Today the Gospel (cf. Luke 10:1-12,17-20) presents Jesus sending out 72 disciples to the villages where he is about to arrive so that they will prepare the way. This is unique to the evangelist Luke, who emphasizes that the mission is not reserved to the 12 Apostles, but is extended to other disciples.
The interior minister wants the right to detain terrorists before they launch an attack and has suggested there may be cases in which terrorists should be killed. The comments have been criticized as undemocratic.
Germany probably entered the single currency at too high an exchange rate for the Deutschmark, so it was initially uncompetitive and exports did not do well for a couple of years. And you can forget all the euro-fanatical nonsense which argued that merely establishing a single currency and eradicating exchange rate fluctuations would lead to a surge of trade and prosperity among eurozone members. It hasn't happened. The advent of the euro was probably a net negative for Germany.
French president Nicolas Sarkozy is set to cause strong divisions among eurozone finance ministers tonight when he appears at one of their regular monthly meetings to tell them that France will be 2 years late to balance its budget. Paris's budget plans are already causing divisions among the 12 other euro states. Germany's Peer Steinbrueck last week said there would be "a problem" if he goes ahead with his plans.
Israel has been accused of orchestrating a deliberate land grab in the West Bank by allocating 11 times as much land to Jewish settlements as is needed. It has also been accused of doing nothing to stop settlers from spilling out of allocated areas and stealing even more land from their Palestinian neighbours.
The 22-country Arab League will send envoys on a historic first mission to Israel this week to discuss a sweeping Arab peace initiative and how it might prop up embattled Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. An official League visit would be a diplomatic coup for Israel. The League historically has been hostile toward the Jewish state, but has grown increasingly conciliatory given the expanding influence of Islamic extremists in the region - a concern underscored by Hamas's violent takeover of the Gaza Strip last month.
If Israel doesn't vacate the strategic Golan Heights before September, Syrian guerrillas will immediately launch "resistance operations" against the Golan's Jewish communities, a top official from Syrian President Bashar Assad's Baath party told WND. The Baath official said Damascus is preparing for anticipated Israeli retaliation following Syrian guerrilla attacks and for a larger war with the Jewish state in August or September. He said in the opening salvo of any conflict, Syria has the capabilities of firing "hundreds" of missiles at Tel Aviv.
Syria has called on its citizens to leave Lebanon ahead of an expected "eruption" in that country, Arab and Iranian press reports have said.
Rafsanjani on Sunday called for national solidarity to foil enemies' plots. "At this critical juncture when the foes speak about economic sanctions, we should preserve unity."
The leader of an al-Qaida umbrella group in Iraq threatened to wage war against Iran unless it stops supporting Shiites in Iraq within 2 months. He said his Sunni fighters have been preparing for 4 years to wage a battle against Shiite-dominated Iran. "We are giving the Persians, and especially the rulers of Iran, a 2 month period to end all kinds of support for the Iraqi Shiite government and to stop direct and indirect intervention ... otherwise a severe war is waiting for you."
Ali-Reza Asghari, the Iranian general who went missing in Turkey nearly half a year ago, is currently being held in a secure US intelligence facility, it was reported on Sunday. During his interrogation, Asghari gave over information on the running of the Iranian government and on the country's nuclear program.
The sudden flurry of digging seen in recent satellite photos of a mountainside in central Iran might have passed for ordinary road tunneling. But the site is the back yard of Iran's most ambitious and controversial nuclear facility, leading US officials and independent experts to reach another conclusion: It appears to be the start of a major tunnel complex inside the mountain. The question is, why?
The New York Times on Sunday published a major statement on the war in Iraq. Running the entire length of the newspaper's editorial page, the statement was clearly conceived of as a definitive pronouncement on the failure of the Bush administration's strategy in Iraq and the assertion of an alternative policy. The editorial is an expression of the enormity of the crisis facing the US ruling elite. In its own way, the statement acknowledges that what was intended to be a demonstration of American might—the conquest of Iraq—has dealt a shattering blow to the US drive for global hegemony.
[WAR: In other words, there is not - and will not - be a NWO.]
Across town from the site of the recent attempted car-bomb attacks, several thousand Muslims gathered in front of the London Central Mosque to applaud fiery preachers prophesying the overthrow of the British government – a future vision that encompasses an Islamic takeover of the White House and the rule of the Quran over America.
What it means to be a Christian after George W. Bush.
Is the subprime-mortgage bust truly large enough to drag down Wall Street, and its precious Dow Jones Industrial Average, with it? If the recent performance of General Motors' stock is an indicator, the Plunge Protection Team is answering this question with a resounding "yes." Goldman Sachs' endorsement, of GM, gave the Plunge Protection Team the cover it desired to continue pushing GM's share price higher; thereby providing market leadership investors yearn for when instability is afoot. As I see it, the intense manipulation of GM's stock indicates that the Plunge Protection Team is frightfully worried about the damage subprime mortgages will inflict upon Wall Street.
Hedge funds hold unparalleled sway over the financial markets, as confirmed by the recent unraveling of $20 billion in Bear Stearns funds. Portrayed as the new masters of the universe by author Tom Wolfe, hedge-fund managers are responsible for more than a third of stock trades and control more than $2 trillion worth of assets. But like the Wizard of Oz, these funds hide behind a cloak of mystery as they pull the levers that make Wall Street go.
The euro hit a record high against the yen and hovered within striking range of its strongest level versus the dollar today as investors continued to flock to the currency on the belief that euro zone interest rates will continue to rise. The dollar hovered near a 4 1/2-year high against the yen, but stayed on the back foot against the European currency.
President Sarkozy has formally endorsed putting a prominent member of the Socialist Party opposition, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, in charge of the International Monetary Fund in yet another sign that traditional French politics is being turned on its head.
What's the greatest challenge facing American conservatives today? Liberalism? Don't I wish. That would be relatively easy to defeat. No, it's capitalism. The prosperity we see is in some respects a mirage, purchased with a credit card. Consumers are buying more and more stuff we can't afford. When bills come due, the whole pyramid scheme stands to collapse. Socialism is not the answer. But we can't pretend that our prosperity does not present us with serious civic problems. Consumer capitalism contains within its unfolding dynamic the seeds of its own destruction, to say nothing of the way it chews up traditional loyalties to faith, family, community and place. When it comes to defending the things traditional conservatives cherish, big business is as much a threat as big government.
Psychologists have found that, if you want the public to buy an opinion, you should persuade many people to voice it. But – and this is alarming – you can achieve comparable success by getting just one person to repeat the same opinion over and over. The key is to make that opinion seem familiar. Familarity, it seems, breeds belief.
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