Watching the World
Danes Assemble
◆ As in other countries of the world, Jehovah’s witnesses in Denmark held “Men of Goodwill” district assemblies this summer. At four assembly cities a total of 19,115 persons attended the public lecture, the highest attendance ever for such assemblies in that land. At Hillerød the assembly was held in Frederiksborg Hall. Afterward its director stated: “I can see you have tried this before. We have never experienced an arrangement that was so well organized, and with so many voluntary workers. There is no one who can copy you.”
Mounting Bankruptcies
◆ Bankruptcies in the United States have mounted alarmingly in 1970. April’s $131.9-million losses were the highest ever for that month. Personal failures cut across all brackets, from abandoned mothers to a $100,000-a-year baseball star. Among factors blamed were abuse of credit cards, soaring medical bills and a mounting divorce rate (many couples filing bankruptcy before they split up). “Moonlighters” and overtime workers, accustomed to a double-income living scale, when suddenly cut off from extra income, often cannot pay their bills. A veteran bankruptcy referee bluntly uncovered a basic cause, stating: “There’s a recession, that’s for sure, . . . tight money and unemployment are pushing people into the courts.”
Treatment Without Consent
◆ If your child had venereal disease, would you not like to know about it? This, however, may not always be possible. Recently the governor of New York signed a bill authorizing the diagnosis and treatment of minors for venereal disease without the consent or knowledge of the parent or guardian. The Public Health Law was amended to read as follows: “A licensed physician may diagnose, treat or prescribe for a case of venereal disease in a person under the age of twenty-one years without the consent or knowledge of the parents or guardian of said person.” But to treat a child without parental knowledge or consent—does this appear right to you? Is this not a usurpation of parental right and responsibility?
Drug Addicts in Harlem
◆ A house-to-house survey of a 40-block area of New York’s Harlem showed that there were 58,000 persons living in streets and alleys. Of that number, the survey revealed, “there were 10,000 addicted adults, 6,000 children between the ages of 16 and 21 who were addicted and 2,000 children between the ages of 7 and 15 who were addicted. Of the 2,000 children, aged 7 to 15, 90 percent lived by themselves without the presence of an adult in their immediate environment.” The report said: “This is what we are dealing with in the United States.”
Government Budget
◆ Prior to World War II, the federal budget of the United States amounted to less than $50 per person. As recently as 1960, the figure leaped to $517 per person. For the coming fiscal year, the government anticipates collecting $202,000,000,000. That is $981 for every man, woman and child in the United States.
Instead of Clergymen
◆ The ranks of the clergy in Latin America are steadily decreasing. The diocese of São Paulo city, with its 6 million inhabitants, suffers from an acute scarcity of clergymen. So, after six days of special preparation, on June 28 some 90 laymen received special permission to distribute the eucharistic emblems. However, this solution is not favored by many clergymen, including Bishop Koop, of Lins, São Paulo, Brazil. Reaffirming his proposal in Vatican Council II, this bishop, in a letter addressed to his fellow bishops, proposed the ordination of married men.
Hitchhiking Is Dangerous
◆ Canadian police have warned young women to stop hitchhiking. In a four-month period 22 sex offenses against hitchhiking girls were reported. Ages of the girls ranged from 12 years to 22. All of these offenses could have been avoided if the girls simply had not gotten into cars with strangers. Police also warn that “there is no safety in numbers. There is no guarantee of immunity from attack simply because the girls are with one or two companions.” In a recent morality case, Provincial Judge Bernard Isman observed: “In my own personal opinion, any girl who gets into a car with a strange man is asking for whatever happens to her—whether it is broad daylight or whether she is with another girl. There is no particular virtue in the fact that there are two girls present. If the person that you get in with decides on a course of action, he will find a way to accomplish it.”
Where Priests Threaten
◆ A high official of the Argentine security police reportedly told an interviewer that “the gravest threat by far facing Argentina today was the militant leftist priesthood.” Many Argentine Roman Catholic priests and bishops have become a militant political force in national affairs, including labor strikes, demonstrations and violence. A special report to the New York Times stated: “The prestige of the church with the Argentine people has clearly declined over the years, and many young priests today believe that only radical renovation of the faith can restore its acceptability. Most of these priests believe that political and social reforms are vital to the nation as well and that priests should be leaders of change.” The report declared that priests or bishops are currently teaching strike and demonstration tactics in many sections of Argentina. Two Catholic priests are in jail on charges of having served guerrilla groups. How unlike Christ is all of this–Christ who said that ‘they who live by the sword would perish by it.’
Blood and Hepatitis
◆ The National Research Council estimated that hepatitis associated with blood transfusions causes 30,000 cases of serious illness and more than 1,500 deaths a year in the United States. While tests are now available to detect the hepatitis virus, the Council estimates that they detect the blood hazard in only about one case in four.
Safest Method of Travel
◆ Canada’s Air Transport Association listed the four major methods of transport in the country and compared their safety. For the latest year available, 1968, the fatalities per million passenger miles were as follows: Railways, 1; Motor buses, 2.4; Domestic airlines, 3; Automobiles, 24. Thus, rail travel was safest; automobile travel, by far the worst.
‘Clean’ Movie Group Fails
◆ A national organization called Operation Moral Upgrade, which opposed “filth and scum” in movies, has gone out of business after ten years. Its president wrote to members in 43 states: “We are too annoyed, too discouraged, too weary to carry the fight any further. We’ve had it! We’re through!” Hopes were dashed that pressures on the “good people” in the industry would convince film makers to abandon making pictures featuring moral filth. The final blow came after this year’s Academy Awards, when an X-rated film won the best-film Oscar.
Compulsory Birth Control?
◆ Experts are increasingly worried over the lack of international efforts to control the population “explosion.” What can be done? In a report to the New York Times, Gladwin Hill observes: “There are only two avenues. One is persuasion of people to limit family size voluntarily, by contraception, sterilization or abortion. The other is compulsory, through such means as large-scale injection of at least temporary infertility drugs into food or water.” Such a viewpoint reflects the desperation of a world that fails to take into consideration the righteous laws of God and his purpose for mankind.
Soaring Crime Rate
◆ The shocking statistics for the 1960’s are in. The Federal Bureau of Investigation reveals that the average American’s risk of being a crime victim has more than doubled in the past ten years. The crime rate for 1969 was a 148-percent increase over 1960. Nearly five million known serious crimes were committed in 1969, and some authorities say that only about 50 percent of such crimes are reported. There were nearly 15,000 murders during the year, more than the 9,414 Americans killed in the Indochina war during that same period. Also, the facts reveal what other studies have shown, that most murders and assaults “occur within the family unit, or among neighbors or acquaintances.” Automobile thefts reached the staggering total of 871,900 last year, a percentage increase during the decade four times greater than that of auto registrations. At the Justice Department a spokesman said: “No human being alive can explain these trends.” However, he is mistaken. The Bible clearly explains why these things are taking place. Long ago it foretold that such events would mark the “last days” of this system of things.
Effects of the Dam
◆ Egypt’s Aswan High Dam has been in place since 1964. Scientists now find that the salt content and temperature of the eastern Mediterranean are up as a result of the dam. Control of floodwaters is preventing rich organisms from reaching the Mediterranean. As a result, fish that feed on these organisms are being affected. An immediate effect of the dam was a drastic cutback for the Egyptian sardine fisheries.
The Heart of the Hailstone
◆ Hail does more damage in America than tornadoes—nearly $300,000,000 each year to crops and property. At times humans are hurt, even mortally wounded, by hailstones weighing as much as one and a half pounds and as big as five inches in diameter. Why does one thunderstorm produce hail and another, seemingly identical, nothing but rain? In a recent hailstorm over Tennessee, unusual starfish-shaped hail and hailstones resembling turtles and daggers fell from the sky. “That was the strangest hail we’ve ever seen,” said Dr. C. A. Knight. Another puzzler is: How does hail stay up long enough to grow as big as it does without dropping? Ice experts are doing a lot of studying, but so far they have not found a way to keep the hail from falling.
Hawaii’s Vanishing Wildlife
◆ Dr. J. Linsley Grossitt, head entomologist at Honolulu’s Bishop Museum, has some bad news for Hawaiians. More than 2,000 species of Hawaii’s native plants and animals are listed as threatened with extinction. Grossitt said that one third of Hawaii’s native birds already are extinct and another third may follow. The island’s beautiful land snails, famous among biologists, are on the way out. It is feared that about 300 species of flowers and plants may soon disappear. Even birds of prey are becoming extinct. They are laying eggs with shells so thin they rarely survive—an effect attributed by many ornithologists to ingestion of DDT and related pesticides.
Alcoholic Costs
◆ Dr. A. W. Stinton told a medical meeting in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, that all levels of society are affected by alcoholism. He said that an alcoholic costs his employer about $1,600 a year in lost working time and reduced output. Dr. Stinton said alcoholism is believed now to be Canada’s fourth-ranking social problem, representing in Alberta an economic loss of $14,000,000 every year. It has been estimated that 25 to 50 percent of all highway accident deaths are blamed on drinking, and Stinton added that “much of the loss of life involves entirely innocent people.”
Noise Pollution
◆ An ear surgeon who studied a remote tribe in Africa found that these people suffer very little from the diseases of so-called civilized nations, namely, hypertension, ulcers, bronchial asthma, coronary thrombosis and colitis. However, when these Africans were subjected to the strains of Western life, such as loud noises, it was found that it did affect their blood pressure. Researchers concluded that noise at high levels and of long duration is unquestionably as much a “pollutant” as is the waste that fouls the air and water.