Friday

The Daily WAR (#01-30)

 
 
The Antichrist's legacy...
The emphasis on Jesus' centrality to the Catholic faith in Pope Benedict XVI's first book as pope is likely to permeate his papacy, panelists told a Washington audience during a book launch event for "Jesus of Nazareth" May 15.
 
Here is the address Archbishop Migliore, the Holy See's permanent observer to the UN, gave to the 6th session of the permanent forum on indigenous issues of the UN Economic and Social Council on the special theme: Territories, lands and natural resources.
 
An exclusive emphasis on rational theology could lead to a weakening of the "mystical impulse" of the Church, according to an expert on angelology. "Mysticism helps us to understand that God cannot be contained in our logical comprehension because he is obviously beyond it. The absence of mystics leads to spiritual aridity."
 
Recently published statistics report that there are 557 citizens of Vatican City. Vatican citizenship is not inherited nor can it be acquired by being born in the city. It can only be acquired based on service to the Holy See and is revoked upon termination of employment by the Vatican.
[WAR: They ought to grant 109 more citizenships to bring the total to 666! Or should it be 59 more to make it 616?]
 
More power to 'em!...
Police combed the wooded hills of the Mount Athos monastic community in Northern Greece yesterday after a militant band of monks barged their way in to join an Ascension Day service. The action by hundreds of bearded and black-clad monks belonging to the Old Calendarists, a sect that refuses to follow the modern Western calendar, brought turmoil to the 1,000-year-old community on the rocky peninsula. The Old Calendarists are those Orthodox who refused to follow the church's conversion from the Julian to the Western Gregorian calendar in 1925. For years the Calendarist monks of that monastery have been shunned and boycotted by the more moderate Orthodox establishment as extremist. Its inmates have been known to hang banners over the walls calling the Pope an Antichrist.
 
 
 
The cigars are out, the beer flows and it's BMWs all round as Bavaria puts aside ideological differences in $500m deal with Castro regime. Bavaria even has its own "ambassador" to Cuba to oversee developments and before his recent illness Fidel Castro held through-the-night talks with German engineers about diesel motors and electricity generators prior to deals being struck. As far as the Cubans are concerned, Bavarians have proven themselves to be loyal participants in the revolution. "We need products, and we're happy that Bavarian companies can provide them. It's not about politics, because trade is trade."
The new-found understanding between Germany's richest region and the communist state is striking. What, after all, have the two in common? The potential for conflict is huge. At its popular beer-hall rallies, the CSU rails against any way of thinking that does not tally with its Catholic, white, conservative, male-dominated values. Communism is despised by the CSU to the extent that the party has invited members of the Cuban opposition to its Alpine training lodge to school them in ways of overthrowing Mr Castro.
[WAR: "...You have increased the number of your merchants till they are more than the stars of the sky, but like locusts they strip the land and then fly away..." (Nahum 3:1-19 - A prophecy about Munich, Bavaria)]
 
 
 
France and Germany have begun to clash openly over control of monetary policy in the eurozone, taking starkly different views about the rising threat of inflation. In an unprecedented rift, the heads of the Bundesbank and the Banque of France have contradicted each other in public, exposing an emerging rift between Europe's north and south. The dispute comes as President Sarkozy takes charge in France with a pledge to clip the wings of the ECB and forge an alliance of like-minded eurozone leaders to take charge of exchange rate policy - with the aim of halting the euro's rise against the yen, yuan, and dollar.
 
President Sarkozy has unveiled a slimmed-down government, giving half the jobs to women. The new Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, is a Socialist famous for having founded the aid organisation Doctors Without Borders.
 
The bizarre interregnum between Tony Blair's announcing the date of his departure and Gordon Brown's succeeding him will also affect foreign policy. Blair may be tempted to jettison prudence in the hope of going out on a high note. He might see bringing back an agreement as enhancing his personal reputation, but this would not necessarily be in the national interest. These are indeed bizarre times.
 
European Commission President Barroso has told Russia that any problems it has with an individual EU state are problems with the whole bloc. Speaking after an EU-Russian summit, he  said the EU was based on principles of solidarity.
 
 
 
A controversy is raging in Israel, in evangelical circles in the U.S. and on kabbalah web forums worldwide following the posthumous release of what a revered Sephardic rabbi claimed to be the name of the Messiah. When Rabbi Yitzchak Kaduri died in February 2006, somewhere between the age of 106 and 117, 300,000 attended his funeral in Jerusalem. The Baghdad-born kabbalist had gained notoriety around the world for issuing apocalyptic warnings and for saying he personally met the long-awaited Jewish Messiah in November 2003.
 
Iran's Foreign Ministry's spokesman strongly condemned the Zionist regime's latest savage attacks on Palestinians in Gaza strip. "Targeting residential areas and slaughtering innocent children, women and men in Palestine as well as demolishing their houses through bombardments indicate the depth of the hostility and hatred of the Zionist regime and its ally, the US which has hidden itself behind the mask of loving peace and democracy, towards Palestinians and people of the region."
 
The world is losing its last hope of making peace in the Middle East and could face the real danger that the conflict between Israel and the Arab and Muslim worlds will continue indefinitely, according to King Abdullah II of Jordan speaking near the ancient Nabatean ruins of Petra.
 
Paranoid Protestant Premier Prophecy Propagandist Preaching Poop...
God carefully sets the time this would take place: "After many days you will be visited. In the latter years you will come into the land of those brought back from the sword and gathered from many people on the mountains of Israel, which had long been desolate; they were brought out of the nations, and now all of them dwell safely." (Ezekiel 38:8 NKJ) This refers to the modern state of Israel.
 
Iraq's government has lost control of vast areas to powerful local factions and the country is on the verge of collapse and fragmentation, a leading British think-tank said. Chatham House also said there was not one civil war in Iraq, but "several civil wars" between rival communities. "It can be argued that Iraq is on the verge of being a failed state which faces the distinct possibility of collapse and fragmentation."
 
In an ominous development mirroring the explosive expansion of US militarism, the Bush administration has designated Africa as a continent of "strategic national concern," and has initiated a new military policy to coincide with this new classification. The US has claimed that it does not plan to engage large numbers of troops in the region, similar to its operations in Iraq. However, the presence of US troops will further the militarization of the continent with the possibility that another conflagration could develop over resources, like that in Iraq, with wider and more ominous implications.
 
 
 
The 3-day Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers on Thursday adopted "Islamabad Declaration", backing Iran's peaceful nuclear program and opposing any use of force against the Islamic Republic. "We call for the reduction of tension and resolution of differences concerning Iran's nuclear issue through dialogue. We oppose the use of force which will further destabilize the region. We recognize Iran's right to peaceful use of nuclear energy and its readiness for peaceful resolution of all issues."
 
The US can count on Iranian help to get out of the current stalemate in Iraq if it changes its methodology in dealing with the crisis in the country. "This method, diplomatic shuttle on the warship, is not helpful. It is somewhat desperate roaring and is far away from logic. Of course, I do not have objection to diplomatic tours, but, they will get nowhere. There is some countries which cherish the dream of establishing great civilization through unilateral action. Iran cannot help in this case. But, if they change their method in a bid to get out of the current stalemate, they can count on Iranian help."
 
Oh, okay...
Fully 71% of Israelis believe that the US should launch a military attack on Iran if diplomatic efforts fail to halt Tehran's nuclear program, according to a new poll.
 
 
 
American foreign policy has lost its compass. Voters across the US, increasingly opposed to the war in Iraq and increasingly certain that the country as a whole is going in the wrong direction, are uncertain about the role that America should play in the world.
 
The experience in Iraq should prompt religious conservatives to step back in humility and reconsider their tendency to confuse ideology with theology, and politics with faith. The debacle in Iraq has discredited much of America's political establishment, but perhaps none more than members of the Religious Right. Followers of the Prince of Peace should be particularly ashamed of serving as the apostles of war.
 
Hijackers who have seized control of the Republican party are engaged in desperate damage control in an attempt to prevent real conservatives from reclaiming the party and are circling the wagons by calling for an end to the democratic process and for Ron Paul to be kicked out of the debates.
 
Jerry Falwell, the brimstone-and-treacle preacher who died this week, occupied an especially honoured place in the demonology of America's critics. He was, let's be honest, an easy target, the very avatar of almost everything that alarms people about the modern US. The received version of recent American history will attest that Falwell played a central part in the nation's rightward lurch towards intolerance and bigotry in the past 30 years, that he was one of the cross-and-microphone-wielding revolutionaries behind the theocratic overthrow of liberal, tolerant American government.
 
The controversial anti-homosexual Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., plans to "preach" at the funeral of Rev. Jerry Falwell, according to its Web site. "WBC will preach at the memorial service of the corpulent false prophet Jerry Falwell, who spent his entire life prophesying lies and false doctrines like 'God loves everyone.'"  
 
Tony Blair and George W. Bush have a very special relationship. You had only to look at their body language, as they paraded before the media yesterday during Mr Blair's last prime ministerial visit to Washington: it was obvious to all just how close the two men have become since their first, awkward encounter 6 years ago at Camp David.
 
Opening a new era in British politics, the governing Labour Party confirmed on Thursday that Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the Exchequer, had emerged as the sole candidate to assume the party leadership and thus succeed Tony Blair when he steps down in June.
(LX op/ed: Brown crowned)
 
 
 
Crude oil jumped more than $2 a barrel Thursday on speculation that US gasoline supplies won't be adequate to meet demand this summer because refiners are unexpectedly shutting units.
 
My request for information about the actions of the secretive Working Group on Financial Markets at the Treasury Department "seems to have fallen through the cracks," according to the wording of an internal government document I just got my hands on. The PPT operates in that shadowy space between the government's desire to keep the market safe for national security reasons and Wall Street's desire to keep prices up for selfish reasons.
 
The stories I am getting are hair curling to say the least. We are about to see the birth of the Chinese Plunge protection team, otherwise it will turn into an utter and complete disaster, the oceans of shares that the Chinese government owns in the SOE's must be carefully released to satiate the demand that is this tsunami of cash and investors.
 
Germany will make a last-ditch effort today to persuade the world's top economic powers to tighten their grip on hedge funds and private equity firms. But even before these countries' finance ministers convened at a G-8 meeting, the push was being written off as futile - illustrating Germany's isolation in its desire to rein in the booming industry.
 
European officials said the White House finally toned down its support for Mr Wolfowitz in the face of united and unrelenting European opposition to his continuing in office. Diplomats agree that ­Germany led the European opposition and a senior official close to Chancellor Merkel said that, despite repeated lobbying from the White House, Berlin would not change its stance.
 
Yes, the Dow did reach a record high last month. But the Commerce Department also reported that economic growth slowed to its weakest pace in four years. How can investors do so well while the real economy is doing so poorly? My supply-side friends don't have an answer, but I do. Bottom line: The Bush tax cuts have delivered for Wall Street but done zilch for America's Main Streets.
 
Capitalism in America is covertly governed by 3 unwritten rules. 1) Treat others the way you would NOT want to be treated; 2) Always measure the value of human beings by your self-interest, not theirs; 3) By turning luxuries into necessities, businesses can force people to pay whatever they demand.
 
Debt is an inescapable concept. It is never a question of debt or no debt. It is always a question of which kind of debt, owed to whom, when. Like addicts, we are trapped in the modern debt-based economy. Every institution is part of this web of debt. Some debt is productive. Government debt is unproductive. Central bank debt is addictive.
 
 
 
You too can live the way Leonardo lived because he left his secret in his notebooks, and it's finally been published.
 
Microwave popcorn is one of America's favorite couchside snacks, but the butter flavor is raising questions about whether the crunchy treat could be dangerous to something other than the waist.
 
 
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