"The WAR on error"
From now on, Rome's four patriarchal basilicas will be called "papal" basilicas. For historical and ecumenical reasons, Benedict XVI has decided to give up the title "Patriarch of the West." "The four basilicas had been given in the past by the popes, as a base in Rome, to the Catholic Eastern patriarchs, not as an official title. Therefore, the Pope has decided that from now on the four major basilicas will be called 'papal' basilicas."
Pope Benedict XVI criticised George Bush as he declared states had to set ethical limits in what they do to protect their citizens from terrorism. Although the Pope did not identify any specific countries, Vatican sources made it clear he was referring to the U.S. particularly.
Germany's parliamentary budget committee plans to approve spending of some 8 billion euros on defence projects.
The German Defence Ministry said Tuesday it was rushing extra armoured trucks to its troops serving with NATO forces in Afghanistan. A total of 100 'Dingo' armoured trucks will be delivered to troops in Afghanistan this year. Previously it had been planned to supply 33 Dingo vehicles to German forces.
Interview with Germany's FM
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier discusses German policy on Iraq, the merits of dialogue with Syria and Iran and Turkey's stalled EU membership talks.
The Prime Minister of Bahrain received a written message from Edmund Stoiber, dealing with bilateral relations and means of promoting them in various fields in addition to issues of mutual interest.
In a new signal that Russia has toughened its position on energy sales to Europe, an adviser to President Vladimir Putin said Moscow had no intention of observing guidelines in the EU's energy charter that would allow non-Russian companies access to the country's vast pipeline network.
Jimmy Carter:
The many controversial issues concerning Palestine and the path to peace for Israel are intensely debated among Israelis and throughout other nations - but not in the United States. For the past 30 years, I have witnessed and experienced the severe restraints on any free and balanced discussion of the facts. This reluctance to criticise policies of the Israeli government is due to the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American-Israel Political Action Committee and the absence of any significant contrary voices.
(LaRouche: I defend President Carter)
An American who once led the KKK has joined his voice with others at a conference in Iran in condemning the influence of "Zionists" on the United States, blaming them for the deaths of Americans in Iraq and the threats to "free speech" worldwide.
The conference has set off a storm of indignation across Europe, where many countries have made it a crime to publicly disavow the Holocaust.
German lawmakers have protested against an Iranian conference on the Holocaust. The meeting was widely considered a platform for revisionists who deny the Holocaust and the existence of gas chambers under the Nazis.
German press on...
The Holocaust conference in Tehran is presenting itself as a forum for free speech. But when it comes to the mass-murders committed by the Nazis in World War II, just how free can speech be?
[WAR: Free is free, is free, is FREE!! There should be NO limits or taboos - and especially no thought crimes for expressing an opinion about history! The truth of any subject either stands or falls with the hard facts and evidence - and not just hearsay.]
Chancellor Merkel said yesterday the international community must use all diplomatic options, including sanctions, to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.
Merkel said at a press conference after the meeting that "for me, a military solution is not on the table - I have said that. It is all the more important for me that we explore every possibility - from offers to sanctions - to truly exhaust the diplomatic possibilities for a solution."
The Foreign ministry spokesman has dismissed the European Union foreign ministers' statement criticizing human rights in Iran, saying it is not based on facts.
The Italian deputy prime minister and foreign minister in a meeting with Iran's ambassador to Rome said, "Iran is a big country with old culture and civilization that can play leadership role in the region."
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told delegates at an international conference questioning the Holocaust that Israel's days were numbered. "Thanks to people's wishes and God's will the trend for the existence of the Zionist regime is downwards and this is what God has promised and what all nations want. Just as the Soviet Union was wiped out and today does not exist, so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped out."
It’s hard to fault a man for saying outright what the world already knows. But the Israeli Government expended much effort yesterday in maintaining that the Prime Minister had not, in a blurted sentence on German television, formally acknowledged the possession of nuclear weapons.
Everyone knows that Israel has at least 400 nukes, and it isn't hard to guess in which direction they're aimed. All the Israeli prime minister has to do is give the order, and Tehran would be reduced to a pool of molten glass. The message sent to Washington – and, indeed, to the entire world – is that Israel is making a clean break with the policies of the past, based as they were on a strategy of economic, diplomatic, and military dependence on Western allies. Israel feels it has been abandoned by the West, including not only Britain but also the U.S. – and all bets are off.
9/11 Press for Truth effectively presents some of the most glaring discrepancies, lies, and coverups concerning the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil.
Bushfires have burned across three Australian states, destroying houses and blackening a huge area, with one major fire front stretching 250km.
[Comments from WARrior Down-Unda: "We have had many bad bush fires in the past week, both here and on the Australian mainland - the smoke drifting 150 miles across Bass Strait and affecting us here in northern Tasmania. It is sad to know that so much valuable and once delightfully scenic country has "gone up in a blaze". In Victoria, the southern state just across the water from us, the fire front extends over 120 miles and is still out of control. Huge losses of property and bushland - which would need years to recover. 'A preview of coming attractions!?'"]
The achievement of economic and monetary union by 11 European countries in 1999 was based on a deal: Germany, the strongest member, gave up the Deutschemark on the understanding that the others would not debauch the new common currency, the euro. Nearly 8 years on, that inherently doomed project is coming apart at the seams. The fundamental problem is that the economies of the "Germanic" members have diverged so far from those of the "Latin" bloc that the single interest rate set by the European Central Bank is becoming a huge political liability.
While the French political establishment has already turned against present policy, its abandonment would undermine support for the EU in Germany. The two "motors" of Europe are pulling in opposite directions. What was once seen as a giant step towards "ever-closer union", as prescribed by the Treaty of Rome, is becoming an intolerable straitjacket.
EIR Strategic Alert (PDF)
Systemic Worries; Distress In The Mortgage Market
Normally one is well advised to maintain a healthy distrust of the media. Yet now and then there appear certain "signal articles," which call attention to institutional speculation about impending dangers. It is in this vein that the British journalist Ambrose Evans Pritchard warned, in a relatively short followup on Dec. 7 to his two previous articles in a series in the Daily Telegraph, of an immediately threatening systemic crash, namely, that the "heart of the system" and the "aorta of capitalism" will be hit by the escalating collapse of the dollar.
It's only a matter of time before the beleaguered U.S. dollar loses its status as the world's reserve currency and medium of exchange, U.S. fund manager and author Jim Rogers told Reuters in an interview. "The dollar is a terribly flawed currency. You should hold as few dollars as possible. The dollar's decline would go on for years to come."
Is an end of an era looming in the foreign exchange markets? The dollar has been depreciating against the euro for weeks. Currency experts and the German government don't yet see this as cause for alarm. The US currency's role as a lead currency isn't as important as it used to be, they say.
Two analysts who have reconstructed money supply data after the Fed stopped publishing it argue a coming dollar collapse will set the stage for creating the amero as a North American currency to replace the dollar.
There has been a power shift underway for years and, believe it our not, our future and fortune rest in the hands of bureaucrats on the other side of the world. Sorry folks, but our red, white and blue economy is afloat today because of help from members of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party. Yes, the Red Menace that we spent so many years fearing as a military threat now represents a far more serious economic threat. Mao must be turning in his grave with the news that no less than 6 U.S. Cabinet Ministers are on their way this week to the Middle Kingdom to beseech, beg, lobby and try to persuade the new mandarins not to sell off their vast reservoir of dollars.
Bouyed by massive gains from trading and investments in leveraged buyouts, Goldman Sachs on Tuesday announced the biggest profit in Wall Street history.
There's a slow poison out there that's severely damaging our children and threatening to tear apart our culture. The ironic part is, it's a "health food," one of our most popular. The dangerous food I'm speaking of is soy. Soybean products are feminizing, and they're all over the place. Unfortunately, when you eat or drink a lot of soy stuff, you're also getting substantial quantities of estrogens. Estrogens are female hormones. If you're a woman, you're flooding your system with a substance it can't handle in surplus. If you're a man, you're suppressing your masculinity and stimulating your "female side," physically and mentally.
[WAR: Hey, we Texans are living up to the phrase, "Things are always bigger in Texas." The caption states that it is finished, but I don't think they've even started it. But too bad that it'll never be built...]
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