THE HOLY ROMAN ...
Here is a Vatican translation of the message sent in Benedict XVI's name by then Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano, on the occasion of World Tourism Day.
No way Jose'...
Pope Benedict XVI's meeting this week with a delegation of Muslim leaders and his calls for interfaith dialogue following earlier remarks about Islam are really "Crusader conspiracies" to subjugate the Islamic faith and force "Christian-Zionist" worldviews upon Muslims ... (and) called the pope a "puppet" for "that Crusader George Bush", a prominent Gaza Strip preacher told WorldNetDaily in an interview.
[WAR: There's no way in he ... Rome ... that B16 would be in cahoots with Bush - NO WAY!]
A week-long, closed-door meeting between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches was “marked by a spirit of friendship and trustful collaboration” and showed signs of progress in the churches’ relationship.
Just for you N.L. ...
Rabbi refutes the "Big Lie" that Pope Pius XII was complicit in the Holocaust - And reveals the liberal political agenda behind the slander. Books like John Cornwell's Hitler's Pope and Garry Wills's Papal Sin (and others) have become New York Times bestsellers by arguing that Pope Pius XII was complicit in the Holocaust by failing to do enough to save the Jews from Nazi extermination. But in The Myth of Hitler's Pope, Othodox Jewish Rabbi David Dalin explodes this newly resurrected, widely accepted, yet utterly bankrupt smearing of a pope who was, in fact, to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, "a righteous gentile." With devastating scholarship and unblinking honesty, Rabbi Dalin condemns the myth-makers for not only rewriting history, but for denying the testimony of Holocaust survivors -- and hijacking the Holocaust for unseemly political ends.
... EMPIRE OF THE GERMAN NATION
A leading German opera house has canceled performances of a Mozart opera because of security fears stirred by a scene that depicts the severed head of the Prophet Muhammad. Political and cultural figures throughout Germany condemned the cancellation. Wolfgang Börnsen, a culture spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkels conservative bloc in Parliament, accused the opera house of falling on its knees before the terrorists.
Germany hosts its first-ever "Conference on Islam" in Berlin today and aims to improve interaction with Muslims living in Germany. But some Muslim groups have been critical in the run-up.
EUROPE/RUSSIA
The recent crisis in France's oncoming Presidential elections exposes the fragility of all western and central Europe in face of the onrushing, global strategic crises. Germany hangs by a thread; Italy's economy is sitting, rocking on the porch, waiting for the arrival of the economic undertaker with the right prices; the former Comecon regions of eastern Europe are dying on the vine; Germany's potential role in resistance to the catastrophe menacing it from current U.S. policy, depends upon partnership with a government of France, a combination which can say a definite "No!" to the pressures of both the U.S. Bush Administration and London.
The European Commission said Monday that tough new asylum rules adopted in Switzerland by referendum over the weekend are incompatible with European Union norms and breached the bloc's standards on immigration.
Calls for a temporary halt in the expansion of the European Union, echoed by France and Germany, sent pangs of anxiety Tuesday through some of the countries seeking to join.
A European Union working group is expected to conclude this week that the Bush administration's monitoring of international financial transactions may violate European banking law.
Italy's lower house of Parliament on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved the country's peacekeeping commitment in southern Lebanon.
MIDEAST/AFRICA/ASIA
A new Middle East war is in the offing. DEBKAfile’s exclusive military sources in Iraq and sources in Iran reveal that Turkish and Iranian air units as well as armored, paratroop, special operations and artillery forces are poised for an imminent coordinated invasion of the northern Iraqi autonomous province of Kurdistan.
Iran has ruled out discussing a key international demand over its nuclear programme in talks between its top atomic negotiator and the EU's foreign policy chief set to be held this week.
The Washington Times reported Tuesday that Iran is willing to temporarily suspend enriching uranium for a period of 90 days, on condition the deal is kept secret. The report, by correspondent Bill Gertz, was probably leaked to him by senior officials who oppose the short-term 90 day suspension, and who are trying to thwart the deal.
Speakin' of thwarters...
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in comments published Tuesday that Israel would not allow Iran, which it considers its top enemy, to produce nuclear weapons. "Israel can't accept the possibility of Iranians having nuclear weapons and we will act together with the international forces, starting with the Americans, in order to prevent it."
[WAR: But Bibi-the-bigger-thwarter is breathing down his neck.]
Although Iran and Israel are bitter enemies, few know that Iran is home to the largest number of Jews anywhere in the Middle East outside Israel.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reached out to the right-wing religious Zionist community Tuesday, saying, “We must understand the troubles of the religious Zionist public and find a path for honest and deep discourse with them. We need to create a new atmosphere of discussion, and even strive towards a new definition of Zionism.”
Japan's new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, pledged on Tuesday to boost his country's role in global affairs while trying to improve relations with China.
Japan began what one senior politician called a "new era" yesterday with the election of its youngest and possibly most hawkish prime minister since the Second World War. Abe has pledged to beef up defence, boost patriotism and revise Japan's war-renouncing constitution.
* (Deutsche Presse-Agentur -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel congratulated Shinzo Abe on his election as Japan's new prime minister and invited him to visit Germany. In a letter to Abe, Merkel expressed "the hope of a further deepening of the traditional close and friendly relations" between Germany and Japan. She went on to tell him that she would be pleased to welcome him in Germany as her guest as soon as possible.)
HOUSE OF ISRAEL
This election already represents a crucial turning-point in current world history, as the threat of a massive U.S. aerial attack on Iran coincides with an onrushing general crisis of the U.S. and world monetary-financial systems.
The United Nations figures prominently in the Armageddonites' fantasies for ending the world. For them, it represents "evil." Many of them would agree with Hugo Chávez that the devil speaks from the podium, though, of course, they wouldn't have George Bush in mind. They hate the UN and want Bolton to wreck it.
The Republican Party, previously devoted to the principles of less government, decentralized authority, and economic liberty, immediately transformed itself into the champion of more government, including a significant increase in federal spending and, more ominously, the establishment of a rudimentary police state. Thus was born Bizarro Conservatism, an ideology that, in every conceivable aspect, inverts the core principles of pre-9/11 conservatism.
Government documents released by a Freedom of Information Act request reveal the Bush administration is running a "shadow government" with Mexico and Canada in which the U.S. is crafting a broad range of policy in conjunction with its neighbors to the north and south.
[WAR: Even though the Paranoid Protestants Prophecy Propagandists may have their thongs twisted over this (and all the other aspects of the NWO), those in the COG should not. We can certainly have an opinion about it, but it shouldn't be the focus of our attention or energies - because the NWO is not our enemy now, nor in the future. But hey, if you want to vent your opinion, then give it at http://www.worldnetdaily.com/polls.]
ECONOMY
The connection between these two circumstances is obvious. The ties between oil companies and various administration officials and other high-ranking members of the Republican Party are too numerous to list exhaustively. Regardless of the exact forces behind the present decline in gasoline and oil prices, one can bet that by January or February prices will be back to their “normal” exorbitant levels.
EIR Strategic Alert (PDF article)
Biggest Hedge Fund Collapse Since LTCM; Bursting Housing Bubble Is Systemic “Detonator”; Hedge Fund Regulation?
Like spectators gawking at a speeding drunk, we have been watching the housing bubble closely...we're wondering what he'll run into.
After months of attempting to deny that there was any real problem in the U.S. housing market, the world's leading bankers and speculators are expressing alarm at the size of the bubble they have created—the largest in financial history.
