Did he do all that he could have done, all that he should have done? Controversy over the conduct of Pope Pius XII during the Holocaust has raged for over 40 years. Pius and Hitler loathed and feared one another as rival claimants for Europe's hearts and souls.
The spokesman for the Vatican has responded to the Taliban's demand that the Pope condemn the violence of the coalition forces in Afghanistan by saying that all should work for the cause of peace.
BMW has blamed a 14% fall in quarterly profits on the high value of the euro and the cost of developing new models. The continuing high value of the euro against the dollar and yen means that BMW is not able to make as much money from its sales in the US and Japan.
German industry may be worried about the effect of the record euro-dollar exchange rate on exports, but the government is relaxed. According to an internal report, Berlin believes the current recovery is sufficiently robust to cope with the strong euro.
While most people would consider the prospect of peace in the Middle East to be a good thing, there are many who find the idea of earthly peace between Jews and Arabs to be of evil origins. Who are the people that get immediately worried or suspicious upon hearing of peace treaties or proposals between Jews and Arabs? Are they members of a hate group of some sort? Violent organizations who promote international chaos? No, ironically enough, it is a large segment of Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christians known as "dispensationalists."
Security forces acting on orders from Prime Minister Olmert yesterday destroyed a synagogue used by Jews to worship near Joseph's Tomb, Judaism's third holiest site and the believed burial place of the biblical patriarch Joseph.
Reports on a possible agreement reached between Olmert and Abbas gave rise to numerous comments on the possibility of a quick settlement of the Middle East conflict and the emergence of an independent Palestinian State on the political map of the world. Taking into account that the sides have repeatedly arrived at similar agreements before, the recent forecasts for the light at the end of the tunnel look far too optimistic. All in all, it would be difficult to see an independent and viable Palestinian State looming on the horizon if any of the scenarios takes shape.
The summer season will be calmer than some people think, Prime Minister Olmert said Tuesday, countering persistent reports predicting a new war. "I firmly believe that the coming summer and fall will not be too hot. There is no place for creating an atmosphere of 'the eve of war.'"
Saudi Arabia says it supports US plans for a regional peace conference this year and would be keen to attend. The conference is intended to revive the peace process and would include Israel, the Palestinians and Arab states viewed as moderate by the US.
German press...
German media commentators question the wisdom of the Bush administration's plan to increase weapons aid to Saudi Arabia. None of America's Mideast allies is furthest from the Bush administration's democratic ideals, newspapers say.
The cultural rise of the Gulf is analogous to that of the US South in recent decades, as country singers and Southern cooking have become part of broader pop culture. Much like the Southern drawl, the Gulf accent has fast entered the mainstream.
Ending months of a tug-of-war with Sudan, the UN Security Council has authorized the deployment of some 26,000 UN and African Union troops to the war-torn Darfur region.
Africa has harbored a number of high-profile Western medical miscreants who have intentionally administered deadly agents under the guise of providing health care or conducting research.
China's strategic goal is clear - to become Asia's regional superpower, preferably without firing a shot.
Puh-leaze!!...
Israeli President Peres called Iranian President Ahmadinejad a "joke" and said he appeared to worship "the bomb more than he's worshipping the God in heaven".
A prominent Iranian MP says Britain's hostile policies toward Iran have tainted the image of the country in the eyes of the Iranian nation. "Historically the Iranians have bad memories of Britain, and British officials should take steps to change their policies on Iran."
A senior member of Iran's parliament says recent events have proven that the US is the root cause of insecurity in the Persian Gulf region. "Arming the Zionist regime and the Persian Gulf littoral states by the US is nothing new. Providing weapons to the Zionists is a linchpin of US strategy. This policy was resumed to structurally overhaul the Zionist regime's army after it was defeated by the Lebanese Hezbollah last summer."
Iran's Foreign Minister said that the US plan to sell billions of dollars worth of arms and prepare illusive scenarios in the region is an instance of adventurism and a disparate effort. "Washington has taken such a move to save the US arms manufacturing companies from bankruptcy. (And) the US knows quite well that the Middle East has suffered a lot from Washington's one-sided and unfair support for the Zionist regime and for its war mongering and expansionist policies. Moreover, the US neo-cons' vain strategies to encourage hostility and division among the regional and friendly states would never work."
Everything was seemingly coordinated in secret. According to the memorandum of understanding, Iran will provide Turkey with the natural gas to transfer and sell to Europe via the proposed Nabucco pipeline. This agreement, worth billions, seriously erodes the importance of the economic sanctions imposed on Iran over its nuclear program.
Germany's foreign minister said that the Iran-IAEA talks on Tehran's nuclear case would go on until a peaceful solution is found to the problem. He lauded Iran's positive role in Afghanistan and said, "Iran and Germany jointly believe that conditions should improve in Afghanistan."
Washington's campaign to persuade financial institutions to break ties with Tehran gained another scalp on Tuesday when Deutsche Bank confirmed it had decided to cease doing business in Iran. On Tuesday, Germany's Commerzbank said it was also debating pulling out of Iran.
Momentum has grown for the removal of Vice President Dick Cheney from office—before the Guns of August are fired. "The issue is getting Cheney out. You get Cheney out, now, and the situation can be manageable. If you do not get Cheney out, you're kissing civilization good-bye." Extremely well-placed U.S. military and intelligence sources have re-emphasized to EIR that all of the preconditions for a US preventive attack on Iran have been met. Over half of the US Navy's combat force is now in the immediate vicinity of Iran, with 2 US aircraft carrier groups in the Persian Gulf, and 2 more in the Indian Ocean.
To understand what is going on with the $60 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and a number of small Gulf potentates, we have to go back to Seymour Hersh's last piece in the New Yorker, "The Redirection," which revealed, among other things, that the US is funding Sunni radical groups possibly linked to al-Qaeda in Lebanon and in the Eastern reaches of Iran. It's all part of a new turn in American foreign policy in the Middle East, toward the Sunni "mainstream" and away from our former Shi'ite allies-of-convenience in Iraq. Having smashed the Ba'athist regime and handed Mesopotamia over to the Iranians, the Americans are taking a U-turn and aligning with their former enemies in readiness for the next war of "liberation" on the neocon agenda: the battle for Iran.
The antiwar movement is focused exclusively on Iraq, but that Rubicon was crossed 4 years ago. Now we approach the River Styx, the demarcation line between the world of the living and Hades, the land of the dead. As we make the approach, ghosts and demons weep and wail, warning us away – yet we keep on going, walking blindly ahead, until we're standing at the edge of oblivion. It won't take much to push us over – and it's a long way down.
Oil futures settled at a record high above $78 Tuesday on expectations that crude inventories fell last week and reports of new violence in Nigeria, a large oil producer and key supplier to the US. Investors are also closely watching OPEC, whose officials have been giving mixed signals about whether the cartel will decide during a September meeting to boost production.
European and Asian stock markets plummeted today, mirroring heavy losses the previous day in New York, on mounting fears that weakness in the US housing sector could infect the world economy. Economists said there were growing jitters about the potential fallout from problems in US subprime lending sector, where mortgages are provided to people with questionable credit histories. Analysts are concerned that growing mortgage defaults will hurt banks and finance companies enough to curb the availability of credit on which the economy feeds. That, in turn, could affect private equity groups because their takeover bids are often financed by large amounts of bank debt.
The seizing up of the world credit markets—triggered by the collapse of the household debt bubble in the US—may turn from a slow-motion collapse into a thorough crash, if one or more major investment banks fails in the near future.
The anti-war crowd is right. It is all about oil - although perhaps not in the way it means. Consider some of the current threats to global stability: Russia's contempt for international norms, Iran's nuclear ambitions, the massacres in Darfur, the descent of South America into Leftist authoritarianism. All these crises are oil-fuelled.
All the signs are that the briefest of brief English summers is coming to an end and autumn is already upon us. A growing number of experts believe that this year's unpredictable weather, which brought spring on early, then deluged Britain with record rainfall, has now taken us straight to autumn - bypassing summer altogether.
[WAR: The tropical seasons may fluctuate wildly, but the sidereal (star) seasons (Job 38:32) never do - which makes the stars the best foundation for determining appointed times.]
A foot-high plastic Jesus doll that quotes Scripture and a three-inch Daniel in the lions' den are about to do battle with Barbie and Bratz in toy aisles across America. The nation's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, has announced that it will start carrying a line of faith-based toys in 425 of its 3,376 stores later this month to see if characters such as Spirit Warrior Samson can rival the popularity of superhero figures like Spiderman.
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