OUR VIOLENT WORLD

In today's world such horror is becoming common-place. It's hard to imagine that even "the days of Noah" were as violence-filled as those in which we are now living!

In England and Wales statistics reveal a steep increase in crimes committed by young people (including girls) many of them under 14. The numbers are distressing: One in every 5 young men commits a violent offence by the time they reach the age of 25. The number of women is one in 20, but that is little comfort. The number of violent offences committed by girls aged 10 to 17 has doubled since 1981, while the perpetrators of nearly 8% of all violent crimes committed by women are aged between 10 and 13. Among under-25s, 17% said they had at one stage carried a weapon, either in self-defense, or with intent to cause harm. Criminals under 18 are now responsible for 28% of all violent crimes, 40% of burglaries, 11% of drug offences and 33% of criminal damage offences. But not just in the UK, all over Europe juvenile crime is spinning out of control.

German juvenile crime rose 10% over the past year. Last week in Germany teenagers threw 2 kilo rocks from a bridge onto cars speeding down the highway, killing two drivers. Why? For fun!

France was shocked by cruel murders carried out by teenage girls. 19 year old Florence Rey killed four people in a robbery. 18 year old Veronique Herbert, first seduced a 16-year-old Tunisian boy, after which she and her 17-year-old boyfriend stabbed him 39 times! Why? For fun!

Not long ago the Parisian transport system was paralized by a strike, set off by increasing attacks on staff, mostly from teenagers. Violence against on Metro and buses staff rose by a third last year. One bus driver was trashed severely, stabbed in the leg and stomach after refusing to drop a teenage passenger off between stops.

In Russia, and all over the former communist block, the crime rate has soared the last years. Russian Interior ministry figures show that crimes committed by minors rose 10 times over the past seven years. In 1996 there were 70,000 crimes committed by 14- and 15-year-olds. By 1997, that figure had risen to 87,000.

In Sweden the average age of male criminals has dropped over the past decade from 20 to 15 year old!

Impact of television. (Dallas Morning News) All you need to do is look at the numbers to know the influence of television on [American] families and children. Consider the following statistics from TV-Free America:

* Percentage of households that possess at least one TV: 99.

* Hours a day that TV is on in an average home: 6 hours, 47 minutes.

* Percentage of Americans who say they watch too much TV: 49.

* Minutes a week that parents and children spend in meaningful talk: 38.5.

* Minutes a week that the average child watches TV: 1,680.

* Percentage of parents who would like to limit their children's TV watching: 73.

* Hours annually that the average youth spends in school: 900.

* Hours per year the average American youth watches TV: 1,500.

The statistics for violent crime in the U.S. are staggering. According to the FBI, a person is murdered on an average of every 22 minutes; a rape occurs every 4 minutes, a robbery every 26 seconds. [27] A commission of crime experts contradicts reports that crime levels are declining: The Council on Crime in America said in its first report that [crime levels] "remain at historic highs.

"America is a ticking violent crime bomb, and there is little time remaining to prepare for the blast," said the report, which noted the rise in youthful violence. They said official FBI statistics on crime, those crimes reported to police, were only the tips of the iceberg. The report said the crime rate--based on surveys of victims and not just crimes reported to the police--show violent crime--including murder, rape, assault and burglary--was 5.6 times higher than those reported. [28]

While America mourns the death of 58,000 of her young men as a result of 8½ years of fighting in Vietnam, few people realize that the combined homicide and suicide rate each year is nearly as high as the total loss of American life during the Vietnam War. The names of all the Americans who died in the Vietnam War are inscribed on the black granite walls of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington--47,365 killed in battle, and nearly 11,000 victims of accidents and disease. It is one of the world's most evocative and impressive funereal works. No one who visits the memorial is not emotionally affected. How would we react to a memorial identical in design and eight times larger, a memorial bearing the names of 500,000 Americans--most of them young--who were murdered or who killed themselves in the United States during the Vietnam War years? How would we react to that monstrous memorial if it were necessary, as it would be every year, to add to it at least another 50,000 names?

Vietnam! Americans mourn the death of 58,000 of their young men in 8-1/2 years of fighting...But the casualty rate on U.S. city streets is now four times as high.

Murders and suicides in the U.S. are now occurring at a rate of more than 145 a day, a rate that is rising. In the past 30 years alone, the total exceeds 1,200,000 people, more than all the men killed in all the wars in the history of the United States. And many of these recent victims are not men and women; they are children. [26]

Jack Levin, a sociology professor at Northeastern University in Boston, said the increased number of homicides by juveniles as young as 14 and 15 is a precursor of worse things to come:

"They are in the leading edge of the mini-baby boom of children of the original post-World War II baby boomers, and they haven't yet reached the 18 to 24-year-old age group that traditionally commits the overwhelming majority of murders," he said. "They aren't even there yet, but they're committing homicide," Levin said. "What are they going to do for an encore?" [29]

John Lott, a University of Chicago researcher, echoes Levin's warning: "A bloodbath of homicides will occur in 10 years as a larger, more aggressive, less supervised, and better armed generation of children become teenagers. Researchers at a major science meeting say curfews and gun buy-back programs do little to reduce the violence." [30]

"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, & that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The earth also was corrupt before God, & the earth was filled with violence" (Genesis 6:5,11).

In the U.S. a teenager shoots his father because he wants to enjoy watching someone bleed to death. In Britain 2 ten year old boys kidnap & brutally murder a toddler. In today's world such horror is becoming common-place. It is hard to imagine that even "the days of Noah" were as violence-filled as those in which we are now living!

Vietnam! Americans mourn the death of 58,000 of their young men in 8-1/2 years of fighting ... But the casualty rate on U.S. city streets is now four times as high. The F.B.I. reports that 24,530 people were murdered in the US in 1994 alone. The US Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that a whopping 1.1 million violent crimes were committed with guns in 1992. MANY of the victims are teenagers killed by other teenagers who seem to have no concept of the value of life. Society wrings its hands & agonizes why?

Violence is glorified in America, where the national icons from Sylvester Stallone to Arnold Schwartzenegger tend to be men who excel at violence. Movies such as the "Rambo" and "Terminator" series, which have grossed millions of dollars worldwide, illustrate how voracious the appetite for violence is in today's world.

Children's cartoons today also contain all kinds of sickening violence. Eclipsing "The Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles" and "The Simpsons," MTV's "Beavis and Butthead" has become a children's favorite. A far cry from the Disney cartoons of a generation ago, Beavis and Butthead routinely torture animals, set fire to furniture and engage in all kinds of abhorrent juvenile behavior.

Then there's horror movies. Many pre-teens today watch this type of movie at "gross-out" parties with their friends. Video shops report that horror movies are especially popular among 11-to-15-year olds.

And then there's rock music videos, many of which romanticize violence, sexual assaults and murder. Between the 7th and 12th grades, the average American teenager will listen to and watch 11,000 hours of rock music more than twice the time they will spend in class.

The fruit of all this is that the rock 'n' roll era has seen violent crime increase among young people by over 10,000 percent. Today In the U.S. alone a violent crime is committed every 25 seconds. Every 9 seconds a home is burglarized. A woman is raped every six minutes. Every 25 minutes someone is murdered.

The only comfort in this terrible tide of rising violence is that, according to Bible prophecy, it is yet another unquestionable sign that points to the 2nd Coming of Jesus Christ, when all senseless violence and cruelty will be stopped, and war itself will be abolished!

Violence is glorified in America, where the national icons from Sylvester Stalone to Arnold Swartzenegger tend to be men who excel at violence. Movies such as the "Rambo" and "Terminator" series, which have grossed millions of dollars worldwide, illustrate how voracious the appetite for violence is in today's world.

Children's cartoons today also contain all kinds of sickening violence. Eclipsing "The Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles" and "The Simpsons", MTV's "Beavis and Butthead" has become a children's favorite. A far cry from the Disney cartoons of a generation ago, Beavis and Butthead routinely torture animals, set fire to furniture and engage in all kinds of abhorrent juvenile behavior.

Then there's horror movies. Many pre-teens today watch this type of movie at "gross-out" parties with their friends. Video shops report that horror movies are especially popular among 11-to-15-year olds.

Even children's cartoons today contain all kinds of senseless violence. MTV's popular "Beavis and Butthead" cartoon has become a children's favorite. A far cry from the Disney cartoons of a generation earlier, Beavis and his crony Butthead routinely torture animals, set fire to furniture and engage in all kinds of violent behavior. No wonder news items such as the following have become routine.

The link between violence on film and violence in our streets and homes is irrefutable. Many of America's most notorious serial killers, including Jeffrey L. Dahmer, were influenced by Hollywood films that graphically depict violence, a homicide expert recently said: "Hollywood is creating problems with some of the stuff they're coming up with," retired FBI agent Robert Ressler said at a police conference. "Movies like 'Silence of the Lambs,' the 'Death Wish' series and all the slasher films are causing mentally unstable people to go over the edge," he said. In a 20-year career with the FBI, Ressler interviewed most of the nation's most infamous serial killers, including Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, David Berkowitz and Ted Bundy. [32]

The 40,000-member Professional Association of Teachers in Britain conducted a survey in which they found that:

"The impact of violent and sexually explicit material is far more widespread than was previously thought," said Jackie Miller, the association's deputy secretary general and author of the report. The survey found that 77 percent of secondary school teachers thought children were being "desensitized to violence," and choosing to glorify and mimic violent activity in the playground. [33]

Dr. Leonard D. Efron, professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who studied the habits of more than four hundred viewers for 22 years, observes: "There can no longer be any doubt that heavy exposure to televised violence is one of the causes of aggressive behavior, crime and violence in society." Arnold Kahn of the American Psychological Association adds, "The debate over the effects of violence on television is like the debate over cigarette smoking and cancer." [34]

The fruit of all this is that the rock 'n' roll era has seen violent crime increase among young people by over 10,000%. Today In the U.S. alone a violent crime is committed every 25 seconds. Every 9 seconds a home is burglarized. A woman is raped every six minutes. Every 25 minutes someone is murdered.

The fruit of all this is an explosion of violent crime among young people. The Associated Press reports, "Young people ages 12 through 17 are the most common victims of violent crime in America, being raped, robbed or assaulted at five times the rate for adults 35 and older, the Justice Department said." One juvenile in 13 was a victim of a violent crime during 1992, the year the statistics were gathered, up 23 percent from 1987. [35]

To find out "how young people themselves feel about their rapidly changing world," Newsweek magazine and the Children's Defense Fund commissioned a poll of 758 American children between the ages of 10 and 17. Newsweek summarized their findings: What emerges is a portrait of a generation living in fear. ... Many had anxieties their parents could never have imagined: of guns, drugs, divorce, poverty. The interviews underscore how deeply violence, or the fear of it, permeates the lives of children, not just in inner cities, but also in small towns and suburbs across America. [36]

The only comfort in this terrible tide of rising violence is that, according to Bible prophecy, it is yet another unquestionable sign that points to the 2nd Coming of Jesus Christ, when all senseless violence and cruelty will be stopped, and war itself will be abolished!

DIRECT SOURCES:

It was enough to bring tears to any 12-year-old's eyes. His pride and joy, a new £200 mountain bike, the Christmas present his parents had saved hard for, was gone: stolen from his own back garden by a gang of jealous youths. But Dean Pope had another reaction: if you can't beat ’em, join ’em. He turned to his mother Val and said words that broke her heart: "I might as well turn to [stealing], too."

A few months later Val Pope got a call from the local police to say her son had been arrested with a gang of other youngsters caught on a shopping spree with stolen credit cards. It was the start of a teenage life of crime that led to arson charges, jail and only ended in remorse last March when his younger brother Daniel, 14, died in a car crash, joyriding, following his big brother's example.

The Pope family's case is tragic, but hardly unique. Statistics for England and Wales reveal a staggering increase in crimes committed by young people including, more than ever, girls as well as boys, many of them under 14.

The figures make harrowing reading. One in five young men has committed a violent offence by the time they reach the age of 25. The figure for women is one in 20, but that is little cause for comfort. The number of violent offences committed by girls aged 10 to 17 has doubled since 1981, while the perpetrators of nearly 8% of all violent crimes committed by women are aged between 10 and 13. Among under-25s, 17% said they had at one stage carried a weapon, either in self-defense, or with intent to cause harm. Criminals under 18 are now responsible for 28% of all violent crimes, 40% of burglaries, 11% of drug offences and 33% of criminal damage offences.

But it is not just a native disease. Across Europe there is a spreading epidemic of juvenile crime, evidence of a continent-wide youth underclass growing up outside the law.

Last week the Parisian transport system was brought to a standstill by a strike, sparked not by pay disputes but by the soaring number of attacks on staff, most of them from teenagers. Violence against staff on the Metro and buses rose by a third last year. One bus driver was badly beaten, then stabbed in the leg and stomach after refusing to drop a teenage passenger off between stops.

The Parisian public has been horrified by a spate of gruesome murders carried out by teenage girls. At 19, Florence Rey killed four people in a bungled robbery and car chase. Veronique Herbert, 18, seduced a 16-year-old Tunisian immigrant, then she and her 17-year-old boyfriend stabbed him 39 times--just for fun.

In Germany juvenile crime rose 10% over the past year.

In Russia the crime situation has reached pandemic proportions. The collapse of communism taught a new generation that everything their parents believed in was wrong. Now the crisis in the country's fledgling capitalist economy has further inculcated an attitude of "every man for himself," except that it starts a lot younger.

Interior ministry figures show that crimes committed by minors rose 10 times over the past seven years. In 1996 there were 70,000 crimes committed by 14- and 15-year-olds. By last year, that figure had risen to 87,000.

Even in stereotypically staid Sweden the average age of male criminals has dropped over the past decade from 20 to 15.

A lack of parental control is an intrinsic part of the problem. On a Thursday night 10 days ago, on the streets of Speke, outside Liverpool, a gangly, 5ft 3in 12-year-old was the ringleader of a gang of 10 youths in tracksuits and Reebok trainers, roaming the streets in search of trouble. He stole a car, and with a few hooting pals drove at a speed he later boasted was 140mph, shaking off a police chase before setting light to the vehicle on wasteland.

In the past year he has cost his mother £500 in fines and is not just unrepentant, but arrogant: "She tries to keep me in, but she can't. What can she do? I started getting into trouble when I was about 11, robbing cars. Me mates were all doing it."

The media bears part of the blame too. Rami, a young Tunisian robber, is open about his inspiration: "We have seen films showing how easy it is. You just have to go in and pick up the money. It was easy, too." Before a recent robbery he had watched Menace II Society, a brutal, bloody tale of black teenage gangsters in America, glorifying fast cars, easy money and the psychology of violence. Florence Rey, the young Parisian convicted of murder, admitted to being fascinated by the controversial Hollywood blockbuster Natural Born Killers.

Consumerism is part of the cancer; the wages of sin are sneakers and CDs. Technological advance and Europe's relative affluence have spawned only more toys to inspire envy. The media and marketing cult of youth has focused on one narrow age band--between 15 and 25--squeezing all human aspirations into it, with the old deemed irrelevant and children seen only as consumers.

The 1950s are now seen as the decade that invented the teenager. The 1990s may be judged as the decade that witnessed another, more sinister phenomenon: childhood's end.

Around the world the crises pile up, and the collage of headlines does not make a pretty picture. In Kosovo, babies die of cold on hillsides where mothers have fled to save their lives. In Sierra Leone, madmen posing as a rebel army cut off the hands of teen-aged boys and trap families in their homes to torch them. Angolans shoot down relief planes. Haiti spirals back into chaos. And the chief judge of an international tribunal is stopped cold at Serbia's border when she tries to investigate crimes against humanity in Kosovo.

Who's in charge here?

In the last year of the century, the newer, saner world order which was confidently anticipated when communism collapsed a decade ago is nowhere to be seen. The problem is magnified by the characters of the combatants and of the causes. A great many of today's conflicts are civil wars, and 100 years of conventions written to make war civilized are useless pieces of paper in these fights. Ordinary people are the targets and the fodder of rogue militias. Nine times more civilians than combatants die. Battles are fought over no apparent principles, only greed and power.

UNICEF, the U.N. children's fund, recently reported that nearly 50 million children and women are in immediate and extreme danger worldwide, causing an agency better known for immunization drives and schoolbooks to rethink its programs in countries where disaster preparedness may have to be given priority instead.

With international peacekeeping all but dead, armies of relief workers are on the front lines. But these angels of mercy are cut no slack either. More aid workers than peacekeeping troops are now dying in the field. At least 173 U.N. relief officials have been killed in about five years.

"Ideas are much smaller now," said Arthur Helton, an international lawyer who directs migration projects at the Open Society Institute. "The circumstances are far more driven by self interest or the perception of self interest." Conflicts, he added, now ride on causes that are "regional, subregional, even to the point of clans--the atomization of societies."

Small ideas. Big egos. War in Africa. Butchery in the Balkans. Could this be reminiscent of the start of the 20th century as much as a definition of its end?

TAIPEI (AP) -- For almost a week, four teen-age boys took turns raping a 15-year-old captive, beating her and torturing her with electric shocks. Their girlfriends watched, or sat in front of the TV in the next room. When she finally died and the teens were arrested, the junior high-school dropout who led the gang said the victim deserved what she got for stealing a pager and being "a pain."

Taiwanese youth long were viewed as deferential bookworms, model strivers who worked hard in school and grew up to help build the island into an increasingly vibrant and affluent society. However, vicious juvenile crimes like the killing of the girl has Taiwan increasingly afraid of its own children. A new stereotype is emerging--that of the sneering, remorseless young tough.

Police say 409 juveniles were arrested for murder in 1997. In Japan, with more than five times the population and its own worrying problem of increasing juvenile crime, the figure was only 97.

Hsieh Fen-fen, commander of the Taipei police department's juvenile branch, said teens' inability to communicate frustration plus constant exposure to sex and violence in comics, video games and TV can lead to random, vicious crime. "Kids slowly get used to gore and sex in the media," she said. "Then, they feel an escalating need for thrills. They want the real thing."

Waiting for a brief probation interview at Taipei district court, a 20-year-old woman said kids choose their own path at school. "So if you're not motivated, you just do what you want," she said. On probation for assaulting another girl when she was 16, the woman said things might have been different if someone had "been there" for her.