The Bavarian Rat on...
The translation of Catholic is "including the whole"; it signifies "relating to the whole". It is a way of expressing the fact that the Church belongs to the whole world, to all cultures and every age. That is quite essential. For the Church must never shrink to being a national Church. She is always there to ensure that boundaries are transcended. She is to prevent the occurrence of Babel. The Church is there to prevent the confusion of opposition and contradiction from dominating mankind. She should, instead of this, bring the whole wealth of human existence, in all its languages, to God--and should be thereby herself a power for reconciliation among mankind.
Nothing is plainer, nothing is more evident, than that in the Catholic realm the authority exercised in the Church of the Word and Sacrament is both form and content. Church authority, the obedient exercise of the fullness of power imparted by Jesus Christ and handed on by the Apostles (cf. the Pastoral Epistles), preserves the necessary distance in order to join us to Christ's work in a valid way.
The company at first said it was just a small fire. But the blaze at Vattenfall's Krümmel reactor has since become a political wildfire. Now, Germany's pro-nuclear energy politicians have gone into hiding.
The Interior Minister has been in hot water since last week, when he told Der Spiegel that Germany should look at radical ways of dealing with the threat of terrorism. His remarks have politicians from every party up in arms.
The Green Party has called for a special meeting on the German military role in Afghanistan. Whether or not it leads to a withdrawal, it signifies a shift in the German mood over the conflict. Der Spiegel talked to the Greens' parliamentary chief about what to expect.
President Sarkozy is challenging Chancellor Merkel for leadership of Europe. But she's hoping to slow down France's hyperactive new leader to ensure German influence on the Continent - while avoiding an open confrontation between Paris and Berlin.
(LX commentary: Merkel embraces a new European order)
(DW: Brown meets Merkel)
The revived EU constitution has deliberately been made "unreadable" to help fend off demands for a referendum, according to the former Italian prime minister, Giuliano Amato.
German press on...
Moscow announced this weekend it would immediately suspend the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty. Though there is still time to negotiate on the issue, many German commentators think Putin is shooting himself in the foot.
The Kremlin has warned Britain it faces "serious consequences" after expelling 4 Russian diplomats from the UK.
(BBC: Row annoys Russian media)
The problem facing Turkey is this: How will the Muslim country of 68 million resolve the conflict between fundamentalism and democracy? How will the key NATO nation and aspiring EU member navigate between the rigid dogmas of yesterday and the modern realities of the 21st century? All of which is to say: How will the clash between Islam and secularism turn out? The balance it finds between Islam and secularism will have major implications for the US.
The 5th annual convention of the Federation of the European Jews for Just Peace is underway in Berlin. In a detailed resolution titled 'Before it is too late', the union declared solidarity with the Palestinian nation in its resistance, and denounced all types of invasion, abduction, murder, torture and imprisonment practiced by Israel, calling on the international community to impose sanctions against the Zionist regime.
One of the myths created by the Israeli lobby is that Jews around the world are unanimous in their support of Israel, regardless of what it does. That's not true and never has been true. Modern political Zionism, whose ideology demands a Jewish state with a Jewish majority, was invented by an Austrian journalist and for decades struggled desperately. There were many early Jewish critics of Zionism, and there still are, despite modern Zionists adopting fascist tactics to silence debate. America badly needs an open and frank debate, based on facts, with no name-calling. Our politicians are as timid as an introverted baby when it comes to Israel.
It seemed as though a ray of hope was penetrating to the Palestinians as President Bush expressed readiness to help them out and to summon an international conference that would discuss a permanent settlement of their dispute with Israel. This does not mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that the Israelis and Palestinians are anywhere close to resolving their differences on borders, Jerusalem, settlements or refugees. These will be tough issues to crack.
(Ha'aretz: Abbas will only talk about final status issues)
"The IDF is preparing itself for an all-out war, and this is a major change in the military's working premise following the Second Lebanon War."
Somalia's interim prime minister has sought to distance himself from a decision to grant oil exploration rights to CNOOC, indicating that the Chinese state oil giant may have become entangled in an internal power struggle within the interim government. CNOOC and a smaller group, China International Oil and Gas, are planning to begin survey work in the Puntland province later this year – the latest example of China's willingness to brave Africa's most volatile regions in search of natural resources.
Iran, locked in a row with Washington over its atomic work, wants to maximise oil export revenue in non-U.S. dollar currencies while the dollar stays weak, a top Iranian oil official told Reuters on Monday. "As long as the dollar is weak, the best decision is for us to move away from it - and we will want as much revenue as possible in non-US dollar currencies. This is not a political gesture. We're losing our purchasing power if we stick with the dollar."
Is the US provoking war with Iran, to begin while the Congress is conveniently on its August recess? As Congress prepares for its August recess, the probability of US air strikes on Iran rises with each week. A 3rd carrier, the USS Enterprise, and its battle group is joining the Nimitz and Stennis in the largest concentration of US naval power ever off the coast of Iran.
Our Founding Fathers created three separate but co-equal branches of government to check and balance each other so no one branch would become all powerful. Indeed, James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers, "The preservation of liberty requires that the three great departments of power should be separate and distinct. The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary in the same hands ... may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." The American colonists were reacting against a police state. More than 200 years later, we have another King George.
Why do the Democrats, with control of both the House and Senate since last year's elections, continue to twiddle their thumbs over the policies and practices of a corrupt president? If one takes the trouble to examine the matter from the perspective of the machinations that dominate all political behavior, the answer becomes apparent. Though Republicans and Democrats have their personal and minor policy differences, they are in agreement on one basic point: their "bipartisan" support for the preservation and aggrandizement of the power of the state. They understand – as do members of the mainstream media – that their principal obligation is to serve the well-being of the political power structure that long ago laid uncontested claim to the ownership of modern society. The interests of Democratic and Republican officials alike are best served by the maximization of political power.
Christians and conservatives alike wanted more than anything else to believe Bush was more than he claimed to be. Bush didn't fool us; we fooled ourselves.
When questioned about the enormous income inequality in the US, the cheerleaders of unfettered markets counter that everybody has a shot at becoming rich in America. That image is wrong, and these days it abets far too many unfair policies. Unfortunately, the American dream is not that broadly accessible.
A hundred years ago, President Teddy Roosevelt said, "The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing as a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities." Last month, Teddy Kennedy tried to pass another immigration amnesty that doubled current legal immigration levels from 1 million to 2 million annually. He worked for amnesty for all illegal alien migrants. If he should get his wish in the future, the Balkanization and destruction of America accelerates to its final conclusion. It won't be pretty for Americans or immigrants.
Oil fell below $76 a barrel on Tuesday as investors took profits after a surge towards record highs fuelled by supply concerns and a wave of speculative buying. Goldman Sachs said on Monday oil could reach $90 a barrel this autumn and $95 by the end of this year if OPEC did not relent on its export curbs and pump more crude.
A suspicion is spreading across Europe that something fundamental has changed in the nature of capitalism and that new legislation - and probably some very new thinking - will be required to deal with it. While most commentators have been thinking of the new 21st century capitalism in terms of hedge funds and private equity and the massive leverage they can generate in order to buy companies worth tens of billions of dollars, the more unusual development has been the emergence of the state as capitalist.
It is not because health insurance executives are meaner than other people, although I do not rule that out. It's just that they're running a business, the purpose of which is not to make people healthy, but to make money, and they do very well at that.
Behind water's peerless punch, and the reason it rather than alcohol or any other lubricant serves as the elixir of life, is the three-headed character whose chemical name we all know: H2O. Scientists observe that when 2 atoms of hydrogen conjoin with 1 of oxygen, the resulting molecule displays a spectacular range of powers, gaining the mightiness of a molecular giant while retaining the speed and convenience of a molecular mite.
[WAR: Here's a pic of last night's sky from Austin, Texas - a new moon (with sunshine and earthshine) ruling with the stars and planets, not still in the orange-glow of the day that's ending. So there were multiple witnesses (the heavens and earth) testifying/establishing that today is the 1st day of a new month. Rely on the heavens that "declare the glory of Elohim (and) display knowledge night after night" (Psa 19), not on unreliable and lying man.]
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