The World and Everything in It: November 21, 2023

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like me. Hi, I'm Tori from Winston Salem, North Carolina. I love a lot of different segments, because they inform me about what's going on in the world around me, or educate me about something I didn't know before, or potentially inspire me to dig deeper into my walk with God. One segment I can't get enough of is the kicker. Every day we get something that is funny or whimsical or just strange. I wonder though, what's the record for the most punny dad jokes fit into a single kicker segment? Enjoy today's program with me laughing alongside you.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: (laugh) Don’t know! Maybe 3 or 4? Good morning!

Electric vehicles are thought to benefit the environment, but do they?

AUDIO: The federal government has essentially just allowed mining companies to dump their waste rock on whatever on public land they thought was available.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also today, an Arab-American view on the war in Gaza. And a family recipe that seems just right on Thanksgiving.

AUDIO: Apple butter should have a little bit of tang from the apples. Most commercial apple butter you would buy at the store is almost inedible.

And what accounts for the social media popularity of Osama bin Laden?

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, November 21st. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Now news with Kent Covington

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Biden on hostages » President Biden says at least some of the hostages that Hamas is still holding captive in Gaza may soon be set free.

REPORTER: Mr. President is a hostage deal near?
BIDEN: I believe so.
REPORTER: You believe so?
BIDEN: Yes.

That exchange captured between the president and a reporter during a Thanksgiving ceremony at the White House.

That echoes remarks earlier this week from Deputy national security adviser Jon Finer, who told CNN:

FINER: We think that we are closer than we have been perhaps at any point since these negotiations began weeks ago.

Reuters has reported that a deal was potentially in the works to release 50 of the more than 200 hostages … in exchange for a three-day ceasefire.

The government of Qatar has been acting as a middle man for negotiations to release the hostages.

Finer said a “significant number” of those hostages are Americans.

Secretary Austin in Kyiv » Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says the United States will continue to back Ukraine “for the long haul.”

Austin paid an unannounced visit to Kyiv on Monday where he met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other leaders.

AUSTIN: I announced today another $100 million dollar drawdown using presidential drawdown authority. It’ll provide additional artillery munitions, additional interceptors for air defense.

Combined, over the last 20 months, the U.S. and its allies have provided about $80 billion dollars in military aid, everything from bullets to air defense systems, to tanks and pledges for F-16 fighter jets.

But Ukrainian forces still need more, and after almost 20 months of shipping arms to Ukraine, cracks are beginning to show. Some European countries have scaled back support, noting their need to maintain their own military stockpiles.

South Korea satellite warning to North Korea » South Korea is warning North Korea not to go forward with plans to launch a new spy satellite. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER: South Korean officials have suggested that if Pyongyang launches the satellite, the South may suspend the 2018 Inter-Korean Military Agreement. That was a pact aimed at tamping down tensions between the two Koreas.

It included creating buffer zones and reducing the military presence along their shared border.

The south could also resume aerial surveillance and ramp up military drills.

But Pyongyang has already informed Japan that it still plans to launch the satellite by the end of the month. =

The North has already tried to launch a spy satellite into orbit twice this year, but failed. However, officials fear that Russia may be providing the technical help to make the next attempt successful.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

Trump gag order » A District court in Washington DC heard arguments Monday on whether to lift the gag order placed on former President Trump. That’s in a case accusing him of trying to overturn the 2020 election.

Trump Lawyer John Sauer called it a clear First Amendment issue.

SAUER: A gag order in this case installs a single federal district judge as a filter for core political speech. The order is unprecedented, and it sets a terrible precedent for future restrictions on core political speech.

Under the October gag order, Trump may not disparage witnesses or prosecutors in his election interference case.

The three-judge panel has not yet issued a ruling.

Altman/OpenAI » Employees are revolting at the company that makes the popular artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin has more.

KRISTEN FLAVIN: Open AI employees nearly 800 people at the moment. The vast majority of them are threatening to quit after the company’s board fired CEO and co-founder Sam Altman.

The move shocked the tech industry.

Most of Open AI’s staff have signed a letter demanding that Altman be restored to his post and for the board to re-sign.

But Altman already has a new job. Microsoft quickly scooped him up, along with Open A-I’s former president, Greg Brockman who quit in protest when Altman was fired. The pair will lead a new advanced AI research team at Microsoft.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Holiday travel » Millions of Americans are hitting the highways and airports ahead of Thanksgiving.

In fact, the Dept. of Transportation expects this Thanksgiving travel season to be one of the busiest ever despite the threat of a cross-country storm.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg:

BUTTIGIEG: There is some bad weather expected that could affect Thanksgiving travel so the FAA is the command center as usual is working closely with airlines to plan for and plan around any disruptive weather.

More than 30 million Americans are expected to pass through airports over the holiday season.

And more than 55 million people are expected to travel at least 50 miles from home for Thanksgiving.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: mining for the minerals used to build electric vehicles. Plus, making apple butter from scratch.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday, November 21st, 2023.

This is WORLD Radio and we’re so glad you are along with us today. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. First up on The World and Everything in It: mining for electric vehicles.

Last week, Arkansas issued a permit to ExxonMobil to drill for lithium. If it’s approved for production, it would be only the second commercial-scale lithium site in the U.S.

REICHARD: It was only last year that the Biden administration set out goals to bring lithium mining to this country. But, some people say that mining could harm the environment in the name of saving it.

WORLD Radio Reporter Mary Muncy has the story.

SOUND: [WALKING THROUGH THE PARK]

MARY MUNCY, REPORTER: The Indiana Department of Natural Resources, or DNR just finished reclaiming part of an old coal mine in Lynnville Park.

SOUND: [PEOPLE JUMPING]

When the mine closed in 1964, the company left a lake that snakes around the park, and several sheer cliffs, called high walls. Park-goers used to jump off those cliffs—leading to several injuries.

That’s why park officials called the DNR. Kit Turpin leads the Abandoned Mine Land program, and he’s showing me the reclaimed high wall. Now it’s a slow incline into the lake.

KIT TURPIN: They were mining this way. And then for whatever reason, they stopped right here. So that's what left the wall was because they were mining up the streams unregulated.

Most abandoned mines in the U.S. were built prior to 1977. That year, the federal government passed a law called the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, or SMCRA. The law requires coal mining companies to put up bonds for reclamation before they can start digging.

Basically, companies are required to put the site back the way they found it or pay for the government to do it.

But that’s not the case for hard rock mining. That’s mining for things like gold, silver, and copper.

Right now, the U.S. only mines about one percent of the world’s cobalt, manganese, and nickel, some of the minerals needed for EV batteries.

But the Biden administration’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act wants to change that. It promises tax credits to manufacturers if 80 percent of critical minerals in their batteries are sourced in the US or trade-friendly countries.

DAVID KANAGY: We need to open up 359 new mines across a whole variety of commodities.

David Kanagy is the executive director and CEO of the Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration.

KANAGY: Whether it be lithium, or cobalt, or graphite, or nickel, or copper, etc, we need to move forward with the development of some of these mines in order to meet the long term supply demand.

Global S&P reports that demand for nickel, lithium, and cobalt will be 23 percent higher in 2035 than it is now.

But not all of that production will look alike. For example, ExxonMobil’s lithium site in Arkansas is not technically a mine. It’s more like drilling for oil, and it’s more environmentally friendly too.

Meanwhile, the majority of hard rock minerals are mined in Africa, Asia, and Australia… and 70 to 90 percent of them are refined in China.

KANAGY: If we really are concerned about the environment, if we're really concerned about worker safety, we're going to mine in the United States.

But that will require careful planning.

Mark Squillace is a professor of Natural Resources Law at the University of Colorado Law School. He has also testified before Congress on mining regulations and has been on committees to create global guidelines.

MARK SQUILLACE: Historically, the federal government has essentially just allowed mining companies to dump their waste rock on whatever public land they thought was available, even if they weren't mining that land.

The other thing that companies do is they basically leave their pit because we don't require that they backfill the pit.

That changed for the coal industry with that 1977 legislation, but the hardrock industry hasn’t changed much.

Right now, there are a few state and federal regulations. Hard rock mining companies do have to put up bonds for reclamation and be permitted before they can start digging, but…

SQUILLACE: The size of those bonds has always been a problem. There are a lot of bankruptcies that occur in  the industry, which can be a real problem. And at the international level, there's been a huge amount of resistance to requiring adequate bonds at hardrock mining operations.

Squillace’s other concern is the Mining Law of 1872. That law allows someone to stake a claim on U.S. federal public land and mine any minerals on it without paying any royalties.

SQUILLACE: The mining companies don't pay any fees to basically take our federal minerals away from us. So it's been controversial, probably, since the law was enacted in 1872.

That’s true of domestic and international companies.

No matter what, there’s a cost if the U.S. outsources mining, it loses control of the supply chain. But if it mines domestically, it could harm the environment while depleting its own supply of minerals.

Arlo Hemphill is an environmental activist with Greenpeace USA. He and Squillace say the real environmental solution is to get better at recycling the minerals we already have.

HEMPHILL: The charts look very scary. But then again, that's those charts are based on the trajectory of current technology, that doesn't take into account whether we might use different battery chemistries, or find or find different ways of doing things.

SOUND: [PARK ACTIVITY]

Lynnville Park is now reopened for visitors, and Kit Turpin has moved on to the next abandoned mine on his list. But he’s happy that list is not getting longer.

TURPIN: The coal mines now are regulated. Problem solved with coal mines. Except, you know, there's just a massive amount of issues left behind.

About 300 million dollars worth of issues in Indiana. And unless things change, the list of abandoned hardrock mines could grow exponentially potentially leaving billions of dollars worth of issues.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy in Lynnville, Indiana.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: Arab views on the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Earlier this month, the New York Times ran an article citing a Hamas media advisor who said the following: “I hope that the state of war with Israel will become permanent on all the borders, and that the Arab world will stand with us.”

NICK EICHER, HOST: While Arab nations like Saudi-Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt have called on the United States to pressure Israel for a cease-fire in Gaza, they have largely stayed out of the conflict, apart from supplying humanitarian aid.

But so far, much of the Arab world is not standing with Hamas’s mission to create permanent war for Gaza.

REICHARD: On Saturday, the Crown Prince of Bahrain stepped out as the first Arab leader to take Hamas to task for its brutal attack.

CROWN PRINCE OF BAHRAIN: I condemn Hamas unequivocally. This is so everybody in the room can understand that I stand on the side of civilians and Innocents and not on the side of political posturing.

Is the Crown Prince alone in the Arab world, or the tip of an iceberg?

EICHER: Joining us now is Hussain Abdul-Hussain. He’s an Arab journalist and a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Hussain, good morning.

HUSSAIN ABDUL-HUSSAIN: Morning.

EICHER: Well let’s start with the basics. Last Monday you published an article in Newsweek in which you say you can’t understand why the world can’t feel Israeli pain following Hamas’s attacks, only Palestinian pain. Why is that the case, do you think? And maybe that plays into the larger issue of why the Palestinian cause is so important in the Arab world.

HUSSAIN: Well, the main reason is that we have at least 1 billion Muslims, and at most we have 20 million Jews. And no matter who’s right and who’s wrong, the voice of 1 billion is always much louder than the voice of 20 million, even if the other side is right, and even if the other side is still hurting from the massacre that Hamas committed against 1200 Israelis. So this is a case where the Israelis were clearly on the defensive. They were clearly the victims, and yet you have the majority of the Arabs still blaming Israel for whatever we see unfolding today.

REICHARD: What are Arab nations in the Middle East saying about the conflict? Are they all on one page, or are there differences you’ve noticed, country to country?

HUSSAIN: On the surface it may seem that they are on the same page asking for a ceasefire, but if you look deeper you will see great differences. You have the bloc that includes Qatar, Turkey, to an extent Iran, and these guys when they call for a ceasefire, they want a ceasefire because they want to spare Hamas the bitter fate that Israel is going after this terrorist organization.

On the other hand, if you look at the moderate Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE and Jordan, these guys want a ceasefire because they believe that peace talks are the only alternative here, the only option and the only choice. So while both might be calling for a ceasefire, each one of them imagines what happens next differently. One wants it as a pitstop to more fighting, the other wants it as a full stop to have peace talks.

EICHER: Let’s talk a little more about Qatar, you brought that up. The New York Post recently ran a story about top Hamas leaders living in luxury in Qatar while the Palestinian people of Gaza suffer as the result of Hamas’s attacks on Israel. What do we know about the extent of Qatar’s support for Hamas, and what can Israel and its allies do to persuade Qatar to end that support?

HUSSAIN: Well, we know for a fact that the Hamas leadership is corrupt and is wealthy compared to the rest of Gazans, and the two main leaders of Hamas, Khaled Mashal and Ismail Haniyeh, they do live in Qatar, enjoying a lot of luxury. There was a leak showing that Ismail Haniyeh spent over $5,000 only going to spas and getting massages. So this is known even inside of the Gaza Strip itself. Gazans have often put out footage showing that the Hamas leadership inside the Strip lives in luxury, they drive luxury cars. In August there were protests, the Gazans took out to the streets to protest Hamas’s corruption. They were saying, “We’re hungry, we’re impoverished, and you’re just driving your luxury cars.” Now the point here is that Qatar has two faces. On one side, they are an ally of the United States. They host our air base in Al Udeid. On the other hand, they’re funding Hamas, they’re funding Al-Jazeera, which to me now sounds like a mouthpiece of Hamas that instigates violence not only against Israelis but against everything that’s Western at this point. What we can do is that we have a lot of leverage here in the United States. We can ask the Qataris to cut it out. We can just say, If you don’t stop funding, your people will face sanctions, or your banking system will face sanctions. And I’m sure at this point the Qataris will not be willing to sacrifice their own wealth and banking system and their own connection to the global financial system only to support a bunch of terrorists that are called Hamas.

REICHARD: A part of the current conflict comes down to whether Hamas really has a system of tunnels and command centers underground in Gaza. Since Israeli forces took control of the Al-Shifa hospital last week, the IDF has been releasing footage of what it found inside the hospital complex. Some mainstream media aren’t taking the Israelis’ word for it and are demanding more concrete evidence.

Are the Israelis providing enough evidence and the mainstream just doesn’t want to accept it, or is there more to the story?

HUSSAIN: Well, I think the Israelis have provided a lot of evidence that offers a strong case, and I think in this case, most of the Arab media just refuse to believe. Now, if we take the statements of Hamas officials themselves, they have talked about the tunnels that they are managing. Sometimes they use them to threaten Israel, to say that, “If you come into the Strip, you will not be able to beat us because we have the tunnels.” So this is not a secret. Everyone knows that the Hamas fighters are hiding in these tunnels. Now the point is that no matter what amount of evidence Israel offers, even footage of brutal acts of violence that Hamas committed against Israeli citizens, even this footage is sometimes not being taken as solid evidence. So I see bias in most of this. And I think if you get a neutral observer, they’ll absolutely believe the evidence that Israel is putting out. And thankfully, Washington at this point and this administration, they believe what Israel is putting out. 

EICHER: Hussain Abdul-Hussain is an Arab journalist and research fellow for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Thank you for your time.

HUSSAIN: Thank you.

NICK EICHER, HOST: A horse is a horse (of course) but when a horse is on the loose during a transatlantic flight, it’s a whole other story.

It happened last week about a half hour after takeoff from New York to Belgium. The Boeing 747 pilot radioed air-traffic control.

PILOT: Atlanta four nine five two. Go ahead.

So the pilot explains calm and concise.

PILOT: We are a cargo plane. We have a live animal, a horse, on board the airplane and the horse managed to escape its stall. We need to return to New York. We cannot get the horse back secure.

This is not the run of the mill unruly passenger who won’t obey the fasten-seatbelt sign. But I’ve got to believe if there’s one word you don’t want to hear in flight, it’s the word “stall.”

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, November 21st. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Home-cooked family traditions.

Few things say Thanksgiving like family recipes. But passing down the traditions takes practice. One family in a small Virginia town has come to learn the lesson.

REICHARD: Gretchen Whittington is a journalism student at Patrick Henry College. Every year her family gathers to make apple butter, and she brings us the sounds — if not the smells — of what it takes to keep a family tradition cooking.

SOUND: [Conversation around the fire, pot bubbling]

GRETCHEN WHITTINGTON, REPORTER: We make apple butter the old-fashioned way: over an open fire, with family. In October, we’d made about 30 gallons of regular applesauce. We picked 5 bushels, over 200 pounds, of Golden Delicious apples from a local orchard.

SOUND: [Washing]

Then we washed them.

SOUND: [Chopping]

Quartered them.

SOUND: [Steaming]

Steamed them.

SOUND: [GRINDING]

And ground them up.

Family began arriving in Winchester on Friday, November 3. The next day, we were going to turn our applesauce, which is good but boring, into apple butter.

For those who aren’t familiar, apple butter is highly concentrated applesauce with extra sugar and seasonings. It has an almost jam-like consistency.

Uncle Eddie explained to me that the sugars in the apple carmelize in the copper kettle.

EDDIE: The copper in the kettle acts as a catalyst to accelerate that, so within five or six hours we can make it turn from a light yellow to a dark burgundy.

We spread it on crackers and toast and pancakes. Some of us boldly slather it on dishes like salmon.

On Saturday, most of the family was up by about 7. Friends and a few more relatives, about 30 altogether, would come and go throughout the day.

We cleaned our old, dented and scratched copper kettle and got the ingredients ready.

SOUND: [Kettle washing]

By 7:45 it was time to light the fire. Uncle Eddie normally handles that. But Uncle Eddie was still sleeping. “We’ll go on without him,” my dad said. He doused some gas on the teepee of wood.

MAN: You’re going to have to move [Sound of gasoline pouring]

My dad looped a trail of gas across our yard. Now that I think about it, a lot of people in my family like starting fires.

He stepped away to set the gas can down, came back, and grabbed the propane torch.

SOUND: [Propane torch]

Then he asked, “Anyone see where the gas trail is?”

I bent down, squinting at the ground. I started to point out a spot, but then I realized I was actually standing on the trail of gas.

SOUND: [Fire whoosh]

I saw a burst of orange between my feet and stumbled backwards.

The fire rushed across the lawn and then our firewood teepee burst into flames.

SOUND: [Fire crackling]

Step one. Accomplished.

My hometown Winchester was once known as the apple capital of the world. We exported apples across the country. Everybody had an apple recipe or two, from cider to cobbler, and of course, apple butter. Churches used to make several kettles’ worth as fundraisers. They’d run from four in the morning to the mid-afternoon or evening.

DWAIN: Apple butter should have a little bit of tang from the apples.

My dad, Dwain Whittington, has helped make apple butter since he was five.

DWAIN: It should have a nice bold sweetness. And I believe that the clove and cinnamon spice should be something that is unmistakable.

He started picking up the tradition for the family around fifteen years ago. He’s tried other kinds of homemade apple butter, but it’s not quite up to our standards. And the stuff you buy at the grocery?

DWAIN: Most commercial apple butter you would buy at the store is almost inedible.

For Dad, apple butter making is all about community. The conversations that happen around the kettle on cooking day. We start off by boiling the applesauce for about six hours. Someone has to keep stirring the kettle as it boils. Forward and back. Sweeping left to right, and then a couple of times around the edges to keep the bottom from burning. It’s something you can do while carrying on a conversation.

VOICE: There might be some doughnuts over there. We’ve kind of eaten all our share, there’s five or six of them there…

Dad explained that most of the time, social norms leave people on guard and tight-lipped. But when you’re working with your hands, you relax and talk more openly.

His older brother, Eddie Whittington—that’s my uncle from earlier—feels that apple butter making is a time to make memories with family. And play games, like lawn darts. Once a spotlight fell off a ladder into the kettle. The butter had a ghostly glow while they tried frantically to pull out the light. Then there was the time they made apple butter in a hurricane.

EDDIE: It's making new memories, and it's keeping the family together. So it's not only a family reunion, but because you produce something that people take home and use throughout the year on their breakfast pancakes.”

For my mom, Chelle Whittington, making apple butter the traditional way with family is what matters. She says that it’s like cursive: it’s special, unique, and something that we’re slowly losing.

CHELLE: If you stopped doing it now, you would lose connections. If you don’t have that anymore you lose an essential part of life.

SOUND: [Boiling applesauce]

After boiling the applesauce down, then we add sugar to taste. Usually about 90 pounds of it.

AUDIO: [Discussion of tasting]

Then we boil it some more. Then we add our signature spices: cloves and cinnamon extract. I just can’t tell you the ratios. That’s a family secret, kept on an Excel spreadsheet.

VOICES: It’s very spicy. Man, that smells good …

The last time we made apple butter was four years ago. Recently, both of my dad’s parents have passed away, and several of their siblings as well.

The old orchards of Winchester, too, are disappearing. Old kettles are being sold for household decoration. It seems that many have moved on.

To me, this is the real story of apple butter: change. Our tradition connects the past to the present. Apple butter making is a constant in a shifting world that is sometimes confusing, or sad, or scary. So my sister and I have agreed that the Whittington apple butter tradition isn’t going anywhere. Times will change, but I can be sure of two things: The presence of God, and our family filling our old kettle in just a few years for another batch of apple butter. No matter what it takes.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Gretchen Whittington in Winchester, Virginia.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, November 21st. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Why did some young people who never experienced 9/11 all the sudden find a hero in the man behind the terror attacks that claimed 3,000 American lives? Here’s WORLD Opinions commentator A.S. Ibrahim.

A.S. IBRAHIM, COMMENTATOR: For more than 22 years, the majority in the West has rightly considered radical Islamist Osama bin Laden to be an evil terrorist.

However, in a confused world largely driven by social media clicks, some young Americans are now sympathetic to the orchestrator of the 9/11 attacks. They are glorifying him as a hero and claiming his actions were justifiable. Many TikTok users with large followings have been encouraging their followers to reevaluate Bin Laden’s image and actions. In particular, these young keyboard zealots naively claim that Bin Laden was seeking to “resist” the evil of American support for Israel.

How did this saga begin?

Some TikTok users came across Bin Laden’s infamous “Letter to America”—an open letter that he reportedly issued one year after 9/11. In this letter, Bin Laden tried to justify killing Americans, precisely because of U.S. support of Israel. He also criticized the United States for rejecting the Islamic Sharia in its governing system.

The letter went viral when TikTok users shared it and encouraged large numbers of followers to read it. Many TikTok users declared they had made a discovery into the supposed reason behind the decades-long Israel-Palestine conflict. Simplistically, many concluded that America and Israel are the oppressors while the Palestinians are innocent victims.

Two observations are worth noting.

First, it is evident that uncontrolled social media consumption by young Americans leads to grotesquely misguided ideas and creates propagandists and sympathizers for terrorists. We saw this recently with Hamas sympathizers and now with fanciful dreamers glorifying Bin Laden.

This development highlights a lamentable failure of parenting. Parents gave away their sacred duty to teach their children to discern right from wrong and basic lessons of history, in this case the unmatched role the United States has played in world affairs and the unique good America accomplished in many ways.

When American children don’t learn at home how evil Bin Laden was, we end up with a TikTok drive to glorify a terrorist as a victim. Bad ideas can only grow in soils of ignorance. If parents don’t teach their children how to love and cherish their country, we end up with ignorant keyboard influencers who destroy lives.

Second, it is abundantly clear that our education system is cursed with twisted ideologies, including Critical Theory and postcolonial theory. In the former, the world is simplistically seen through the lens of oppressor-oppressed, and Bin Laden is not identified as the oppressor. In the latter, the Western nations are portrayed as merely bad colonizers who have done no good whatsoever in the world. Here, too, Bin Laden’s image is not a terrorizer of innocent people, but a “resister” of bad Westerners.

These sick ideologies give way to other poisonous ideologies like Islamism, especially as our schools shield Islam from any critical evaluation. In this confused environment, Bin Laden’s “Letter to America” becomes celebrated, although it is a textbook of harmful claims and radical Islamism.

Let’s be clear. Bin Laden was an evil terrorist and a mass murderer—not a victim. His glorification on social media carries a loud warning for every good American. There is malicious ignorance and fanciful lunacy circulating in our midst. Poisonous ideas must be exposed and defeated. We cannot afford to lose this fight.

I’m A. S. Ibrahim.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: The summit between President Biden and China’s President Xi Jinping is over, but what do they have to show for it?

We’ll talk with a China expert on Washington Wednesday. And, teaching kids about Thanksgiving in France. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says: “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” —Ephesians 4:29.

Go now in grace and peace.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.