Tel Aviv should know better than to rely too much on a Western world afflicted with its own problems and its own long-term interests.
From a storefront, he taught classes on Vedic culture, which he claimed could affect the consciousness of a world afflicted with rampant materialism.
Scientists already knew Venus was a strange world, afflicted with a crushing dense atmosphere, surface temperatures that would melt lead and clouds laced with sulphuric acid.
Before small pox was eradicated in 1977, it was one of the most infectious and deadly diseases in the world, afflicting millions of people each year regardless of age, race, or socioeconomic status.
In a world afflicted by climate change, which is already causing deserts to spread to once fertile regions, GM crops such as these could be a bulwark against major famines - if they are given the chance.
Delivering his Christmas Day homily at St Peter's in Rome amid heavy security, the pontiff said he was praying for an end to human suffering in a world afflicted by war, poverty and extremist attacks.
In the long run, he envisions a reliance on less expensive hardware like hand-held organizers so that the identification system can be used in poor regions of the world afflicted by malaria and other mosquito-borne illnesses.
All this is easily forgotten in a world afflicted by shifting baseline syndrome: our habit of conceptualising as natural and normal the ecosystems that prevailed in our own youth, unaware that they were, even then, in an extremely degraded state.
The costs involved – in investing in the development of alternative energy sources, for example – would be far outweighed by the costs of coping with an overheated world afflicted by flooding, soaring temperatures, ruined crops and farmland, lack of food and displaced people, he argued.
The Syrian president knows that in a world afflicted with amnesia he can do as he pleases.
