Benedict XVI has made a clear gesture to traditionalists so that division does not become irreparable schism, says a French cardinal.
Puh-leaze!...
A class action suit is to be filed in Israel against the German government on behalf of the children of Holocaust survivors who are in urgent need of psychological treatment.
Chancellor Merkel's attempt at bringing Germany's gas and electricity companies on board has proved difficult. She is learning the hard way just how powerful these companies are in German politics. Taking on Germany's most powerful sector was never going to be easy. Ever since the postwar years, when the energy companies were still state-owned, they have wielded enormous influence.
Germany's stock market, the DAX, hit an all time high on Friday. Last time it set a record, it promptly crashed. Will the same thing happen again?
This week will see the EU preparing itself for the detailed negotiations on the new reform treaty at the so-called Inter Governmental Conference starting on 23 July, which the current Portuguese EU presidency wants wrapped up by October.
European policy makers are considering imposing controls on state-owned funds that take stakes in flagship European companies. So-called "sovereign wealth funds" have taken off recently as a way for emerging-market countries to earn higher returns on excess reserves, rather than squirreling them away in the usual low-yielding government securities. The German government has taken the lead in Europe, with officials hoping to hash out a plan of action by the end of this year. France is supporting the German initiative.
Vladimir Putin has sent a chilling message of defiance to the West, effectively tearing up a vital Cold War treaty designed to guarantee peace in Europe. Putin signed a decree suspending Moscow's participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, a move that will allow Russia to mass tanks on Europe's border for the first time in 15 years.
German press...
A resurgent al-Qaida. A continuing lack of success in Iraq. Not much is going right for Bush. German commentators argue that he has no options left when it comes to the failure of Iraq.
President Musharraf's regime sought to reassure Pakistan's Muslim clergy yesterday as the authorities tried to contain public anger over the siege of the Red Mosque. Minor protests took place in cities across the country.
Iran asked Japanese refiners to switch to the yen to pay for all crude oil purchases, after Iran's central bank said it is reducing holdings of the US dollar. The request is for all shipments "effective immediately."
Iran has become a major focus of US propaganda efforts. That this state of affairs continues demonstrates the failure of the American people to learn the most obvious lessons from the course of events that led us to be in Iraq in the first place. The hypocrisy of condemning Iran for so much less than what the US is responsible for is lost upon mainstream commentators. Simply stated, the framework assumes that when we do it, it's good, but when they do it, it's bad. If you go outside of that framework, you're some sort of radical and must be disregarded. It's understandable that nobody likes to look in the mirror and see a monster. But it's unjustifiable for a nation of people to see what they want to see, instead of facing up to reality when the consequences of such self-imposed delusion are so real, so profound, and so deadly to people of other nations.
On the Friday before July 4, Republican Senator Arlen Specter showed his respect for the US Constitution and his anger about President Bush's repeated pissing on it by introducing the Presidential Signing Statements Act of 2007. What happens to this crucial bill will test both congressional integrity and courage. "This is a finely structured constitutional procedure that goesstraight to the heart of our system of check and balances. Any action by the president that circumvents this finely structured procedure is an unconstitutional attempt to usurp legislative authority. If the president is permitted to rewrite the bills that Congress passes and cherry-pick which provisions he likes and does not like, he subverts the constitutional process designed by our framers."
Why does the special relationship manage to survive and re-emerge repeatedly in foreign affairs? In fact the special relationship is rooted in 2 things. First, because Britain and the US (and Australia, Canada, New Zealand and India) share a common language, culture, and legal and political traditions, they tend to see the world in much the same way. The "Anglosphere" countries believe in a liberal international order and are more prepared to uphold it by force than other liberal powers. Second, since 1941 Britain and the US (and, again, countries such as Australia, Canada, etc.) have developed practices of mutual cooperation in fields as various as war, trade, electronic spying, investment, and international institution-building.
A doctor should analyze this attention-starved, skeletal scalawag and the psychology behind her infantile opinions and rabble-rousing statements. Volumes can be written about people like Coulter who call themselves Christians and act like repellent overbearing tyrants because they are so convinced that they have a lock on the truth. They're never humble; seldom compassionate and rarely Christ-like in anything they say or do.
On your knees!...
General Electric became the latest group to admit defeat in America's sub-prime home loan market as it announced plans to sell its WMC Mortgage unit. The sale would bring the number of mortgage lenders that have closed, gone into bankruptcy or been sold to more than 60 in the past 18 months as a trickle of defaults on high-risk subprime mortgages has turned into a flood. GE announced its disposal plans as the American Government sought to persuade the Chinese administration to prop up its mortgage market. Representatives of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development were in Beijing yesterday trying to tap China's $1.33 trillion of foreign currency reserves as the growing level of defaults continued to deter many traditional investors in bonds backed by subprime loans.
Optimism does not equal reality...
Global stock markets rose Friday and the Dow Jones industrial average pushed briefly past the 13,900 mark for the first time as investors clung to new optimism about the long-term US economic outlook.
Is this the so-called End of the World (as if we would ever have a clue of knowing it)? Boy, who wants to go out on a limb and say so? Who would ever want to, since so many predictors of the End have been wrong before and embarrassed themselves since the death of Jesus, the birth of the Scriptures, when the Chicken Littles of the world somehow got let out of their cages.
In an experiment filmed for TV, nine British volunteers set up camp for twelve days in a tented enclosure at Paignton Zoo in Devon , next to the ape house. The volunteers consumed up to five kilos of raw fruit and vegetables each day, in a diet regime devised by nutritionist.
Quote de jour
"I may have walked into that feed store a squirrelly little kid, but I walked out as Sheriff Wyatt Earp. I had an identity and a place in the story. I was invited to be dangerous. If a boy is to become a man, if a man is to know he is one, this is not an option. A man has to know where he comes from, and what he's made of." (Wild at Heart , p.20-21)
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