Basic HTML Version
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, NOVEMBER 20, 1981
PAGE 12
ON THE WORLD SCENE
Dateline:
Jerusalem (Nov. 18, 1981)
Greetings from the future world capital! For the past week my wife Barbara
and I have had the wonderful privilege of accompanying Mr. Armstrong and
his party on his trip to Europe and the Middle East. I'm afraid that
traveling on the Work's G-II on a trip like this has spoiled me forever.
Prophesied end-time events are definitely picking up steam. One really
feels the momentum on a trip like this. Britain, our first stop, continues
to languish in the economic doldrums with little hope of recovery for the
near future. The opposition Labor Party has gone so far to the left that
its hardcore fringers are openly calling for unity between Britain's Labor
and Communist parties. They may as well since there is so little difference
between the two now.
Even more important than politics, Britain faces the prospect of a civil
war in Northern Ireland, or at least the danger of Protestant extremists
threatening to form a "third force" to prevent further loss of life in
Ulster. The increased tension follows the shocking murder a few days ago of
the British member of Parliament in Northern Ireland by three IRA gunmen.
The feeling now is that the IRA, following the collapse of its hunger strike
scheme, is in desperate straits and wants to throw the province into utter
chaos and sectarian strife from which it hopes to emerge the winner.
In Britain and elsewhere in Europe, the United States government is begin
ning to look like it too is in a state of confusion and disarray. Europeans
have been suspicious about "Reaganomics" from the very beginning, but now
they are dumbfounded by the revelation that President Reagan's whiz kid
Budget Director, David Stockman, admits that he never had much faith in the
supply-side Reaganomics program from the very beginning. Coming on the
heels of the Stockman revelation, National Security Adviser Richard V.
Allen finds himself in hot water for accepting money from a Japanese jour
nalist for arranging an interview with Mrs. Reagan. Add these two factors
to the day-in and day-out controversies surrounding Secretary of State
Alexander M. Haig, Jr., and the Reagan team rather suddenly appears to be in
a state of confusion; a remarkable turnaround after the President's string
of personal victories on issue after issue both domestic and foreign.
The confusion at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is helping to fuel the fervor of
the neutralist cause throughout Western Europe, as we have been writing
about lately. This is, as has been stressed, a trend of grave importance to
the future of the United States and Britain. Some of the neutralist leaders
depict President Reagan as a simple-minded cowboy who might shoot from the
nuclear hip if and when NATO gets its projected new American-made missiles.
The neutralist surge is picking up steam. Rather than explain it further,
just notice these headlines from newspaper articles I've been reading on
this trip:
"NATO's Death Is Now Thinkable,'' "Will Europe Hold for Two
Years?" "Americans On the Firing Line," and "How Would You Feel If the
Americans Did Get Out of Europe?"
The big danger in all of this is that growing European neutralism and anti
Americanism could result in a move in the U.S. Congress to pull America's
guardian troops out of Europe if the feeling is that they are simply not
wanted.