But when ye shall hear of wars and commotions, be not terrified: for these things must first come to pass; but the end is not by and by.
—Luke 21:9
6551 Terrorist Groups
New York City Police Department terrorism specialist Captain Frank Bolz, estimates that there are 140 clearly-defined terrorist organizations active in the world today.
More than 4,000 businessmen were kidnapped since 1974. And according to the CIA there were 239 separate terrorist attacks—ranging from bombings to kidnappings to assassinations—on businessmen and their property in 1977, vs. just 37 in all of 1968.
6552 Terrorists And Publicity
Many experts draw a careful line between the ordinary criminal and the terrorist. Explains Rand’s Jenkins: “Terrorism is violence aimed at those people watching. Fear is the intended effect, not the by-product. That distinguishes terrorist tactics from muggings and other forms of violent crime.”
By simply thrusting their way into public consciousness some terrorists have achieved their primary goal—attention.
Writes Laqueur in a new book called Terrorism: “The success of a terrorist operation depends almost entirely on the amount of publicity it receives. This was one of the main reasons for the shift from rural guerrilla to urban terror in the 1960s; in the cities the terrorist could always count on the presence of journalists and TV cameras.” Coverage of terrorist incidents can intensify the climate of fear and help discredit legitimate political authority.
6553 The Victims
Terrorism’s present significance lies less in what has happened than in what people fear might happen.
In raw numbers, terrorists are few, as are their victims. From 1967 to 1975, terrorists the world over took 800 lives and wounded 1,700—a disturbing total but one that, notes a CIA study, is dwarfed by the 19,000 homicides committed in the U.S. in 1976 alone. The study also points out that the price tag of all terrorism to date (including ransoms paid and property damaged) falls well short of the $500 million in damage that vandals inflict on U.S. school buildings in an average year.
6554 “Steal This Book”
Steal This Book is a do-it-yourself guide to revolution by Yuppie Abbie Hoffman. It has earned hefty profits from 200,000 customers who have ignored the title and forked over $1.95 each. But does Abbie really deserve all the loot he is getting?
Not according to Izak Haber, who says he conceived the idea for Steal, did 90% of the research, wrote a 700-page manuscript that Abbie merely edited, and was promised 70% (but is getting only 22½%) of the royalties. Abbie, who decided not to appear at the “trial,” denies it all. “I wrote the book, it’s my style, and you name me one researcher that ever got 22½% of the royalties of a book.”
6555 What Christmas Card?
A Black Panther Christmas card, pictured in a FBI report, has the heading, “All power to the people,” and shows a Negro father in conversation with his son. The father asks, “Son, what do you want for Christmas?” The son replies, “A machine gun, shot gun. A box of hand grenades. A box of dynamite and a box of matches.” This is supposed to be a Christmas card.
6556 Strange Companions
The senior class of Notre Dame University bestowed the school’s 1971 Senior Fellow Award upon radical-left lawyer William Kunstler, stout advocate of arson, violence and the “Chicago 7.” The honor, known until 1969 as the Patriot of the Year award, was initially given to FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover. In 1967 General William Westmoreland was its recipient. Hoover, Westmoreland and Kunsler make strange bedfellows.
6557 Argentine Terrorism
In Argentina, the American business community has almost disappeared. Some U.S. executives commute to their offices in Buenos Aires by plane from neighboring Uruguay, where the urban guerrillas have been wiped out. Along Rome’s Via Veneto, the home of the dolce vita, the owners of half-empty nightclubs gloomily wring their hands. Turin, the center of the Fiat automobile empire, is practically a ghost town after 9 p.m., and even flamboyant cities like Naples are strangely and unnaturally subdued. “We live in a state of siege,” said millionaire industrialist Alvaro Marchini. “It’s degrading sleeping with guards outside the door.”
6558 Blackmailing A Country
The potential for evil will soar if terrorists get their hands on new biological, chemical and radiological—to say nothing of nuclear—arms with which to frighten the innocent. Warns Laqueur: “In ten or fifteen years, terrorists will have the weapons of superviolence; then perhaps even a single person will be able to blackmail an entire town, district or country.” To combat tomorrow’s terrorist, new and creative measures, as well as an un precedented degree of international cooperation, will be required.
6559 To Build Nuclear Bomb
Washington (AP)—The head of the United States arms control and disarmament agency said the possibility exists that terrorists can build a crude nuclear bomb and detonate an explosion “that would change the world.”
Director Fred Ikle told the US Senate’s government operations committee there is also the possibility that some countries will attempt to use the plutonium produced by nuclear power plants to make their own bombs, thus touching off local arms races.
And he said that new technology is making it far easier for non-nuclear nations with some industrial capacity to make their own bombs.
6560 More On Nuclear Bombs
R. W. Mengel, in a report financed by the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, says that it is possible for terrorists to make an atomic weapon with about half the power of the Hiroshima bomb.
“Assuming a surface burst of about 1 kiloton, using a truck as the probable means of delivery to the target, the damage in a downtown area of a major city would be in excess of 100,000 immediate fatalities.… and destruction totaling in the billions of dollars.”
The danger of casualties from the use of biological weapons is even greater than that from nuclear or chemical weapons.
6561 The Available By-Product
The use of atomic energy is expanding so rapidly that by 1980, civilian reactors in 40 countries will turn out as a by-product plutonium enough to make 5,000 A-bombs a year. If only 1% of that plutonium were diverted, it could be used to make several dozen atom bombs a year.
The Atomic Energy Commission states:
“There is virtually no limit to potential power. The limiting factor is economics.” In other words, any nation can make a bomb as big as they are able to pay. Hydrogen bombs costs between 2–3 million dollars each.
6562 Another Nuclear Scenario
Many people are terrified of atomic reactors, convinced that it is only a matter of time before one of them accidentally spills a deadly dose of radiation across an entire countryside. Others envision some witless dictator running amuck, waving primitive A-bombs at his enemies, or a band of conscienceless terrorists holding entire cities for ransom in a grim game of nuclear blackmail.
6563 The Research Reactors
Not counting research reactors, there are today 194 nuclear- power reactors operating in 20 countries. By 1985, if construction continues as now planned, there will be more than 600 power reactors in at least 39 countries. Sleek, smokeless shapes in the landscape, they will fuel the future without dipping into the world’s fast-dwindling reserves of oil.
Yet these superautomated plants have become stunningly expensive servants; the average reactor ordered today will cost up to $1 billion. There is a distressing realization that the atom that can produce prosperity can also make war: a nation that has a reactor can eventually have a bomb.
6564 Atomic Heart’s Danger
According to Dr. Theodore Cooper of the National Heart and Lung Institute of Bethesda, Md, an atom-powered artificial heart will be ready for use very soon. One of the problems they foresee, however, is a possibility that foreign powers might hijack the heart recipients to use the hearts to build atom bombs! The implanted hearts would each have enough potential nuclear power to blow up a city!
The natural heart itself is a marvel of power but atom-hearted people of the future may have city-destroying power in their bosoms.
6565 Schools As Armed Fortresses
A national survey by a Senate subcommittee indicates that some of the largest school systems have turned to barbed wire, floodlights, police dogs, heavy iron grills, plastic windows, and an array of alarms and electronic surveillance systems to cut the cost of vandalism, now estimated in scores of millions of dollars each year.
Schools have become armed fortresses. Chicago has 460 off-duty and on-duty policemen patrolling 200 of its schools. Los Angeles has 102 “security agents” armed with revolvers and the power to arrest in about 40 schools. Baltimore has added 33 policemen to its security division. They carry blackjacks. New York has policemen stationed in 40 of its secondary schools. Philadelphia and Detroit have “non-teaching assistants” and “security people” in their schools.
—Christian Victory
6566 British Parliament Got Bomb
London (AP)—Irish terrorists exploded a bomb in the House of Parliament, setting fire to Britain’s most historic building for the first time since Hitler’s World War II blitz, officials said. Eleven persons were injured. Smoke temporarily blacked out of the Big Ben clock tower.
Extremists succeeded where all earlier sabotage attempts had failed, including the abortive gunpowder plot by Guy Fawkes who tried to blow up Parliament in 1604. Monday’s bomb damaged the 900-year-old Westminster hall, the only part of Parliament to survive fires down through the centuries.
The 80-yard-long great hall, famed for it’s hammer-beamed ceiling, was built in 1097 by King William Rufus, son of William the Conqueror. It was the scene of coronation feasts, state occasions, and great trials, including the one that ordered the beheading of King Charles I. Churchill lay in state in the vast hall in 1965.
6567 Major Changes In Embassies
New York (AP)—In an age of terrorism, assassinations and political kidnappings, diplomats around the world conduct their business behind steel doors and under heavy guard—extremely cautious about whom they let into their offices.
—The U. S. embassy in New Delhi, India, is guarded 24 hours a day by Indian police who live in a tent outside the gate.
—The American ambassador in Malaysia runs several miles every morning for exercise, but with a marine guard jogging alongside.
Meanwhile, actual attacks on US embassies and diplomats have surged sharply. The wealth and prestige of the US make it an inviting target for the discontented. Major assaults in the 70s included:
—On Feb. 14, 1979, leftist guerrillas invaded the US Embassy in Iran and held 100 hostages. The Ayatollah’s militia fought the leftist and freed the Americans after 2 hours. But on Nov. 4, 1979, the US Embassy was again seized—this time it was condoned by the Ayatollah—and 54 hostages taken.
—In 1979, US Ambassador Adolph Dubs was killed in Afghanistan when kidnapped by Moslim extremists. Afghanistan’s Russian advisers were at the scene.
—On August 4, 1975, guerrillas of the Japanese Red Army occupied the US embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
—Moreover, several US diplomats have been kidnapped outside embassy grounds and murdered by terrorists.
6568 Boss Of World Terror
The participation of the Japanese in such incidents as the 1972 attack at Tel Aviv’s Lod Airport and the 1974 takeover of the French embassy in The Hague in order to free a compatriot from prison points to an alarming central fact about contemporary terrorism: the growing links of these organizations. A number of West German radicals, for example, got their combat training at Palestinian-run camps in Lebanon and Southern Yemen. Libya, which seems willing to bankroll revolutionaries all over the world, has supplied many of the groups with arms.
These tightening links raise the conceivability of a global organization, or perhaps a loose confederation, with a single leader—a boss of all bosses of world terrorism.
6569 Protection In New Police Uniform
Police in many cities of the United States are now wearing a new “soft” body armor made of Kevlar 29, a touch, lightweight, man-made fiber which is five times stronger than steel. According to its manufacturer, Dupont, this is the same fiber which replaced steel cords in radial belted tires and which reinforces high pressure hoses and heavy-duty conveyor belts.
Under a uniform, the armor weighs less than four pounds and can stop bullets fired at close range from handguns of caliber .22 to .38. It offers little protection however to high-energy rifle fire.
6570 Skyjacking
The first in-flight skyjacking took place in 1931, when a plane was commandeered by anti-regime forces during a coup in Peru.
This most devastating of terrorist tactics crested in 1972, when there were 62 skyjack attempts. When tough airport inspections were implemented around the world, the record dropped. But the rate is again on the rise, as terrorists think of “better” ways to beat the system.
6571 New Breed Of Commando
Since terrorism in general and skyjacking in particular became international political threats, Western governments have created special units to combat guerrillas and if possible, rescue their terrified victims.
The senior service in the war against terrorism is Britain’s 900-man Special Air Service Regiment. Founded in Libya in 1942 to penetrate the lines of Rommel’s Afrika Korps, the S.A.S. has battled Communist guerrillas in Malaya, Mau Mau insurgents in Kenya, and I.R.A. gunmen in South Armagh.
Probably the most seasoned commando force is Israel’s General Intelligence and Reconnaissance Unit 269. Its accomplishments include the 1972 rescue, at Lod Airport in Tel Aviv, of 90 hostages aboard a Sabena jet that had been hijacked by Palestinian terrorists, and the daring Entebbe raid.
The U.S. Defense Department said that it too has a special strike force, made up of volunteers from several elite units of the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force. Although trained primarily for hit-and-kill commando warfare, these troops have the skills and equipment to fight skyjackers and other small, desperate bands of terrorists.
All specialists in anti-terror give high proficiency marks to the West German unit, which was not well-known even within its own country before its 1977 successful mission to Mogadishu. Grenzshutzgruppe Neun, or Border Protection Group 9, was created five years ago, after a bungled West German rescue attempt led to the Munich massacre of nine Israeli hostages and five of their Palestinian captors.
6572 The Painter Of Pain
It is said of Rubens, the great Dutch painter, that he delighted in picturing pain; and while his genius was indeed great, I do not at this moment recall a picture I have ever seen of his that did not in some way represent the contortions of pain. The most remarkable picture he made was the picture of the lifting of the serpent in a very insignificant manner. It hardly attracts the eye of the observer.
But there, in the features and gestures and condition of the worshippers and afflicted people, is represented pain in its most horrid aspect. It is peculiarly Rubenistic to represent humanity in some horrid relationship, and give the picture of pain so clearly that when you looked into the face of one of his characters your heart seems to be chilled, and all through your system runs a current of superstition and of dreadful abhorrent sympathy.
The “Descent from the Cross” is true to extreme horror. The influence of his pictures has done great harm. They will ever do harm to those who simply look at the unnatural exhibitions of woe. There is a law in the land where Rubens lived that no woman should be allowed to look upon a beggar, or upon anyone afflicted with cancer or any terrifying disease; that no woman of the land should be allowed to go into a hospital where there are distorted, unnatural figures. It has its great foundations in the great law of human life, and saves the children of the next generation.
—Current Anecdotes
See also: Fear ; Kidnapping ; Violent Times ; Rev. 9:5.