Last November, Somali pirates in speedboats hijacked a massive oil tanker bound for America through a waterway patrolled by the U.S. Fifth Fleet. The piracy made mainstream news, and alerted the world to what remains a serious threat.

The most frustrating and disturbing aspect of the hijacking was America’s pathetic response. As Trumpet columnist Stephen Flurry noted at the time, despite knowing the precise location of the stolen oil tanker and having received permission from the United Nations to enter Somali waters in pursuit of the pirates, “the most powerful naval force in the world simply [did] not act.”

Last week, it became apparent that America’s impotence in November was perceived by the pirates as both a signal and a precedent. Last Wednesday, a handful of pirates in what was little more than a dinghy boarded and hijacked a 17,000-ton American cargo ship in the seas off the coast of Somalia. The pirates abandoned the ship after a brief struggle and when its brave captain, Richard Phillips, agreed to be taken hostage if his crew and ship were released. As negotiations between Washington and Somalian chieftains for the release of Captain Phillips and the vessel proceeded, a tense high-seas standoff carried on between U.S. Navy frigates and the pirates on their peanut-sized dinghy—which is floating aimlessly after running out of gas as it was booking it back to the Somali coast.

The attack on the US Maersk Alabama is the first act of piracy against an American ship in 200 years. And it was made inevitable last November, when America refused to act decisively after the oil tanker carrying American oil was hijacked by Somali pirates. That impotence exposed America’s lack of will to aggressively respond to assaults on its sovereignty.

Now America’s weak response to last week’s attack on an American ship—in what could easily be argued was an act of war—is sending exactly the same message. Just as it did when pirates hijacked American oil last November, the world is taking note. These incidents show that enemies can attack American ships, and Washington still will not respond with decisive action!

As Mark Steyn pointed out yesterday, this incident, as well as North Korea’s missile launch and Iran’s nuclear program, is being passed off in the mainstream media as an inconvenient distraction to Barack Obama’s efforts to establish a nuclear-free planet and apologize for American foreign policy these past 200 odd years. More people ought to be seeing these events for what they are: namely, “a portent of a future” where the world’s one and only “hyperpower” is persecuted by bold, freelance marauders—such as Somali pirates, puny North Korea and apocalyptic Iran—willing to exploit its drastic lack of willpower.

Once upon a time we killed and captured pirates. Today, it’s all more complicated. Attorney General Eric Holder has declined to say whether the kidnappers of the American captain will be “brought to justice” by the U.S. “I’m not sure exactly what would happen next,” declares the chief law-enforcement official of the world’s superpower. But some things we can say for certain. Obviously, if the United States Navy hanged some eye-patched, peg-legged blackguard from the yardarm or made him walk the plank, pious senators would rise to denounce an America that no longer lived up to its highest ideals, and the network talking-heads would argue that Plankgate was recruiting more and more young men to the pirates’ cause, and judges would rule that pirates were entitled to the protections of the U.S. Constitution and that their peg legs had to be replaced by high-tech prosthetic limbs at taxpayer expense.

Last week’s hijacking of an American ship and Washington’s pathetic response is symbolic of a dangerous broader trend, Steyn says.

Somali pirates seize vessels the size of aircraft carriers flying the ensigns of the great powers. Iranian proxies run Gaza and much of Lebanon. North Korea’s impoverished prison state provides nuclear technology to Damascus and Tehran. Unlovely as it is, Pyongyang nevertheless has friends on the Security Council. Powerful states protect one-man psycho states. One-man psycho states provide delivery systems to apocalyptic ideological states. Apocalyptic ideological states fund nonstate actors around the world. And in Somalia and elsewhere nonstate actors are constrained only by their ever increasing capabilities.

Steyn closes with a warning for America.

When all the world’s a “distraction,” maybe you’re not the main event after all. Most wealthy nations lack the means to defend themselves. Those few that do, lack the will. Meanwhile, basket-case jurisdictions send out ever bolder freelance marauders to prey on the civilized world with impunity. Don’t be surprised if “the civilized world” shrivels and retreats in the face of state-of-the-art reprimitivization. From piracy to nukes to the limp response of the hyperpower, this is not a “distraction” but a portent of the future.

To learn more about how America’s pathetic response to piracy on the high seas is a sign of its ultimate demise, and even fulfillment of specific Bible prophecy, read Stephen Flurry’s full article “Pirates Expose America’s Broken Will.”

Officials Stunned by Hezbollah

A Washington Post piece from last week illuminates a debate taking place among American defense officials over the Lebanon war of 2006. More traditionalist Defense Department officials are arguing that Israel’s failure to defeat Hezbollah in the 34-day war was a result of its military’s overemphasis on preparing for low-intensity counterinsurgency conflicts (such as the U.S. faces in Iraq and Afghanistan) at the expense of conventional warfare capabilities.

Amid the discussion are these remarkable statements about Iran’s Lebanon-based terrorist proxy, Hezbollah:

U.S. military experts were stunned by the destruction that Hezbollah forces, using sophisticated antitank guided missiles, were able to wreak on Israeli armor columns. Unlike the guerrilla forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, who employed mostly hit-and-run tactics, the Hezbollah fighters held their ground against Israeli forces in battles that stretched as long as 12 hours. They were able to eavesdrop on Israeli communications and even struck an Israeli ship with a cruise missile.”From 2000 to 2006 Hezbollah embraced a new doctrine, transforming itself from a predominantly guerrilla force into a quasi-conventional fighting force,” a study by the Army’s Combat Studies Institute concluded last year. Another Pentagon report warned that Hezbollah forces were “extremely well trained, especially in the uses of antitank weapons and rockets” and added: “They well understood the vulnerabilities of Israeli armor.”

The Lebanon war was a game-changer. It changed the geopolitical reality of the Middle East. As we wrote at the time,

Considering the stark contrast between Israel’s impotence against Hezbollah and Israel’s past victories, the most monumental outcome of the war was this: In the minds of Muslims, it evaporated Israel’s air of invincibility. … Decades of decisive Jewish ascendancy over Arab foes melted into ancient history, mere myth. The sense of Israel’s military pre-eminence shattered into a thousand shards. To Muslims, the unthinkable became viable; the impossible, inevitable.The door is open for the next attack.

American and Israeli officials were taken aback by Hezbollah’s capability and are studying the Lebanon war for clues on how to deal with future wars. But the fact is, the lessons have not been learned. Iran has achieved similar victories since, with Hamas taking over the Gaza Strip in 2007, and this past year staving off an Israeli incursion aimed at preventing Hamas’s incessant missile attacks.

Rather than supplying American and Israeli leaders with lessons on how to prevent future such losses, the Lebanon war was a sign of more to come. The days of Israel and America being able to contain even non-state terrorist entities like Hezbollah and Hamas are past. Read Jerusalem in Prophecy to learn why.

Vatican Spends Easter Week Striking Spain

The Catholic Church is using Easter week to continue its fight with the Spanish government. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has been a thorn in the Vatican’s side for years. He opposes the Catholic Church on almost every issue, pushing for more liberal abortion laws, legalizing homosexual unions and easier divorce, removing crucifixes from schools and generally demanding that the Vatican cease meddling in state affairs. But the biggest fight is over abortion. Now the Spanish government is drafting a new law that would allow abortion upon request during the first 14 weeks, and would allow 16-year-old girls to get abortions without parental consent.

Pope Benedict is, to put it mildly, displeased. The New York Times reported last week:

The church is outraged. In several cities, the Catholic brotherhoods that mark Holy Week with solemn processions have pinned a white ribbon and tiny footprints to their robes in protest. The Spanish Episcopal Conference has rented billboards in three dozen cities that display an Iberian lynx, a protected species, next to a crawling baby and the words: “What about me? Protect my life.”During sermons on Palm Sunday, bishops called on the faithful to resist the new law, according to news reports from several cities. Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llover, archbishop of Toledo, said abortion was “against man and against the designs of God,” according to a transcript of his sermon on the diocese website. “We truly cannot give in to this,” he said of the legislation. “It is not a question of politics, it is a question of humanity.”Pro-life groups and conservative regional governments have joined the protest. The government of Valencia, led by the Popular Party, is preparing a pro-life law that would promote a network of surrogate families who would take in or support single mothers-to-be. Thousands of people in Spain and Latin America turned out on March 29 for a protest organized by HazteOir, a conservative group. The group’s president, Ignacio Arsuaga, said the government should enforce the existing law rather than loosen it. “This government likes to say it defends women’s rights. But women who abort suffer, physically and psychologically,” he said by telephone.

Pope Benedict’s attempts to prohibit abortion and champion the institution of family against Zapatero’s morally vacuous government is worthy of some praise. Abortion, as the Trumpet has explained, is an attack on the God-ordained institution of family.

But it’s also important to remember the Vatican’s history of meddling in European governments, and empowering and legitimizing some of Europe’s most horrific figures.

Pope Benedict’s persecution of the Spanish government ought to considered with a biblical analogy in mind. A prophecy in the book of Revelation describes a powerful church that looks like a lamb but speaks like a dragon. You can read about that prophecy in our booklet Germany and the Holy Roman Empire. You may also find the article “Benedict the King-Breaker” of interest with respect to the role of the Catholic Church in European politics.

Britain’s New Conservative Archbishop

Pope Benedict xvi is working hard to make the Catholic Church more appealing to disgruntled Anglicans in Britain. On April 3, for example, he personally appointed Archbishop Vincent Nichols to succeed Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor as archbishop of Westminster. Nichols is also likely to succeed Murphy-O’Connor as head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales. Nichols used to be a liberal Catholic, but has become more conservative over recent years.

The Times says Nichols is “unafraid to be outspoken.” He has stood up to the British government a number of times, forcing the education secretary to back down on proposals calling for religious schools to accept more irreligious children. He also fought to prevent homosexuals from adopting children, but failed. Most commentators see Nichols as a man who will bring the Roman Catholic Church in England more closely in line with Rome. Damian Thompson writes in the Daily Telegraph,

The 63-year-old archbishop of Birmingham is a forceful character who was once regarded as a liberal. But, in recent years, his pastoral gifts have won him friends among Catholics of all varieties—and have persuaded Pope Benedict xvi that he is the man to transform the church in England and Wales and bring it closer to Rome.

Thompson also writes that “he is significantly more loyal to the holy father than some of his fellow bishops.” In another article, the Telegraph states that Nichols “enthusiastically endorsed the pontiff’s drive for liturgical renewal in the church,” and that his “openness to the Latin Mass significantly improved his credentials with the conservative wing of the church.” The Guardian stated, “Pope Benedict has given England a missionary archbishop” (emphasis ours throughout).

The appointment of an ambitious, conservative archbishop to oversee the Vatican’s activities in Britain is a wily move. The Church of England has grown increasingly liberal in recent years, which has infuriated many traditional Anglicans and caused tremendous division within the church. By appointing a conservative loyal to Rome, the Vatican is making itself an appealing option for disgruntled Anglicans seeking a new place to worship.

Escapees From North Korea Provide a Disturbing Glimpse

Every week, about 35 refugees from North Korea find their way into South Korea; 4,000 have made that dangerous trek in the last two years.

Accustomed to the suffocating strictures of Kim Jung Il’s regime, these brave souls are unhealthy, uneducated, paranoid, and utterly bewildered by life outside North Korean borders.

Blaine Harden paints a fascinating picture in today’s Washington Post of their difficult adjustment to freedom, prosperity and consumerism. A couple of excerpts:

Teenagers are particularly bewildered. As part of the newest wave in a decade-old flow of defectors from the North, they arrive stunted from malnutrition and struggling to read. At the movies for the first time, they panic when the lights go down, afraid someone might kidnap them. They find it incredible that money is stored in plastic credit cards. Pizza, hot dogs and hamburgers—staples of South Korean teen cuisine—give them indigestion. One gargled with liquid fabric softener, mistaking it for mouthwash. …”Everyone who defects has adjustment problems,” said Ko Gyoung-bin, director general of a settlement center called Hanowan, a government-financed cluster of red-brick buildings perched in hill country about 70 miles south of Seoul.All adult defectors are required to spend three months at Hanowan, where they receive psychiatric counseling, learn their rights under South Korean law, take driving lessons and go on field trips to department stores, banks and subways.Teenage defectors spend two months to two years at nearby Hangyoreh Middle-High School, a remedial boarding school the government built three years ago to help the increasing number of newly arrived youngsters who are unfit for public schools. Many have been out of school for years and have difficulty with basic reading and math.”All I learned in school in North Korea was that Kim Jong Il was the best leader and that North Korea was the best country,” said Lee, who is in her final year at Hangyoreh and hopes to become an English teacher. …A new UN human rights report describes North Korea as a place where ordinary people “live in fear and are pressed to inform on each other. The state practices extensive surveillance of its inhabitants. … Authorities have bred a culture of pervasive mistrust.”When defectors arrive at Hanowan, they whisper. They are reluctant to disclose their names or dates of birth. They question the motives of people who want to help them. They say South Koreans look down on them. On field trips from Hanowan to get their first checking accounts, they find bank tellers to be terrifying.A majority of defectors suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder ….At the Hangyoreh school, [students have] fears that often overwhelm their ability to concentrate: They are afraid that someone will harm them, that someone will punish their family in North Korea, that they will fail in South Korea.”These things really weigh them down,” Gwak [Jong-moon, the school’s principal,] said. “When they start to make progress, they feel guilty. One hundred percent of the time, when you throw a birthday party for these young people, they cry for the family they left behind.”

Bitter fruits from a rapacious government that prioritizes nuclear weapons and icbm development over the genuine needs of its people. Though the Western world isn’t much interested in changing that horrifying status quo, Jesus Christ certainly is. At His imminent return, He will bring such abuses to an end. Read about the government He will put in its place in the inspiring booklet The Wonderful World Tomorrow—What It Will Be Like.

President Obama Denies His Country’s Foundation

“We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation,” President Obama said while in Turkey last week. “We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.” These comments were similar to those in his inaugural address, when Obama referred to the United States—the largest Judeo-Christian nation on Earth—as “a nation of Christians, Muslims, Jews and Hindus.”

But the fact that the U.S. president chose to make this point while in a Muslim nation was especially significant.

“I don’t know what ‘we’ consider ‘ourselves,’” David Limbaugh writes on Newsmax.com, “but I do think we ought to examine that statement and why Obama felt compelled to make it a part of his world apology tour. Can you imagine the Saudi king coming to America and bragging that his nation is not Muslim? I assure you that he’s not ashamed of the Islamic character of his nation, even though his nation is demonstrably less tolerant of other religions.”

Limbaugh continues:

So is (or was) America a Christian nation? … [I]f we are talking about the ideals that led to the very colonization of this land, our declaration of independence from Britain, and the formulation of our Constitution, then the answer is certainly “yes.”In the words of Prof. John Eidsmoe, author of Christianity and the Constitution: The Faith of Our Founding Fathers, “If by the term Christian nation one means a nation that was founded on biblical values that were brought to the nation by mostly professing Christians, then in that sense the United States may truly be called a Christian nation.”Why does this matter? Simply because our dominant secular culture delights in demonizing Christianity, distorting its character, conflating it with less tolerant faiths, and associating it with all our societal woes. History revisionists have convinced many that we mainly owe our liberties to secular humanist ideals and those borrowed from the Greeks, Romans and the French Enlightenment.To the contrary, our freedom tradition can be traced to our predominantly Judeo-Christian roots. …Our constitutional framework of government can be understood only in the context of the framers’ predominantly Christian worldview. Although they believed in man’s dignity, they also believed in his depravity and that it would be possible to establish a scheme of individual liberties only if they imposed limitations on government.Much of our Bill of Rights is biblically based, as well, and the Ten Commandments and further laws set out in the book of Exodus form the basis of our Western law. Indeed, English legal giants Sir William Blackstone and Sir Edward Coke both believed the common law was based on Scripture. …Our ruling class today is dominated by those who no longer believe that our rights are God-given or that our liberties depend on effective limitations on the state. They are so divorced from true history and American statecraft that they fail to see the irony in their dissociation with and apologies for our Judeo-Christian heritage, which is responsible for making this the freest and most prosperous nation on Earth for people of all races, ethnicities and religions.

Read our booklet Character in Crisis to see where this repudiation of America’s heritage—by both its leaders and people—is leading.

Homosexuals Gaining Ground in Legal Battles

Individuals taking a stand against the march of homosexual rights are losing in court. This Washington Post article from Friday lists some recent examples:

— A Christian photographer was forced by the New Mexico Civil Rights Commission to pay $6,637 in attorney’s costs after she refused to photograph a gay couple’s commitment ceremony.— A psychologist in Georgia was fired after she declined for religious reasons to counsel a lesbian about her relationship.— Christian fertility doctors in California who refused to artificially inseminate a lesbian patient were barred by the state supreme court from invoking their religious beliefs in refusing treatment.— A Christian student group was not recognized at a University of California law school because it denies membership to anyone practicing sex outside of traditional marriage. …Even when groups opposing homosexuality have prevailed in court, they have gone on to face other setbacks. The Boy Scouts of America won a lawsuit in 2000 because it did not allow openly gay Scouts or Scout leaders. Since then, some private charities have refused to support the Scouts, and some local governments have yanked free use of facilities and other benefits. In Philadelphia, the city is demanding that the Scouts pay $200,000 in annual rent for a building that they had been using rent-free. The dispute is in court.Some scholars also point to Bob Jones University, which lost its tax exemption over a ban on interracial dating and marriage among students, even though it claimed that those beliefs were religiously grounded. Some legal analysts suggest that religious groups that do not support gay rights might lose their tax exemptions because of their politically unpopular views.Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who supports same-sex marriage, said the Bob Jones ruling “puts us on a slippery slope that inevitably takes us to the point where we punish religious groups because of their religious views.”

These incidents highlight a dramatic cultural revolution rapidly seizing not only the United States but also several other Western nations.

The individuals and faith-based groups losing these lawsuits claim that their “freedom of religion” is being sacrificed to ever-expanding anti-discrimination laws. In truth, the problem is far more pernicious than a mere loss of freedom of religion. The institution of family is under severe attack, and the primary antagonist is more powerful than most people recognize. To understand why this trend is gaining such rapid momentum, read our booklet Conspiracy Against Fatherhood.

Elsewhere on the Web

Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah admitted on Friday for the first time that his organization is operating on Egyptian soil. Israeli paper Haaretz reported on the speech, writing that “Nasrallah mentioned the swearing-in of Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, but it was clear that, in the context of Friday’s speech, the real enemy was the Egyptian regime.” Everyone knows that Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy, and the Trumpet has explained that overthrowing the moderate, Western-friendly Egyptian government is one of Tehran’s primary goals.

Writing in the Sunday Times today, Paul Anthony McDermott points to an important lesson we can learn from the recent earthquake in Italy: that mankind doesn’t like to listen to warnings. “The most poignant image last week,” he writes, “was of Italian seismologist Giampaolo Giuliani touring the medieval mountain town of L’Aquila in his van warning the locals with a loudspeaker to evacuate because an earthquake was coming. He was reported to the police for ‘spreading alarm’ and forced to remove his warning from the Internet.” McDermott shows how warnings were similarly ignored before the recent global financial earthquake. McDermott’s observation about mankind’s proclivity to ignore sobering warnings and even persecute those courageous enough to warn reminds us of a prophecy in Isaiah 30. Rather than listen to the truth, the Prophet Isaiah warns that many in the end time will demand their leaders speak “smooth things.” To learn more about this dangerous mindset, read Winston S. Churchill: The Watchman.

The Treasury Department said Friday that the budget deficit increased by $192.3 billion in March—a new record for the month, and nearly four times the size of last March’s deficit. The deficit was significantly higher than the $150 billion that economists expected. The deficit already totals $956.8 billion for the first half of the budget year, also a record for that period. The deficit for the entire year is projected to hit $1.75 trillion, but government projections on spending are chronically low. Even a deficit at that level would nearly quadruple the previous annual record. Expect more spending records to be broken going forward.

And Finally …

In Britain, the Daily Mailreported today on the National Union of Teachers annual conference, at which union officials warned that some students are not being taught properly because schools are hiring “bouncers, former soldiers and ex-police officers to cover classes.” The conference was about improving students’ education, but perhaps the bigger issue is why certain schools are looking to hire people with military backgrounds to teach students. According to one official, the answer is because many schools have lost control of their classrooms, and are now taking extreme measures to implement “crowd control.”

Education is in a sorry state when having “former nightclub bouncer” on your resume actually increases your chances of being hired as a schoolteacher.