Venezuelan President Chavez demanded Pope Benedict apologize to Indians in Latin America for saying this month in Brazil that the Roman Catholic Church purified them. "With all due respect your Holiness, apologize because there was a real genocide here and, if we were to deny it, we would be denying our very selves."
For the first time in 5 years, those responsible for negotiations between the Holy See and Israel will meet after Israeli representatives cancelled a March meeting at the last minute. The meeting is planned for Monday in the Vatican. The meeting will address negotiations on the "comprehensive agreement." Discussions will include the security of the Church's religious properties in Israel and the confirmation of historical tax exemptions, which the Church had at the time of Israel's establishment and that the UN ruled Israel must uphold.
Speaking English, Archbishop Migliore expressed the Holy See's disappointment at "the postponement of the adoption of the draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples."
The Bremen election deals a big setback to Germany's grand coalition.
A casualty on the road to consolidation among Germany's state-owned banks.
Like my rubbish, the constitution cannot be thrown away, only recycled.
For the past 50 years Britain's engagement with Europe has been constrained by a sterile debate between two opposing schools of thought. On one hand, some pro-Europeans have traditionally advocated closer union as the sole solution to what they saw as Britain's declining influence and wealth, policy paralysis and apparent ungovernability. On the other, anti-Europeans have argued that the very definition of Britishness lies in rejecting anything put forward by the EU.
The summit between the EU and Russia, held May 18 in the Russian city of Samara, ended in a debacle for the European powers as antagonisms between the US and Russia reach a breaking point.
(German press: Europe and Russia: The Divorce?)
Its newest members offer the EU some history lessons. If the EU does not learn to listen to and understand different views of the past, it may find itself stumbling when confronting future conflicts inside and outside the union. And that would be an historic mistake.
In Kosovo now there is only one question. What will the Russians do? It is asked in smoky cafes, on the countless building sites, and in government offices. It is asked by the majority Albanians, hoping for independence for this divided former Serbian province, who fear the Russians will torpedo the dream for which they fought the Kosovo war of 1998-99. A crisis 8 years in the making is unfolding with a giddy inevitability. For while the fighting in Kosovo stopped in 1999, the conflict itself, as diplomats here acknowledge, has never really ended. All that has been held in check has been forced to the surface again.
For the first time in its history, The Times is to be published in the Middle East. We are proud to publish a special supplement on the Middle East and are particularly honoured that we will soon be published each day in a region that is destined to play an increasingly influential role in the world.
In a new book that "totally contradicts everything that has been accepted to this day" about the Six Day War, two Israeli authors claim that the conflict was deliberately engineered by the Soviet Union to create the conditions in which Israel's nuclear program could be destroyed. Having received information about Israel's progress towards nuclear arms, the Soviets aimed to draw Israel into a confrontation in which their counterstrike would include a joint Egyptian-Soviet bombing of the reactor at Dimona. They had also geared up for a naval landing on Israel's beaches.
The stakes are indeed high. Iraq's slide into ethnic conflict and internal fragmentation poses enormous challenges for the region's stability. If left to fester, Iraq's sectarian fault lines will spill beyond its borders.
A suicide blast tore through a bazaar in a normally quiet town in northern Afghanistan Saturday, killing 3 German soldiers and six Afghan civilians.
Yet the enemy was not the Taleban, nor an infiltrating column of al-Qaeda fighters. Instead, in the remote border district of 'Ali Kheyl in eastern Afghanistan, Afghan security forces have found themselves pitted against an older and bigger enemy: Pakistan.
A new sort of Great Game. Central Asia has long been squabbled over by outsiders. The latest manifestation of this old imperial "Great Game" is a proposed gas pipeline linking Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan with Russia. But a struggle for leadership has broken out between countries of the region as well.
"Study the past", Confucius said, "if you would define the future." Now he himself has become the object of that study. Confucius was revered—indeed worshipped—in China for more than 2,000 years. Now, an outspoken scholar at Beijing's Renmin University argues that Confucianism should become China's state religion.
Competition for Japan's far right from an unexpected source.
OPEC's 2nd biggest oil exporter is venturing into the controversial territory of petrol rationing. Petrol consumption in Iran far outstrips the capacity of Iranian refineries, forcing Iran to import billions of dollars worth of petrol at international prices.
President Ahmadinejad gave a comprehensive report to nation on great achievements made by his cabinet in the past 18 months. "Unfortunately, certain elements are now issuing fabricated statistics and try to tarnish reality but we strive to remove all existing weaknesses."
Iran wants nothing more than the rights envisaged for member states in Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran's Ambassador to Bangkok said. "Iran is neither looking for confrontation with other states nor is it trying to achieve something beyond its legitimate rights. We acknowledge the possible concerns that might exist and are ready to remove all ambiguities through reciprocal goodwill."
Former President Carter says President Bush's administration is "the worst in history" in international relations, taking aim at the White House's policy of pre-emptive war and its Middle East diplomacy. "I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history." Carter also lashed out at British prime minister Tony Blair. Asked how he would judge Blair's support of Bush, he said: "Abominable. Loyal. Blind. Apparently subservient."
The rhetoric and spin about Congressman Ron Paul's "blaming America" for the September 11th attacks is symptomatic of the problems of foreign interventionism plaguing this country. The media establishment is so out of touch with reality they don't know where to begin analyzing an actual informed opinion.
"All the world's a stage," observes Jacques in As You Like It, "and all the men and women merely players." No sphere of human life is more theatrical than politics. And seldom has the world's political stage seemed more Shakespearean than it does today. To judge by the number of bodies that currently litter it, we appear to be nearing the end of Act V of The Tragedie of King George. By the concluding scenes of Shakespeare's greatest political tragedies - Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King Lear and Macbeth - nearly all the principal characters lie dead. So it is with King George, the tragic tale of a simple, unworldly fellow who ascends the throne of a great empire, responds heroically to an unprovoked attack, but then wreaks havoc by turning from retaliation to pre-emption.
Now the neocons have been ousted, one by one, from their positions of influence and trust while the Republican party base is desperately thrashing around for a successor to Bush that it can back in 2008. The cleavage between the two marks the end of an era in which Bible Belt conservatives became the surprise champions of radical nation-building in the Middle East in the hope of crushing terrorism and halting the march of militant Islam.
For whatever reason – perhaps out of fear or power lust – neocons have abandoned conservative skepticism of government in favor of a blind ideology of American exceptionalism. Beck, Hannity, and Giuliani have jumped on Dr. Paul relentlessly because they are beginning to realize that many conservative voters are dissatisfied with the spendthrift, Wilsonian mainstream of the Republican Party.
Gordon Brown is prepared to risk the future of the "special relationship" with the US by reversing Tony Blair's support for the Iraq war, President Bush has been warned. He has been briefed by White House officials to expect an announcement on British troop withdrawals from Mr Brown during his first 100 days in power.
(LX op/ed: Still making it special)
In the French Aquitaine region, if you happen to be tall, pale-faced and foreign-accented, you are likely to be accused of being British. But you might get an apology if you turn out to be American, apparently a more welcome species. Accused? Apology? What's wrong with being English? More likely the history-conscious French have in mind centuries of armed conflict with their cross-channel neighbor, including several large-scale wars and long periods of occupation.
France's new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has made a number of courageous gestures in assembling his cabinet under Prime Minister Francois Fillon. He's promised to represent tout la France - but he's also opted for safety in key areas.
The Chinese central bank announced Friday that it would allow its currency, the yuan, to fluctuate more during daily foreign exchange trading, but again rebuffed demands from the US and Europe for a sustained rise in its value.
The Wolfowitz affair, in the final analysis, is an expression of this decline of the US and reflects the greater willingness of rival capitalist powers in Europe and Asia to push back against the supposed "sole superpower."
Global investment banks are taking ever more risk, and are devising ever more sophisticated ways of spreading it. Is that reassuring or worrying? At least since 1823, when Byron's Don Juan described "Jew Rothschild, and his fellow Christian Baring" as the "true Lords of Europe", investment bankers have inspired awe, envy and, rightly or wrongly, a measure of disdain.
The struggle between "pro-choice" and "pro-life" forces around the world. Like the Catholic church, Islam regards life as sacred from conception. But unlike the Vatican, Muslim thinkers tend to calibrate the gravity of the "sin" according to the timing—early abortions are viewed less seriously.
[WAR: Until something receives it's own "breath of life," it is not "a living being."]
Will Peter Schaefer's new book, Jesus in the Talmud, be controversial? "I'm afraid so," Schaefer told RBL. "That's why I'm nervous." His editor at Princeton University Press, Brigitta van Rheinberg, laughed but agreed: "You think, oh, whoa, this is not going to go over well in certain circles."
Now that I've gone through the Auschwitz main camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, Mauthausen, and Dachau
War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
Yesterday/today in Scripture
* "YAHWEH spoke to Moses in the Tent of Meeting in the Desert of Sinai on the 1st day of the 2nd month of the 2nd year after the Israelites came out of Egypt..." (Num 1:1)
* "Then Solomon began to build the temple of YAHWEH in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where YAHWEH had appeared to his father David. It was on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, the place provided by David. He began building on the 2nd day of the 2nd month in the 4th year of his reign. (2Chr 3:1,2 / 1Kings 6:1)
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