Anarchists across the world have united in street conflagrations. Annual May Day celebrations deteriorated into fistfights. Macedonian Slavs rioted over NATO peace deals. On the island of Jamaica 23 died in riots. Violent protesters marred the EU summit in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Anticapitalist radicals tried to ruin the G8 meetings in Genoa. Three former mill towns in Lancashire, England, sustained three nights of race-inspired rioting. Riots occurred on the divided Mediterranean island of Cyprus. In Belfast 23 police officers were hurt in riots.

Much has been written about the human right to protest peacefully, but what begins as a peaceful demonstration often winds up as an old-fashioned riot, sometimes with severe injuries to rioters and police. Professional troublemakers travel the globe to protest against capitalism and other imagined evils.

A British journalist remarked on the enjoyment rioters seem to gain from bloody confrontations. Obviously, human nature has a violent downside. It had become so pronounced in the pre-Flood world of Noah that "the earth was filled with violence" (Genesis 6:11, 13). Much later Jesus Christ said that, just as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man (Matthew 24:37). Are our crimes and violence signs that we may be in the end time? (Sources: The Times, The Observer [London].)