in the fence separating the Mexican town of Tijuana from the United States. Fifteen miles (24 km) from the border they were met by a car arranged for by their paid guide, known as a “coyote.” Because the car would not start they were delayed long enough to be spotted by the border patrol and were returned to Mexico.

The next night the young man tried again with 15 others, but this time they were seen by the border patrol from a helicopter when the wash of the plane’s rotors pulled off a plastic sheet they were hiding under and exposed them to the plane’s spotlight.

In his third attempt that same week he was caught again and deported. This time the group was detected by hearing devices while they were walking along a train track. The fourth attempt was successful.

He was only one of an estimated 5 million illegal aliens from many countries who have successfully entered the United States despite the diligent efforts of the border patrol to stop them. Approximately half a million a year continue to pour in. Although many are apprehended and deported, the majority promptly return. Why are these people so determined to enter a country where they are not wanted? The principal factor is economic.

Aliens in the United States as well as in some European countries want jobs and money they can send back home to needy relatives. Those in Europe send back to their home countries of Turkey, Portugal and Yugoslavia approximately 12 billion dollars (U.S.) annually, an important factor in the economies of these countries. But their presence is creating problems.

Competition for Jobs

Slow economic growth and rising unemployment are causing keen competition for jobs. Between the mid-1950’s and the 1970’s several European countries permitted approximately 30 million aliens to enter as migrant workers to fill job vacancies with the understanding that they would return when the need for them ended. But many decided to stay and sent for their families. There are about 15 million migrants still living in these countries. Now with the economic slump, there are too many aliens competing with citizens for jobs.

Violent clashes have occurred in Britain between the local people and migrants from Asia and the West Indies. West Germany has seen a growing number of demonstrations and antimigrant incidents. In Stuttgart anti-Turk hate groups have threatened reprisals on companies that keep Turks on their payrolls.

In the summer of 1982, Semra Ertan, a Turkish migrant, poured a gallon of gasoline over her body and burned herself to death because of her despair over the way the Germans had been treating the Turks. Before her death she phoned a radio station and said: “The Germans should not treat us like dogs! I want to be treated like a human being.”

In France there is growing hostility toward Algerian migrants and their families. Sweden has clamped tighter controls on the entry of aliens. Switzerland has stepped up its efforts to stop illegal immigration. In Italy there are prospects of stiff penalties against employers who hire undocumented aliens. So the aliens that were wanted when the economies of these countries were booming are now an unwanted people.

In the United States the complaints are similar​—that aliens are competing for jobs that citizens need. Much of the rising animosity is directed against the Indo-Chinese and aliens from Latin America. A survey by a City University of New York economist revealed that half of all new jobs created nationwide in the late 1970’s were taken by legal and illegal aliens. Another study of 2,000 Houston, Texas, construction workers revealed that 40 percent were noncitizens.

State and local officials are complaining that their budgets do not permit them to continue providing millions of dollars of aid to aliens in the form of education, health-care services and public assistance. But a decision by the United States Supreme Court in June 1982 ruled that states cannot deny children of illegal aliens free education.

When immigration agents made raids on a number of businesses across the United States in May 1982, and deported the illegal alien workers, there were crowds of unemployed Americans seeking their jobs. At one plant where the raid left open 50 jobs, there were 1,000 applicants. A food plant in Chicago was left with 60 openings for which they received 600 applications. But frequently the citizens do not like the jobs and quit.

In a poultry plant north of San Francisco, 18 chicken pluckers were apprehended and deported. For these jobs there were hundreds of applicants. Within a week 14 of the 18 newly hired employees quit. At a fishery in Santa Rosa, California, the ones who sought the jobs of arrested aliens refused to do the aliens’ work of cleaning fish.

A furniture manufacturing company in Santa Ana, California, was left with approximately 100 assembly-line openings by the raids. A spokesman for the company said that the workers sent him by government agencies seldom lasted for a day. The work is hard and monotonous, and the local people do not want it.

The same was true at a California strawberry farm. Most of those who came to replace deported aliens quit the first day because it is very hard work. All day they worked on their knees.

Exploited Aliens

It is not unusual for employers of illegal aliens to take advantage of the aliens’ fear of deportation. The young Mexican man mentioned in the beginning of this article worked for a while for an employer who paid him about one third the minimum wage in the United States and nothing extra for overtime.

In New York City’s Chinatown, 60 illegal aliens from Hong Kong were found working in garment-industry sweatshops for less than one third the minimum wage. In similar sweatshops in Manhattan lofts, Chinese, Koreans and Cubans were found working for even less.

Fruit and vegetable growers who hire illegal aliens claim that they pay the minimum wage, but the money usually is paid to labor contractors who hire the workers. Frequently these contractors, aliens themselves, deduct a large amount from the wages, leaving the workers very little for their hard work.

Being willing to work for much less than local citizens, the aliens are able to revitalize failing industries. Since these industries would likely collapse without them, they are not competing for jobs with local people who demand higher pay, but they are actually creating jobs in other businesses that benefit from these industries.

Efforts to Cope With the Problem

The European countries would like to see their unwanted aliens return home and are pressing them to do so. France even instituted departure grants of $4,500 plus air fare for a family of four. But not enough are responding to the pressure, and so an explosive situation is forming.

In the United States the government is working on legislation that revamps the immigration laws. It grants amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, permitting them to gain legal status if they meet a residency requirement. On the other hand, it provides for increasing the staff and budget of the Immigration Service with the hope of making it more difficult for aliens to enter the country. Additionally it makes it tougher for illegal aliens to get jobs, even setting fines and prison terms for employers who knowingly hire them. By means of this legislation the government hopes to curtail the influx of illegal aliens.

The decision to grant legal status to those meeting a residency requirement was no doubt due to the impossibility of finding and deporting the millions of illegal aliens already residing in the country. But legalizing them creates a further problem. The Immigration Service will have the gigantic task of issuing these people residency documents when it is already swamped with more paperwork than it can handle. It is years behind in processing applications for legal residency. The district director of the Immigration Service in San Francisco said: “We have horrendous backlogs, tremendous delays. We’re falling further and further behind.”

The United States and European countries cannot put up a Berlin wall to keep out unwanted aliens. Even with a beefed-up border patrol there is little hope that the United States can stop the flood of illegal aliens that is increasing with the worsening of economic conditions and political upheavals in Latin America.

The only solution to the problem is a complete change in the worldwide economic and political systems that create floods of desperate refugees. All man’s efforts to make these changes have been dismal failures. Instead of creating an increasingly more united, peaceful and stable world, he is making one that is more divided politically and more unstable economically.

While man does not have the answer to the problem of unwanted aliens, God does. His long-promised world government can make the necessary changes. Under its rule mankind will no longer be fractured into innumerable quarreling governments of human origin but will be united under one perfect, just government of divine origin. The security it will bring is indicated in the Bible prophecy at Micah 4:3, 4, which says: “They will not lift up sword, nation against nation, neither will they learn war anymore. And they will actually sit, each one under his vine and under his fig tree, and there will be no one making them tremble.”

Let’s Taste Some Delicious Mexican Dishes!

Lunch is being served! How we appreciate the arrangement our Creator has made for us to fortify our bodies with good, wholesome food!

Here in Mexico we have a very simple but tasty dish. We call it molletes. It’s simple because all you need is a crisp French roll, refried beans, cheese and a delicious Mexican hot sauce. We know you will like refried beans even if you don’t use them for the molletes. You must cook the beans until they are well done. Now put a little oil in a frying pan and strain the beans and pour them into the hot oil and begin mashing them until they become as a paste or of the proper consistency for spreading on a roll. If your appetite has been whetted already you can simply eat this dish just as it is, and it is delicious.

But you say no, you want molletes, well, then, let’s continue. You must split the French roll in half lengthwise and spread the refried beans on both pieces and then sprinkle it with a soft cheese. Put it into the oven for 10 minutes and now it is piping hot and ready to be eaten by adding hot sauce according to one’s taste. There are a number of ways to make different hot sauces, but most of us prefer what we call typical Mexican sauce, which we prepare by finely chopping a couple of tomatoes, an onion and a hot chili or two, according to taste. Let me warn you​—go easy on the hot sauce. Some even make the sauce omitting the hot chilies, but we Mexicans enjoy our hot sauce, so come on with the chilies! Hm-m, please serve one more mollete!

Here in Mexico one of the main staples is corn. There are many ways to prepare it so as to make it appetizing as well as nutritious. If hominy is available where you live you will find Pozole a very easy dish to prepare. You must cook the hominy seasoned with salt until it bursts (as if it were popcorn). While it is cooking we can cut the chicken or pork in small pieces and boil them until they are well done. Strain the hominy now and add it to the meat and broth and cook them together for 15 minutes. Now arrange separately on a plate cayenne powder, oregano, chopped onions, shredded lettuce and quartered lemons. Each will be served a deep bowl of hominy and meat; add the seasoning desired, along with the onions, lettuce and the juice of the lemons. This dish can also be garnished with sliced radishes if you like. We like it very much since we have our soup, meat and salad all in one meal and, oh, it is so good!

Young People Ask . . .

How Can I Get Along With Others?

“DO ANY of you feel that you don’t get along with others?” asked Robert Conklin, author and researcher in the field of human relations. Rarely, however, does he find someone who says Yes. Yet of 1,000 people whom he asked to list their ‘three greatest pet peeves,’ 998 indicated that ‘their biggest gripes in life were caused by other people.’

Conklin concluded that in actuality such people are saying: “I feel I get along with you fine and dandy until you do something I don’t like. Then I stop getting along with you, inside. I become irritated, aggravated, frustrated.”

Is this how you feel at times about people that you know? Such feelings​—whether they are expressed or remain locked up inside—​can prevent peaceful relations with others. Yet a life filled with meaning and substance is greatly dependent on your ability to get along well with others.

But what are some of the positive steps that you can take to better your relations with others?

Communicate

Be willing to talk with people! Good communication builds strong relationships. To get along with others we must be willing not only to share our feelings but also to listen.

An outstanding example shows the value of listening. Once Jesus Christ met a Samaritan woman at a well and engaged her in conversation. His request, “Give me a drink,” started that conversation. (John 4:5-26) Jesus attentively listened to her views. As a result, this Samaritan woman was drawn closer to him. Jesus communicated. He knew how to listen as well as how to talk. “Of all of the actions that can make another human being feel significant and worthwhile,” wrote Robert Conklin, “there is none more vital than skilled listening.”

Communication also helps you to get along with your parents. Often the home can be a battlefield. But 17-year-old Don says: “My parents and I are pretty close because we’re honest and open with each other.” But does being “open” mean that you can be harsh or brutally blunt? “Let your utterance be always with graciousness, seasoned with salt, so as to know how you ought to give an answer to each one,” advises the Bible. Is this advice really practical?​—Colossians 4:6.

Well, when your expressions are “seasoned with salt,” they gain greater acceptance. For instance, even if you were upset with another, there is a big difference between blurting out: “You make me sick!” and calmly saying: “What you said to me yesterday after school hurt my feelings.” Which statement would be more easily “digested” and likely produce the better results?

However, just as important in getting along with others is knowing when to say something. Solomon, a wise king of ancient Israel, compared “a word spoken at the right time for it” to “apples of gold in silver carvings.” (Proverbs 25:11) Golden apples set by a craftsman in a background of silver were prized possessions in ancient Israel​—so, too, the value of knowing when to speak and when not to. The right words said in the right way and at the right time are ‘building blocks’ of good relationships with others.

Acknowledge the Good in Others

How do you feel when others genuinely comment favorably about your personality, skills, and so forth? Don’t you enjoy it? Though flattery​—insincere or excessive praise—​can repel, truthful expressions of merit can do much to foster feelings of closeness.

“We may tend to think less of ourselves, not considering our good qualities,” admitted Tim. Yet this young man, acknowledging the drawing power of sincere commendation, explained: “To have someone say nice things about you is rewarding and I enjoy being around people like that.” Don’t you feel the same way?

Jesus knew this and acknowledged the good in others. To Nathanael, who later became one of his apostles, he said, “See, an Israelite for a certainty, in whom there is no deceit.” (John 1:47) Jesus made this appraisal while undoubtedly being aware of Nathanael’s very belittling query about Jesus’ hometown: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46) Rather than be offended, Jesus drew attention to Nathanael’s exceptional qualities. There followed an abiding friendship.

Do you, like Jesus, overlook minor flaws and search for finer jewels of personality in others? ‘But some people just get on my nerves! No matter how nice you try to be they are irritable!’ exclaim many. True, people have their faults. Nonetheless, being able to maintain a peaceful relationship still depends on mastering perhaps the most important quality needed to get along with others. That quality is understanding.

Be Understanding

How would you react if you were driving along and saw a young man waving his hands and gesturing for you to stop. But you do not. Suddenly the young man throws a rock striking your car. You stop, get out of the car and start toward him.

Many thoughts flood your mind: He must pay for the damages. Why are people so vindictive? I cannot let him get away with this. You get closer and observe a tearful and nervous figure before you. He explains, ‘I had to get you to stop.’ You now observe just beyond him another young man who is badly injured, lying in the grass in need of assistance. Now you see the whole of the matter and you certainly feel differently about the young man standing beside you. Yes, you understand!

Many persons are besieged by difficult, at times hopelessly frustrating, problems. Others are emotionally very insecure, perhaps due to their upbringing or a bad family environment. Others may feel heavy pressure or even oppression, which even the Bible says can “make a wise one act crazy.” (Ecclesiastes 7:7) All of this may contribute to their irritability and cause them to say things that they later regret. Can you be “big” enough to make allowances for that type of thing and overlook it?​—Proverbs 19:11.

Understanding can help us search for an answer to questions such as: Why does he act that way? or, Why can’t he listen to reason? Not drawing hasty conclusions about others promotes understanding. This is a lesson that 27-year-old Scott has learned. He confessed: “I had the tendency to form an opinion about a person from one brief incident or encounter. I allowed this to affect the way I treated and felt about that one.” However, he changed and found that he could get along better with others. He added: “I now have found it better not to prejudge a person but to allow time to get to know the whole person. I try to understand the whys and wherefores of his actions.”

Of course, there will be times when you will fail to show the needed understanding. You may not always be the man of discernment that is “cool of spirit.” (Proverbs 17:27) When this happens, haven’t you found it necessary to salve the hurt feelings of someone close to you, perhaps saying, ‘I am sorry, I apologize, I just did not understand’?

So pursue better relations with others. Learn to communicate. Let others know that you appreciate their good qualities. Strive to see why others do things, try to understand. Your putting these principles to work in your life can be richly rewarding to you and to those with whom you associate.

[Blurb on page 22]

Knowing when to speak is a ‘building block’ of good relationships with others

[Blurb on page 23]

“There will be times when you will fail to show the needed understanding”

[Picture on page 23]

Look beyond actions and try to cultivate understanding

Should You Believe in Reincarnation?

WHILE under the influence of LSD, a man from Edmonton, Canada, would peer into a mirror. “I began to hallucinate and see what I believed were previous incarnations of myself. For instance, I saw myself as an evil warlord . . . responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. Once while observing such an evil person in the mirror, I heard a voice saying: ‘You’ll have to suffer for these evils that you have done!’”

Other things, besides the use of drugs, have led people to believe in reincarnation. When visiting new places, some get a strange feeling that they were there before, concluding that they must have lived before. Others report similar feelings after meeting total strangers. Hypnosis has also played a part. “Several psychiatrists practicing today have come to believe in reincarnation because some of their patients under hypnosis have recalled experiences of times before their own birth,” wrote R. Stemman in Spirits and Spirit World. The same doctrine forms the basis of the Hindu and Buddhist religions, whose members number well over half a billion.

Although long prominent in the East, reincarnation has recently become a popular topic for discussion in the Western world. It forms the plot of books and films. Many saw the recent Robert Wise film production Audrey Rose, based on a best-selling novel. The story depicted distressed parents who were led to believe that their beloved daughter was the reincarnation of another man’s deceased child.

“After death a person’s soul is reborn into another body,” reincarnationists say. Where did this belief originate and how does it affect people? Should you believe it too?

Where Did It Start?

The belief that after death a person’s soul passes on to another body is widespread and deeply rooted in mankind’s past. The Vendas, one of South Africa’s black tribes, believe in it, as do Australian aborigines, Araucanian Indians of South America and many others.

More than 2,000 years ago it was believed by ancient Greeks and Celts of Western Europe. At the same time Brahmin priests were teaching it in India. “Many scholars believe that the Hindu Brahmin in the East and the Celtic Druid in the West were lateral survivals of an ancient Indo-European priesthood,” comments the Encyclopædia Britannica.

One ‘ancient priesthood,’ central to India, Western Europe and Greece, was located in Babylon. Was reincarnation mothered there? Well, Babylonian religion included the annual mourning over a dead hero, Tammuz, or Dumuzi, whom they made into a god. “The kings who incarnated him,” wrote Professor Mircea Eliade, “annually celebrated the re-creation of the world. . . . Tammuz disappears, to reappear six months later. This alternation​—periodical presence and absence of the god—​was able to institute ‘mysteries’ concerning the salvation of men, their destiny after death. . . . Eventually, every human being could hope to enjoy this privilege.”

How Does It Affect People?

Could reincarnation bring confusion and suffering to parents, as depicted in the novel Audrey Rose? In India Dr. Vinoda Murthy investigated reported cases of “rebirth.” One involved a child who cried each night, saying that he belonged to another place. Eventually he was taken to a distant village, identifying a house and the couple in it as his own. “The story,” according to science-writer Radhakrishna Rao, “had a sorry sequel, for the boy became the centre of a heated dispute between two sets of parents.”

Connected with reincarnation is the belief that misfortunes in the present life are a punishment for things done in previous lives. This is referred to as “the law of Karma.” While discouraging some from doing harm to others, is this belief a positive force for doing good? The answer is reflected in the station of Brahmin priests, who lead a system of castes, which millions find burdensome and oppressive. Consider, too, Buddhist monks, who withdraw from society to live a life of seclusion. “If a person has been put into this world to redress the balance of his own wicked past, what business is it of ours to interfere and disturb the ordinances of God?” comments Man, Myth and Magic​—An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Supernatural.

Investigating their “past lives” has brought some under the influence of dangerous superhuman forces. “I felt haunted by spirits,” wrote the man referred to at the beginning of this article. “At times I begged only to die and never be born again . . . I made several attempts to commit suicide.”

What Does the Bible Teach?

The Bible teaches that after death there is no invisible part that survives to be reborn as someone else. The soul is the person himself. For example, you can read in the Bible that after the first man was created, he was called a “soul.” Thus, when he died, that “soul” came to an end, as God had said: “In the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you will return.” Elsewhere, the Bible repeatedly shows that the human “soul” dies.​—Genesis 2:7; 3:19; Joshua 10:32; Ezekiel 18:4; James 5:20; Revelation 16:3.

If nothing survives the body after death, what explanation is there for phenomena associated with the belief in reincarnation? The Bible shows that demons, angels who turned unfaithful, are responsible for this. (1 Timothy 4:1) As for the hope of life after death, you can firmly believe in the Creator’s ability to bring back “those who have been counted worthy of . . . the resurrection from the dead.” As Jesus assured: “The hour is coming in which all those in the memorial tombs will hear his voice and come out.”​—Luke 20:35; John 5:28, 29.

This information from God’s Word has brought comfort and relief to millions, including the once troubled man from Edmonton, Canada. Another, a former Hindu from India, expressed it like this: “According to reincarnation, one returns in this system, under these conditions where people grow sick and die. But the resurrection will take place after Jehovah God, by means of his Kingdom government, will bring an end to this corrupt system. Then, . . . sickness, mourning and even death will be things of the past!”​—Revelation 21:3, 4.

[Picture on page 24]

At times, some people get the feeling that they have lived before

[Picture on page 25]

Law of Karma teaches “wheel” of endless rebirths

A Bird That Chooses Imprisonment

Tropical and subtropical areas in Asia and Africa are the home of the hornbill. This dark-colored bird looks as though it is greatly handicapped by its huge beak. And when the female is walled up in the hollow of a tree, with only a hole large enough for her to project the tip of her bill, a person may well conclude that something definitely has gone wrong.

Appearances, though, can be deceptive. Filled with many air chambers, the awkward-looking beak is comparatively light and just right for hornbills. Perched on a branch that is strong enough to support the weight of its body, the hornbill makes good use of the long beak to reach fruit.

For quite a few weeks the females of most varieties live in confinement and are fed regurgitated food by the males. Females of at least one variety, using a mixture of clay, dung and food particles, hammer the wall into place, and males obligingly bring the needed clay.

The confined female is undisturbed as she incubates her eggs. While walled up, she loses her tail feathers and wing feathers, making it impossible for her to fly until they are replaced. So her self-imposed imprisonment serves as a protection.

The male is kept very busy in caring for his mate and offspring. During the course of an hour he may visit the nest 20 times to supply food. Once the hatched birds have an appetite that is too much for him to handle, the fully feathered mother breaks free and begins helping her mate to feed their offspring.

The youngsters proceed to close up the enlarged opening through which their mother exited. But as time passes, a conflict of interests may arise. Some of the birds may be ready to leave the nest, while others may not be. So while one youngster begins breaking down the wall, another one is right on the job doing the repair work.

Truly, careful observation and research time and again reveal that seemingly strange features and habits of animals serve a good purpose. Hornbills, with their long beaks and extraordinary nesting procedures, are not an exception.

From Our Readers

Protection Against Thievery

I want to thank you for helping me to save money, which I would have lost if I had not followed the advice in the Italian edition of Awake! for April 8, 1980. [English issue of October 22, 1979, “Wise Counsel Protects Against Crime.”] Recently my home was visited by thieves who stole some money. Thanks to your advice to keep valuables in different places I was able to save some of it.

E. B., Italy

We are pleased to hear that our articles are helpful. On this point, please read “There Are Ways to Avoid Robbery” in our issue of January 22, 1983.​—ED.

Video Games

I really enjoyed your article on ‘Video Games.’ (November 8, 1982) I have decided to study it together with my 10-year-old daughter. We should see this side of what most people consider a harmless game. Only one thing bothers me. You state: “What starts out as innocent fun turns out to be an addictive, compulsive game that controls the players.” Would it not have been more in line with truth to have said that such may turn out to be addictive, instead of saying it will always be the case?

L. R., Colorado

We agree that readers should understand what was said as merely a general statement and not interpret it as meaning it will always be the case, without exception. But people can be benefited by knowing the dangers and how others have been affected.​—ED.

Just a few short years ago I shook my head in dismay at the enormous amount of time and money my little brother was spending at the local arcade. Now due to the many new and eye-catching games that have been produced I find myself becoming a slave to these very same things. Make no mistake about it, video games can become addictive. I’ve even found that during my meditation in prayer I start to see the video game in my mind’s eye, and right there during the prayer I begin playing the game! What a damaging effect this has had on my spirituality! The video game can’t be all to blame for this, I know, but it nevertheless plays an important role.

B. J., Massachusetts

Drug Addiction

I want to thank you for the advice on tranquilizers and depression. (May 22, 1981, and October 22, 1981) I must admit that, at first, these articles upset me. This was because I had never thought of myself as a drug addict, although I had been prescribed Valium for over 10 years. I believed it would be impossible for me to stop taking these pills. After much thought and prayer I decided to try again slowly to reduce my intake of this drug. It has not been easy, but after eight months I am now free from these dreadful tablets. I felt that, if I made an earnest effort, Jehovah would back me up and strengthen me. I feel now, after three full months clear of these tablets, that I have been helped every step of the way. If you had not published these articles, I would still be taking Valium.

S. L., England

Watching the World

Transfused Baby Dies of AIDS

● The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, reports that a baby has died because of a blood transfusion that transmitted AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome), a deadly illness that has mainly afflicted homosexuals. The epidemiology facility in Atlanta also reported several cases of AIDS among hemophilia patients who were given frequent transfusions of a blood-clotting factor. Said the report: “This and continuing reports of AIDS among persons with hemophilia A raise serious questions about the possible transmission of AIDS through blood and blood products.”

Meteorite Invades Living Room

● Scientists estimate that 200 million visible meteors, or shooting stars, occur daily in the earth’s atmosphere. Almost all of them burn up completely before reaching the ground. Thus only about 500 meteorites a year land on earth, and, of these, few are ever recovered. But one was recovered recently in Wethersfield, Connecticut, when it crashed through the roof of a house and its second- and first-floor ceilings, coming to rest in the living room. It weighs six pounds and is about the size of a grapefruit. Remarkably, this was the second time in 11 years that a meteorite smashed through the roof of a house in Wethersfield. “To have two strike the same town is, well, almost incomprehensible,” said Dr. Ursula Marvin, a geologist with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She added that the black object probably came from the asteroid belt, a “sort of celestial rock garden” between Mars and Jupiter.

Pope Visits Sicily

● When Pope John Paul II recently visited Sicily for a two-day visit, it was the first time that he had spent a night out of Rome on a pastoral tour in Italy. The pope called on Sicilians to construct a society without violence and war. Reporting on the visit, the The New York Times said: “Many people expressed surprise that the Pope, who delivered 13 homilies and addresses here to large groups of Sicilians from all regions of the island, never directly and clearly condemned the Mafia as an organization that terrorizes much of the population. Officials say that in the capital and its surroundings alone, the Mafia has been responsible for 124 murders and the disappearance and presumed death of 130 additional people since the beginning of the year [1982].”

In another comment on the pope’s visit, the New York Daily News said: “In the prepared text of his address, released before the meeting in a Palermo square, the Pope also threw his support behind the Sicilian church’s excommunication of Mafiosi. But when John Paul read the speech, that passage was left out, as was an appeal to the youths to fight omertà, the Mafia code of secrecy and revenge that keeps many Sicilians from testifying against mobsters. The Pope also omitted a passage that said Mafia violence ‘merits the full moral condemnation recently repeated by your bishops.’”

UN’s “Class War”

● U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Jeane Kirkpatrick, recently charged that the UN is engaged in a Marxist “class war” against the United States and its corporations. She accused the “new class” of UN bureaucrats of trying to achieve “global socialism.” Reporting on her accusations, the New York Post said: “Mrs. Kirkpatrick told a crowd of 300 at a Regulation magazine breakfast at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington that the world body now advances a Marxist ideology based on the assertion that all poverty is the fault of the rich. . . . Washington should understand the destructive ideology and influence inside the UN and work against that, she said.”

Printing for Inflation

● Israel released its largest denomination banknote recently​—the 500-shekel note bearing a portrait of Baron Edmond de Rothschild, a symbol of wealth and generosity. The new bill was designed so that Israelis would not have to carry around wallets stuffed with banknotes, the highest of which had been only 100 shekels. The new bill was worth about $15.50 when released, but it is expected to lose half its value in a year if triple-digit inflation continues. “Our inflation causes a lot of problems for our money printers,” said a Bank of Israel spokesman. Bank officials are already planning a 1,000-shekel bill and foresee the possibility of a 2,500- or 5,000-shekel bill bearing a portrait of the late prime minister Golda Meir.

Warning on Video Games

● U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop recently warned that video games may be dangerous to the health of young people. Children are becoming addicted to the games, he said, and “they are into it body and soul.” He added: “Their body language is tremendous and everything is zap the enemy. There’s nothing constructive in the games.” He said there are educational video games, but “the kind the kids like and the kind they are addicted to are Martians coming in that have to be killed,” and so forth. Doctors are just now seeing, he said, “aberrations of childhood behavior” because of the games. Symptoms induced by the games were described as “tensions, sleeplessness in kids and dreams that have to do with the things they have been doing all day.”

Largest Hydroelectric Dam

● Spanning nearly five miles (8 km) across the Paraná River, which separates Brazil and Paraguay, is Itaipu, the world’s largest hydroelectric dam. Jointly dedicated recently by Brazil’s president and his Paraguayan counterpart, the dam is 604 feet (184 m) high. So much cement went into its construction that it is said to be enough to build eight cities of medium size. Seven years have already been spent in building Itaipu, but not until 1989 will it be producing at full capacity. Its potential power of 12,600 megawatts is about six times the output of Egypt’s Aswan High Dam.

Too Big for Cradle

● Antonio and Luzinete Mondini of Guarulhos, SP, Brazil, recently became the parents of a baby boy weighing 6 kilograms 880 grams (15 lb) and measuring 57 centimeters (1 ft 10 in.) in length at birth. The baby, named Rafael, had the appearance of a child of four to six months. This was the mother’s first cesarean birth, although her other four boys weighed an average of 5 kilograms (11 lb) at birth. Rafael was born with serious health problems, due in part to the fact that his mother is diabetic. He is now being treated with a view to normalizing his metabolism. One of the mother’s problems was that none of the clothes or shoes prepared for her baby fit him. Even the wicker basket, all nicely decorated for the new arrival, was of no use. Rafael just did not fit into it!

Lack of Faith in Finland

● Reports indicate that the clergy of the Lutheran Church of Finland are suffering from lack of faith. Juhani Simojoki, director of the Lutheran congregations in Helsinki, recently said that the Church has taken the view that the Bible is more human than holy. He also said humans constitute “a part of animal world, an evolutionary result, but not necessarily the final result. God’s image is a cousin of an ape. . . . Nor do we consider it a fact that the Flood once destroyed practically all life.” As for the end of this system of things, he said “there is no reason to await it anymore.” Furthermore, he indicated that some theologians are probably quite ready “to deny certain doctrines,” but “delicacy usually prevents them from talking about their views and insulting the faith of others.” Of similar religious leaders, Jesus Christ pointedly said: “Blind guides is what they are. If, then, a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit.”​—Matthew 15:14.

They’re Not Teddy Bears!

● Each year horror stories come out of the wilds of North America’s national parks telling of those seriously injured or killed because of viewing bears as being rather tame. An article by a doctor in The Medical Post of Toronto, Canada, gives some current examples: “In Jasper a mother smeared her child’s hand with honey to get a picture of a bear eating out of her palm, and was outraged when the bear walked away with most of the child’s fingers in its mouth. A Banff ranger told me of a man he found trying to encourage a bear to climb into the front seat of his car so he could take a photo of it sitting beside his wife.” Most of the bear-related tragedies could have been avoided if people heeded the signs warning them that bears are wild animals.

When Flying With a Baby

● When a mother travels by air with a baby she does well to bring along a bottle to help prevent the infant’s ears from hurting. This advice was given in a letter written by Dr. Hans H. Neumann of the Health Department of New Haven, Connecticut, and published in the New England Journal of Medicine. “Air travelers know that during a plane’s descent, infants on board howl pitifully,” wrote the doctor. “Physicians should urge mothers to bottle-feed their infants with whatever liquid the baby likes best, both when the plane is rising and particularly during its descent.” Since the problem is changing air pressure, he explained that “the frequent swallowing will make it easier to equalize the pressure on both sides of the eardrum.” The ears of infant air travelers hurt more, noted the doctor, because their Eustachian tubes are narrower and their noses are often clogged.

How to Catch and Stop a Cold

● One way to catch a cold is by shaking hands with someone who has one, according to Family Circle magazine. In addition, any contact with objects previously touched by a cold sufferer could infect you. Why? Because studies indicate that dried surfaces contaminated by cold-causing viruses are potent for infection-spreading up to three hours. For prevention of cold: regularly wash your hands. If you do happen to come down with a cold that causes congestion or a cough, Family Circle suggests a concoction of the juice of one lemon mixed with honey and four ounces of water for relief. Cold lemon juice for a cough; hot for congestion.

● Rhinotherm is the name of a device that can cure a cold by hot-air blasts, claims Science Features From Israel. Professor Aharon Yerushalmi and his colleagues of the Weizmann Institute of Science developed this instrument on the principle that viruses cannot live in high temperatures. The Rhinotherm bombards the nasal passages with jets of 107° F. (42° C.) moist air, weakening the cold viruses to the extent that they do not multiply and the symptoms disappear. According to the report, “seventy-two percent of the sufferers treated were free of cold miseries when tested one day after treatment.” Of the 900 patients involved, some found permanent relief with just one 30-minute application. Rhinotherm has shown evidence of halting symptoms of allergies too.

Easy-to-read Bible in Large Print

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King of the World​—Who Would Be Your Choice?

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