Middle East

“The increasing instability of Pakistan’s government makes Pakistan—more than Afghanistan—the central challenge of our ‘AfPak’ policy.” This is the perception now taking hold in the U.S. according to an article on HumanEvents.com on Wednesday. Last week, David Kilcullen, a former Australian Army officer, who was a top adviser to Gen. David Petraeus during the troop surge in Iraq and is now a consultant to the Obama administration, said Pakistan could collapse within one to six months. “You just can’t say that you’re not going to worry about al Qaeda taking control of Pakistan and its nukes,” Kilcullen said. “We have to face the fact that if Pakistan collapses, it will dwarf anything we have seen so far in whatever we’re calling the war on terror now.” In the past, the Pakistani military prevented Islamists from taking control of the country; now, Pakistan’s army and intelligence services are largely sympathetic to the jihadist cause. If the Islamists’ onward march is not stopped, Pakistan could easily become a nuclear-armed terrorist-sponsoring state.

Egypt arrested 49 Hezbollah agents last week for planning “hostile operations” and for espionage, according to Egypt’s Attorney General Abdel-Magid Mohammed. Mohammed also said that Hezbollah had rented apartments overlooking the Suez Canal to spy on canal traffic, and that Hezbollah agents were holding training workshops on how to spread Shiite ideology in Egypt. On April 13, Egyptian officials reported that Hezbollah was planning to attack Israeli tourists in the Sinai. They claim to have found bomb-making materials and explosive belts, and to have uncovered a plan to smuggle more weapons into Egypt. Iran is Egypt’s real enemy in this spat. Iran wants Egypt onside—either by cajoling it into forming an alliance or by changing the regime to one more supportive of its cause. Biblical prophecy indicates that Egypt will end up abandoning its relatively pro-Western stance and aligning with Iran.

A scheme to smuggle nuclear weapons materials from China to Iran using American dollars was recently uncovered by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. “A Chinese financier who peddles nuclear weapons material to Iran was indicted [April 7] for illegally running tens of millions of dollars through a half-dozen New York banks,” the Daily News reported. One law enforcement source said the case shows how the Iranians are “going ahead full-steam to get a nuclear bomb.”

Violence has flared up in Israel in the wake of Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government coming to power. On April 2, a Palestinian brandishing a pickax hacked a 13-year-old Israeli boy to death and wounded his 7-year-old friend in the West Bank town of Bat Ayin. The same day, seven Jewish settlers broke into and took over the home of a Palestinian businessman in Jerusalem’s Old City who had moved out of the home while renovations were being done. The settlers claimed they owned the house. Then on Tuesday of last week, a Palestinian man driving a car tried to run down Israeli police officers in Jerusalem. The next day, a spokesman from Hamas’s military wing, Abu Ubayda, “threatened Israel of an ‘explosion’ if it continues to consolidate control of Jerusalem,” the Maan News Agency reported. Watch for tensions between Jews and Palestinians in Jerusalem to increase.

Europe

Atheists were to blame for Nazism, according to the Catholic bishop of Augsburg, Walter Mixa. Mixa warned of the dangers of rising atheism in Germany on Sunday, saying that the Nazi regime was an atheist one. To say that the Nazis were atheists is a lie—and Bishop Mixa knows it. Social Darwinism did play a key role in Nazi doctrine, but most Nazis firmly believed in a God. In fact, the history of Nazi Germany’s Catholic connections during World War ii shows what kind of regimes the Vatican has been willing to support to obtain power, and what it is willing to do to convert people to its way of thinking. It has been this way for all of the Vatican’s history. For more information, see our booklet Germany and the Holy Roman Empire.

The ports of Dunkirk, Calais and Boulogne-sur-Mer were blockaded this week by French fishermen protesting against the government. Protestors want more subsidies from the government, and a change in fishing quotas. Thousands of truck drivers and holiday-goers were left stranded on both sides of the English Channel, as ferries were unable to dock in France. After talks with the government on Wednesday, French Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Michel Barnier offered €4 million (us$5.4 million) in aid to the fishermen. The quotas, however, are set by the European Union, and France cannot change them on its own. Watch for more issues like this to spark protests in Europe as the economy gets worse.

Asia

Cyberspies from Russia and China have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software implants that could be used to disrupt the system in the future. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal last week, senior intelligence officials are warning that these implants could be used to destroy water, sewage and other infrastructure systems by manipulating their Internet-based communications systems. Such a disruption is not without precedent. In 2000, one disgruntled employee at an Australian water-treatment plant rigged a computerized control system, releasing over 200,000 gallons of sewage into parks, rivers and the grounds of a hotel. Though it fields the world’s preeminent military, America is not impenetrable. An organized cyberattack on the American power grid—which is comprised of three separate electric networks, covering the East, the West and Texas—could easily damage sewage systems, shut down transportation lines, upset communications systems, disrupt the economy, ruin investor confidence and cause massive social chaos. Modern American history is peppered with shameful examples of lawlessness quickly erupting in the streets when ignited by specific events. The Los Angeles riots in 1992, for example, were some of the deadliest in U.S. history, killing close to 60 people, causing an estimated $1 billion in property damage and costing 40,000 jobs. A targeted, sustained cyberattack conducted by Russia, China or some other rival nation or non-state actor could play a major role in igniting similar chaos in the future. For more information on the threat that cyberwarfare poses to American national security and how you can avoid this threat, read “America’s Achilles Heel—and Germany” from the May 2005 Trumpet and our booklet Ezekiel: The End-Time Prophet.

Latin America

U.S. President Barack Obama arrived in Mexico on Thursday for his first Latin American trip. He met with Mexican President Felipe Calderón and discussed the problem of Mexican drug cartels before leaving for Trinidad and Tobago to attend the fifth Summit of the Americas. At this summit, 33 leaders from the Americas will discuss the problems facing the region. Will Obama and Calderón be able to fix Mexico? Hardly. For more information on the problems Mexico faces, read “Is Mexico About to Collapse?”

Anglo-America

Americans chose the April 15 tax-filing deadline as an opportunity to express outrage against the federal government and its gigantic spending bills. Wednesday’s rallies occurred across the nation, and were named after a 1773 protest against Britain actually lowering taxes on tea for the East India Company. More important than the misnomer, however, is that this event shows America is as divided as ever. Proving this fact were many reactions to the protests from msnbc and cnn commentators, including Anderson Cooper, Keith Olbermann, David Shuster and Rachel Maddow, who not only exposed their political bias, but did so using shocking vulgarity. Cooper, Shuster, and other cable news stars actually made repeated, unconcealed lewd sexual references in their deriding commentary of the protests, accounting for an unprecedented, literally obscene week in notionally serious journalism.

Perhaps an even more important divisive factor than American taxpayers’ protests is the reaction of American states against the federal government’s increasingly expanding power. An ongoing struggle that states have historically lost, the fight over states’ rights versus federal power has leaped back into headlines this week after Texas Gov. Rick Perry enthusiastically backed a Texas Legislature resolution last week. The resolution rebukes Washington for violating the Bill of Rights, which says that powers not specifically assigned to the federal government by the Constitution are reserved to the states. Calling it oppression in terms of size, intrusion into personal lives and state affairs, the governor also reaffirmed what he and other governors have done—refused federal stimulus money with manipulative strings attached. But his most surprising remarks came this week when he suggested that one extreme option is not necessarily off the table: secession.

Many other Americans are more concerned that the Department of Homeland Security might consider them “right-wing extremists.” Among those under suspicion by the department as terrorist risks who need to be watched, according to a newly unclassified report, are American veterans, opponents of abortion, states’-rights advocates, border-control activists and religious groups.