The following items were printed in the April, 2002 issue of The Prophetic Expositor:

Please write for further details of any items of particular interest.

Saudi Aramco World, Volume 53, No. 1, January/February 2002
is an issue particularly devoted to a focus upon the general topic of Islam. Besides a pictorial journal of Muhammad Asad's Journey into Islam in 1926-27 (the attraction of one of Jewish extraction to that way of life), [pp. 6-32 & 41] it contains articles on Ramadan and a centre special pull-out 8-page section on the history of Islam. This includes a one-page "Cultural Timeline of the Islamic World" and a page of about 40 short biographical notes on "Notable Muslims", past and present. A limited number of copies of the section are stated to be available to interested parties. [ www.saudiaramco.com , www.aramcoservices.com ]

The Globe and Mail, March 5, 2002: Lost Holocaust lawsuit, historian bankrupt. - London. Historian David Irving who questioned the extent of the Holocaust, was declared bankrupt yesterday after failing to pay legal costs to an American professor and her publisher. ... The High Court ordered (Mr. Irving) to pay the defendants' legal costs - estimated at $2.78-million (U.S.).AP The Weekly Telegraph, No. 555 mentioned it as "estimated £2 million."

The Weekly Telegraph, No. 554, March 6-12, 2002: 6 items -
1. "Are too many Muslims in denial about September 11?
Whether among Arabs or Britons, the debate about the Middle East is bedevilled by illusions," says Barbara Amiel. "The Saudi proposal would mean Israel giving up tangible assets in exchange for the promise of eventually getting a piece of paper signed by countries that you know regard Israel's very existence as 'a catastrophe'."
COMMENT: The honest question asked in the rest of the world outside of our kept-media could be stated thus: "If intruders seized half your house at gun-point, and then demanded that you negotiate respecting their right to full unquestioned ownership thereof, must you accept this without objecting?"
2. Muslims rule out Arab terror link:
MOST Muslims do not believe Arabs were to blame for the attacks on the US, according to a Gallup poll.
The survey, in nine Islamic countries, questioned almost 10,000 people. Fewer than a fifth of respondents accepted Arab involvement in the attacks.
3. Unionists win battle of the flags.
THE FLYING of the Union flag and preservation of the royal coat of arms on courthouses in Northern Ireland was to be announced in a Government concession to Ulster Unionists.
This goes some way to addressing unionist fears that the extent and pace of changes wrought by the Good Friday Agreement are turning the province into a "cold place" for Protestants.
4. Gibraltar draws up plans to bring in self-government by David Blair:
GIBRALTAR'S parliament has approved a package of constitutional reform designed to give the colony almost complete self-government.
The House of Assembly approved measures that would strip the governor of most of his powers and create a new parliament of 17 elected members without the two now appointed by London. ... By seeking almost total self-rule while clinging to British sovereignty, observers say, Gibraltar is seeking similar status to that of the Channel Islands.
5. One last throw of the dice: by Paul Hart in BULAWAYO:
AN AGEING and ailing autocrat, President Mugabe is fighting for political survival after 22 increasingly despotic years at the country's helm ...
COMMENT: The election in Zimbabwe was by all reports a sham.
6. Peter Simple, in The Weekly Telegraph 556 of March 20-26, 2002, under the heading 'African Dreams' has this to say:
THERE is nothing surprising about Mr. Mugabe's victory. What is surprising is that he bothers about elections at all. There must be easier ways of holding on to power than beating up voters, stuffing ballot boxes with fake papers and losing them or setting them on fire and generally rigging the result.
And for all the shock, horror and distress among Western liberal thinkers, there is nothing surprising about the African countries' support for him. The quarrel in Zimbabwe, as in all of Africa, is between the white man and the black man. The black man, as Mugabe knows and the white thinker denies, would like to get rid of the white man and all his laws and institutions that linger on so confusingly from colonial times and irritate Mugabe and his fellow potentates by getting in the way.
There is an obvious remedy. Let the black man get rid of the white man's democratic elections, his parliaments and wool-sacks and judge's wigs, his military uniforms, his weapons and other ingenious devices, his science and technology, his money and financial arrangements, his motor cars and air craft, his computers, radio and television, not to speak of his hospitals and medical services.
No longer ensnared by the white man's overpowering gifts, the Africans could return to African ways of doing things. The African chief would summon his tribal council and dispense African justice. Wars would be fought with sticks and stones. Cattle would be currency, Witch doctors would flourish with their spells and potions. The people would dance and sing and celebrate birth and death and the procession of the seasons. The fat man, reclining in the shade, would have the thin men scurrying about to do his bidding, as from time immemorial.
No news, good or bad, would come out of Africa any more to fill our "media" with worry and soul-searching. Experts and liberal thinkers, deprived of conscience-fodder and obsessive guilt, would have to find other ways of passing their time. And African, free of mad, white, alien dreams of progress and modernity, would be itself again."

The Weekly Telegraph, No. 555, March 13-19, 2002: 6 items -
1. 'Chinese Columbus' theorist finds fame By Elizabeth Grice -
A LECTURE by a former British submarine commander, advancing the case that the Chinese discovered America 72 years before Christopher Columbus and were the first to circumnavigate the world, will be broadcast live from the Royal Geographical Society in London to three million Chinese television viewers this week. The Gavin Menzies show on March 15 has become the most unexpected hot ticket in town following a report in the Daily Telegraph on March 4. The article explained the theory that the eunuch admiral, Zheng He, in a colossal fleet of multi-masted ships beat the great European explorers at their own game. It also claims that Columbus, Magellan, Da Gama and Cook used maps drawn by the Chinese in 1423 to help them "discover" the Americas, India and Australia.
COMMENT: The three column illustrated article, which ends with the question "If ... it wasn't the Chinese ... then who was it?" does not take into account the Phoenicians, who circumnavigated the continent of Africa in the time of Pharaoh Necôs, nor the Vikings, who sailed centuries before 1423.
2. Carey's profession of faith.
THE Archbishop of Canterbury has deplored the "spiritual schizophrenia" that leads Christians to divorce their faith from their work, writes P J Bonthrone. Dr George Carey said: "In our society there is a disturbing tendency towards the compartmentalising of faith and one's professional activity.
"For fear of offending those around them - and possibly also our of respect for the beliefs of others - Christians have been inclined to leave their faith at home, thus leading to an increasingly privatised religion."
3. 'Anti-white bias' in US army -
THE American Army's promotion system has been declared illegal by a federal judge on the grounds that it discriminates against white men in favour of ethnic minorities and women. District Court Judge Royce Lambert said military promotion boards had been directed to consider only "past personal of institutional discrimination" faced by female or minority soldiers - and no other groups.
4. Kurds chose banned names -
TURKISH prosecutors have charged seven families for giving their children banned Kurdish names, a report said. Prosecutors in the town of Dicle in Diyarbakir province, in the largely Kurdish south-east, said the seven families gave 21 children Kurdish names such as Serhat, Baran Rojda and Zelal.
5. Obituary - Anita Goulden - Indomitable Englishwoman who devoted her life to saving abandoned children of Peru.
ANITA GOULDEN, who has died aged 78, went to Peru on holiday and stayed for the next 43 years to look after abandoned and handicapped children.
She was about to return home to Manchester when she encountered some children with meningitis and tuberculosis, lying neglected amid pools of blood in the street. "In all my wildest dreams, I had never thought of human beings in such shocking conditions," her diary recorded at the time. "The appalling poverty: the indifference of those around. I can only liken it to visiting a store and finding all the goods priced wrongly. Precious goods worthless. Worthless goods precious."
Since nobody else showed any interest or concern for them, Anita Goulden wrote to her 15-year-old daughter at boarding school in England to say she had decided to stay two years in the coastal town of Piura, at the foot of the Andes, to help them. "If I wanted change in the world," she explained, "I would have to change myself."
In the great tradition of the indomitable Englishwoman abroad, Anita Goulden proceeded to quarrel with anyone she encountered who failed to be 100 per cent cooperative. She defied hostile politicians and indifferent civil servants. The local arch-bishop accused her of being an Interpol agent. A bandit held a pistol to her temple. But nobody who crossed her path ever doubted her determination. Soon "Doña Anita" started travelling with donkey trains into the sierra in search of more unwanted and mistreated children.
On entering a village, the first places she searched were the pigsties. This was where physically and mentally handicapped babies, all too often the result of botched abortions, were consigned with the excuse that they were of no use to their families and had been sent as a curse from God. After a time parents would simply tell her they could not afford to keep their children.
Her standing in Peru started to change after she was appointed MBE in 1987. If the Queen of England approved of this gringa, the Peruvians reasoned, she clearly deserved their help, and local help began to trickle in. The Variety Club of Great Britain sent her two vans; other British and American charities also started to send contributions which enabled her to expand the hostel she had established and to open a free school which now has 200 pupils.
Anita Goulden made only one visit home, in 1992. She was delighted by the lush greenness of the English countryside, and by the fact that worms or sand did not come out of taps. But when asked if she would like to stay, she replied "I want to go back - to my children."
6. US arrests 200 young Israelis in spying probe -
UP TO 200 young Israelis, some of them former members of military intelligence units, have been arrested in America in the past year, a leaked government report disclosed.
Some had used cover stories to gain access to sensitive government buildings and the homes of American officials. The report said the actions of some of the Israelis "may well be an organized intelligence-gathering activity".
None of the Israelis, about 140 of whom are believed to have been detained before the September 11 attacks, has been charged and most have been deported, according to the US government. The Israeli Foreign ministry said it was "nonsense" to suggest they had been spying.
Janes' Intelligence Digest, of 15 march 2002
carries a lead article which confirms the above report under the heading: "Allies and espionage." While the two-page article is too long to copy, we can quote the lead paragraph which is in bold print. "It is rather strange that the US media, with one notable exception, seems to be ignoring what may well prove to be the most explosive story since the 11 September attacks - the alleged break-up of a major Israeli espionage operation in the United States which aimed to infiltrate both the justice and defence departments and which may also have been tracking Al-Qaeda terrorists before the aircraft hijackings took place."
Other points on the history of such Israeli operations in the U.S., elsewhere in the account include reference to smuggling of 200 pounds of weapons-grade uranium to the Israeli State, and Jonathan Pollard's massive damage to U.S. security. As the final paragraph notes "US officials admitted to reporters that the entire investigation had become 'too hot to handle', but declined to give further details. However, some FBI officials did confirm at the time that the Israelis were running a major eavesdropping operation that had penetrated into the highest echelons of the US administration." This last would seem to be a reference to Comverse Infosys and Admocs, two Israeli-owned telecommunications companies which, between them, handle virtually all the billings records in the USA.

The Toronto Globe and Mail, March 18, 2002:
Terrorists attacked a Christian church jammed with foreigners in the diplomatic quarter of Pakistan's capital yesterday, killing five including two Americans. Scores were injured, including three Canadians. The attack underscores how difficult it is for Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to curb Islamic militants angered by his appeasement of Washington.

The Toronto Globe and Mail, March 19, 2002 - 2 items:
1. Changing languages -
In the United States, the study of Latin, which peaked in the 1930s has experienced a resurgence in recent years, reports the Baltimore Sun. Modern courses are more than just grammar translation. "Some classes sing songs about Latin; others share videotapes in spoken Latin. One company has translated popular books - like Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Quomodo Invidiosulus nomine Grinch Christi natalem Abrogaverit) - into Latin."
And Irish seems to be rallying, in Dublin, as elsewhere.
2. Obituary: Ralph Pastore By J. M. Sullivan, St. John's - Archeologist dispelled myth about the Beothuks, -
His research showed key role played by ecology in the demise of the Newfoundland native people.
COMMENT: The five-column illustrated article mentions that 'If you live in Central Newfoundland, you will die, because caribou are the only significant prey. You have to live on the coast to survive.'

The Toronto Globe and Mail, March 20, 2002 - Naming places, placing names,
a 4-column article by L. M. Sebert on the Facts & Arguments page, from which we quote this paragraph:
"Some names have taken hundreds of years to evolve. The name Kandahar is frequently in the news today. This is an anglicized version of what the present citizens call their city. It has evolved over the centuries from the Greek name Alexander. Alexander the Great established this city to be a bulwark near his empire's eastern border."

The Weekly Telegraph No. 556, March 20-26, 2002: 2 items -
1. Londoners on way back -
THE POPULATION of London is on course to exceed eight million for the first time in more than 50 years. The projection came as a global survey placed the capital second only to Athens as the most polluted city in the European Union and grimier than Detroit or Chicago. ... Half the increase is due to immigration. Non-white ethnic minorities now make up 27 per cent of London's population and may represent 31 per cent by 2011.
2. Pagan monarch's treasures return home, By Charles Clover Environment Editor:
A CROSSROADS in English history was celebrated last week with a ceremony on the burial ground of the last pagan king of England. A great shield, a sword and an intricate gold sword-belt inlaid with garnets were returned to the site at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk, believed to be the resting ground of King Raedwald, warrior king of the East Angles and the first king of all the English peoples. They are now on display at a new visitor centre that was opened by Seamus Heaney, the Nobel Prize-winning poet. Since the priceless treasure was found buried in a 90 ft Anglo-Saxon longship in 1939 there has been little to see. Angus Wainwright, the National Trust's resident archaeologist in East Anglia, said this was something the custodians of similar but less splendid burial grounds in Scandinavia regarded as "shameful". That omission has been rectified by the National trust, which acquired the site in 1998, with the building of the £5 million centre and the loan by the British museum of some of the artefacts found in the ship.
Royal burials went on in increasingly splendid style at Sutton Hoo for about 50 years until, just after Raedwald's death in about AD625, the Anglo-Saxons were converted to Christianity and burial customs changed... .

The Weekly Telegraph, No. 557, March 27-April 2, 2002: - 23 charged over twin towers fraud -
TWENTY-THREE people have been charged with falsely claiming compensation for relatives they said were lost in the September 11 attacks. Robert Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, said: "Con artists from New York and around the nation took advantage of the country's generosity [in donating to a fund] after the attacks on the World Trade Centre." Among those charged is Cyril Kendall, a New Yorker who was paid $109,000 (£135,000) after claiming that his 13th child, whom he said he had accompanied to a job interview, was lost when the twin towers collapsed. Daniel Djoro, from Michigan, told the Red Cross that his brother died in the collapse during a business meeting. He received $272,000 from the fund, but has no brother. And a woman from the Bronx said her mother had been killed in the towers. In fact, her mother died in 1998 and was cremated.
Time (Can. Edn.) April 1, 2002, Vol. 159, No. 13, p. 15
confirmed the same figure of 23 as above, and added "$760,000 - Amount they had collected in benefits before being caught."

The Toronto Globe and Mail, March 26, 2002 - 2 items:
1. "Mistrust of U.S. alive and well in the Middle East"
headed a six-column article, part two of a five-part series, By Timothy Appleby, AMMAN. Some excerpts: "(Quoting Mrs. Saeed) We were completely shocked," she replies. "If - I say if - those are the people who did this, they should be punished. But I don't know if there is any real proof of that."
The long list of other attacks linked to Mr. Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network? The incriminating video-tapes of Mr. Bin Laden? Mrs. Saeed shakes her head. Anybody, she says, can manufacture a phony video. "We have real doubts about all this, and that's the general feeling of most Jordanians." Her skepticism speaks volumes about the current level of mistrust of the United States across the Arab world. [... roughly 60 per cent of Jordan's five million people are Palestinians.]
2. Handel manuscript returns to its roots: London.
The autographed score of Handel's Messiah is returning for the first time to the London house where he composed the world renowned work in 1741.
The signed manuscript has been lent by the British Library for three weeks to the Handel House Museum in London.
Museum director Jacqueline Riding said: "Messiah must be the greatest piece of music ever written. Now for the first time since Handel's death, the autograph score is coming back to the room in which it was composed."
The oratorio was first performed in Dublin in 1742. Reuters

Science, Journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Volume 295 No. 5556, 1 February, 2002,
carries a one column, illustrated article on p. 779, under ScienceScope which notes that the total number of animals slaughtered in wiping out the foot-and-mouth disease in Britain was, according the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, 6,131,440.

The issue, [Science] Volume 295 No. 5562, 15 March, 2002,
carries a one column, illustrated article on p. 1993, under ScienceScope: "Tower Study Pushed" which reports on the efforts of engineers to come up with explanations regarding the surprisingly sudden total collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. It mentions that, although they "began studying the fall of New York City's 415-meter-tall landmarks even before the dust had settled", "their investigations were hampered by bureaucratic infighting and lack of timely access to the site."

A correspondent sent us a clipping from The Calgary Sun, March 17, 2002: - Surgery cuts out blushing for good.
It explains that a surgical operation under the armpit can permit clipping nerve endings at the base of the neck that trigger blushing. It reminds us that, just as contact lenses can change the apparent colour of a person's eyes, cosmetic arts and hair tints can likewise alter the appearance. It seems that, item by item, the natural appearance of men and women is becoming subject to available procedures which alter clues to the physical and emotional truth.

Biblical Archaeology Review, Volume 28 No. 2, March-April, 2002,
carries two articles which particularly caught the eye of your Editor. A well-illustrated, in-depth article by David Jacobson, examines "Herod's Roman Temple" [pp. 18-27 & 60-61], while a related article by Nikos Kokkinos, "Herod's Horrid Death", [pp. 28-35 (& 16)] tell us much of medical interest concerning the recorded symptoms, and modern interpretation and diagnoses of his demise, and further probe the question of his burial location.

Scientific American, Vol. 286, No. 4, April, 2002, pp. 80-88 carries "the social psychology of Modern Slavery",
a well balanced scientific article by Kevin Bales. An alphabetical listing of well over 100 countries notes the estimated number of slaves in each at the present time, and this accompanies a double-page World Map displaying the general distribution of this practice. It turns out to be very widespread and deeply rooted; a fact that should give us all pause to consider how it can be alleviated. It seems that not all slaves want freedom, as this brings an insecurity with which they are not prepared to cope.

The Weekly Telegraph, No. 558, of April 3-9, 2002: Obituary: Jack Whitehead,
Aged 88. Carved ships' figureheads of unusual life and immediacy and became a leader in his field. His many commissions included the figurehead for a replica of the Nonsuch, the Hudson Bay Company ship which had opened the fur trade of North America to Britain.

We shall lay aside some further items for which we may find space in the next issue.

While there will appear elsewhere in the present issue of the Prophetic Expositor an expanded appreciation of the life of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, we cannot let this column close without, once more, noting and marking the occasion of her death. We, The Board of Directors and The Membership of the British-Israel-World Federation (Canada) Incorporated, send our deepest respects to our Present Queen and All the Royal Family on the occasion of Her passing. We, of the generation who saw her in Toronto on the first Royal Visit by the King and Queen to Canada, particularly well know her worth to the nation, and the sense of Family that accompanied her wherever she traversed the Nations of The British Realm.

Douglas C. Nesbit,
President