"The WAR on error"
Harsh words from the Vatican over plans to grant legal status to gay couples in Italy drew an angry reaction yesterday from the country’s left wing, which bristled over “interference” in the nation’s political affairs.
Concerned about Lebanon and all the Mideast, Benedict XVI appealed to the faithful to pray for the convulsed region and he called on national and international authorities to exercise responsibility. "I follow with heartfelt concern all that is happening in the Middle East, where the possibilities for a solution to the crisis besetting the region alternate with tensions and difficulties that cause fears of new violence."
A German intelligence service has paid more than 20 German foreign correspondents for spy dispatches, it was reported today. According to German news magazine Focus, the German Federal Intelligence Service, BND, used 20 journalists working in foreign countries as part-time spies between 1998 and 2005.
[WAR: Speakin' of the BND ... Last week I created a new blog, The BND in OKC?!, to post my paper - and future relevant articles - to. I have also sent out numerous e-mails to domestic and international media outlets and government institutions directing them to the blog - including the BND itself. We'll see what happens . . . ]
Symbolically sending German troops isn't the answer. What would German soldiers do there? They're considered to be very professional, nonpartisan mediators. Nevertheless, a good troop needs more - like a ceasefire, first of all. But that's where the largest problem is. The rebels are fighting on various fronts and the militias are still receiving sufficient support from Khartoum. In the end it's about resources -- land, water and perhaps oil as well.
The NATO meeting held in Riga, Latvia, in late November attracted very little attention. Nothing of substance emerged from the conference and there was plenty of competition for headlines. Not that long ago, the very idea of a NATO meeting in a Latvia that was itself in NATO would have been a nightmare for Russia, like a Warsaw-Pact Canada for the United States.
Less than a month before Germany takes over the European Union presidency, the government in Berlin is divided over Turkey's accession talks. Edmund Stoiber, a leading conservative, favors immediately abolishing EU accession talks with Ankara. Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is an outspoken proponent of continuing the process by all means.
As EU foreign ministers meet today to discuss the issue, some observers - particularly in Europe - see Turkey's stance as self-defeating obstinancy. But others say it is in fact fueled by a greater sense of self-confidence, the result of a surging economy and an increased sense of its own growing strategic importance, which may dampen the effects of any rupture with the EU.
The leaders of Germany and Egypt on Sunday underlined their commitment to helping secure stability in Iraq and Lebanon, and Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested that Berlin might step up efforts to train Iraqi soldiers.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert heads for Germany and Italy this week buttressed by hopes for new peace momentum, but concerned Europe might soften tough sanctions on the Palestinians' Hamas-led government and show more tolerance for Iran's nuclear ambitions, analysts say. He'll also sound out Italian and German leaders on a U.S. panel's sweeping recommendations for revising America's Mideast policy, as well as on developments in Lebanon.
In an effort to put a stop to Israeli overflights in Lebanon, the French Armed Forces has deployed an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) squadron in southern Lebanon to conduct intelligence-gathering missions in place of the IDF.
The head of the research division of Military Intelligence, Brigadier General Yossi Baidatz, said Sunday that Syrian President Bashar Assad is preparing for a war with Israel. He said that Assad has ordered increased production of long-range missiles and instructed the Syrian army to position its anti-tank missiles closer to the Syrian border with Israel, on the Golan Heights.
If Israel does not vacate the Golan Heights within months, a guerilla organization allegedly formed in Syria will soon launch "resistance operations" against Israeli positions and Jewish communities in the Golan, an official from Syrian President Bashar Assad's Baath party told WND in an exclusive interview. "If in the coming months an agreement is not forged between Israel and Syria [for an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan], the Committees will begin attacks."
A two-day international conference to review the world's concept of the Holocaust opened here today with an inaugural speech by Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said here Monday that Iran does not intend to deny or confirm the Holocaust with its opening of a conference on the subject. "The Islamic Republic of Iran is holding the Holocaust conference to create a suitable atmosphere for raising different points of view on a historical event. We do not intend to deny or confirm the Holocaust. If the occurrence of the event is officially questioned, the identity of the Zionist regime will also be put under question."
Germany, where it is a crime to deny the Holocaust, summoned the Iranian charge d'affaires and said it condemned "any attempt, in the past or in the future, to give a forum to those who relativise or question the Holocaust."
The Iranian government has responded more positively than the Bush Administration has to the Iraq Study Group's proposal for talks between the two. And government sources in Tehran tell TIME that this reflects a sincere and calculated desire among the Iranian leadership for improved relations with Washington.
Despite talk of a possible rapprochement between Tehran and Washington, Iran sees no sign of the United States changing its policy toward the Islamic state, Iran's Foreign Ministry said.
The German government has criticized US President George W. Bush for his continuing refusal to have direct talks with Iran and Syria, the daily Frankfurter Rundschau reported in its Saturday edition. It cited German government circles as voicing disappointment over Bush's lack of diplomatic inflexibility towards Tehran and Damascus following the publication of the Baker-Hamilton report which urged direct negotiations between the US, Iran and Syria.
President Bush's infantile and defiant response to the release of the Iraq Study Group report was tantamount to a demand for his own impeachment, along with that of Vice President Dick Cheney. Now, the new Democratic majority 110th Congress has a clear mandate, from a wide segment of the U.S. political institutions, spanning the leading factions in both the Republican and Democratic parties, to dispense with the Bush-Cheney regime, before another new disaster unfolds.
That election turned out to be pivotal because it disrupted the plan Papa Bush had for his sons, which may be why he was crying, and why the country cries with him. The family’s grand design had the No. 2 son, Jeb, by far the brighter and more responsible, ascend to the presidency while George, the partying frat-boy type, settled for second best in Texas. The plan went awry when Jeb, contrary to conventional wisdom, lost in Florida, and George unexpectedly defeated Ann Richards in Texas. With the favored heir on the sidelines, the family calculus shifted. They’d go for the presidency with the son that won and not the one they wished had won. The son who was wrongly launched has made such a mess of things that he has ruined the family franchise.
I listened to Limbaugh a great deal in the late 1990s and up until about 2002. I finally became fed up with his bobble-head attitude that every thing that Bush and the GOP do is holy. Rush Limbaugh has finally crossed the line that should be visible to all Americans, especially Southerners. He is no friend of freedom, liberty, the Constitution or the Bill of Rights! He is fan of tyrants, and a lover of despotism, and should be treated as such.
Oil producing countries have reduced their exposure to the dollar to the lowest level in two years and shifted oil income into euros, yen and sterling, according to new data from the Bank for International Settlements.
So here's the big question: is the age of the dollar economy lurching toward an end? Are China, Japan, Saudi Arabia and other big holders of T-bonds about to start a rush, or even a stately promenade, toward the exits? Let's hope not, because the world is unprepared to replace the dollar with anything else. The euro is not suited for the job, and a joint dollar-euro system would need better central bankers than either America or Europe has got. An end to the dollar system would therefore be chaotic, inflationary, and very tough on world trade. Could it happen, though? Yes, it could. And it could be connected to that other unfolding disaster [in Iraq].
Even as the stock market is hitting new record highs almost every day, the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department are quietly coordinating a devaluation of the dollar that the Bush administration hopes will be a slow decline rather than a dollar collapse. This week, in an unusual move, the Bush administration is sending virtually the entire economic "A-team" to visit China for a "strategic economic dialogue" in Beijing. The Bush administration wants to get China's cooperation in preventing a dollar collapse.
The Bangladeshi banker Muhammad Yunus, who developed microcredit, the practice of making small, unsecured loans to the poor, warned yesterday that the globalized economy was becoming a dangerous "free-for-all highway."
Reasons behind the strong Chinese currency... and a weak US dollar. The credit cost of generating one new dollar. How Gates got rich... the transfer prices tax scam as used by big corporations, to avoid paying taxes. Canada's top cop changes his testimony on Arar...Iraq study group publishes findings...
While we can never be exactly sure of what Jesus, Mary and Joseph actually looked like, we know they were not fair-skinned, flaxen-haired Europeans. And, though an emerging fringe of historians would argue otherwise, it’s fairly certain they weren’t black Africans. In all likelihood, what they were was something in between: olive-skinned, dark-featured Semitic Jews living in Israel.
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