The only surviving witness to a decades-long conspiracy theory has firmly denied the Catholic Church is hiding details about a predicted apocalypse. Archbishop Capovilla said there was no truth in the rumour that the Vatican was suppressing a vision of the end of the world.
Oh my stars and garters! It turns out that, not only did the Church say a perfectly valid Mass from the time of the Reformation till now, but on top of that, the Pope is still Catholic. That was the astonished discovery of the delightfully ignorant mainstream media when, in a shocking move, Pope Benedict XVI let the cleansing daylight of truth throw light on the minds of people who have somehow gotten it into their heads that there are two Churches, pre-Vatican II and post-Vatican II.
Floatinga a Crusade trial balloon?...
During a Mass celebrated to mark the anniversary of the attacks on the US, the head of the Polish military chaplaincy appealed for a defense of Christian culture, particularly in Europe. Bishop Ploski, the head of the military ordinariate, said that the Christian heritage of the European continent should be preserved, and warned against the development of "Euroarabia." He issued a reminder that September 11 is also the anniversary of the Battle of Vienna, which he described as "Islam's greatest defeat."
Merkel has shied away from the biggest fight at home - over the deep economic restructuring she advocated during her campaign 2 years ago. And on the matter of the suspected terror plot in the heart of Germany, she has remained in the background, apparently happy to cede the issue to her interior minister. And voters here, it seems, could stomach just enough free-market reforms to get the economy moving again and no more. "She has learned her lesson. No more of this neo-liberal stuff, no more blood, sweat and tears, no more change."
The general commanding the EU's police training mission in Afghanistan is returning to Germany 3 months after his appointment because of wrangling with the EU, NATO and officials inside the Afghan Interior Ministry.
If the Berlin government doesn't immediately erect a protective wall around the real economy and the public banks, an economic and financial catastrophe threatens not only the Free State of Saxony, but the rest of Germany as well. Because the debacle around the Saxony Landesbank and its subsidiaries is part of the breakdown of the global financial system, which is about to disintegrate in a chain reaction.
Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel aren't as enamoured of each other as their smiles and embraces might suggest. The charismatic Sarkozy has irked Berlin with his budget policies and his recent rescue mission to Libya. And Merkel and her ministers aren't flavor of the month in Paris either.
This is not a shot from a romantic movie or a new Singin' in the Rain. It's a glimpse of the Franco-German couple in action and part of why Nicolas Sarkozy gets on Angela Merkel's nerves. Sarko is a physical guy. He comes in close. Grabs, hugs and back-slaps are his tools for connecting with people.
President Sarkozy has put in motion the privatisation of Areva, the world's biggest builder of nuclear power stations, as he asked officials yesterday to assess plans for a merger with Alstom, the French engineering group. The move has set Paris on a collision course with Berlin, which is keen for Siemens, the German engineering group, to maintain a 34 per cent stake in Areva Nuclear Power, the nuclear reactors subsidiary.
They had promised their countrymen a new, clean republic, one without corruption and scandal. But now the Kaczynski twins have tripped up over their own moral standards. Nevertheless, the duo's Law and Justice Party stands a good chance of winning the next election.
In a victory for those attached to their pints, miles and ounces, the European Commission on Tuesday finally admitted defeat and abandoned its years-long struggle to get Britain and Ireland to convert to the metric measuring system.
President Putin dissolved Russia's government today in a major political shakeup ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections, the Kremlin said.
Russia has tested the world's most powerful vacuum bomb, which unleashes a destructive shockwave with the power of a nuclear blast, the military said on Tuesday, dubbing it the "father of all bombs". "Test results of the new airborne weapon have shown that its efficiency and power is commensurate with a nuclear weapon."
(AP: "Dad of all bombs")
(PR: Pics of bomb and test)
Will the new year really be better than the last one? A lot depends on the impact of that air strike that Syria claimed occurred in the north of the country 6 days ago. Both the Syrian and the Israeli leadership have been extraordinarily silent about this.
Israel believes that North Korea has been supplying Syria and Iran with nuclear materials, a Washington defense official told the New York Times. The official added that recent Israeli reconnaissance flights over Syria revealed possible nuclear installations that Israeli officials estimate might have been supplied with material from North Korea.
Recent squabbles between Syria and Saudi Arabia highlight increased differences, while Iran's behavior unnerves many.
Monday's testimony by General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker was just another of the broken promises and false claims of success that we've heard from President Bush for years.
Hassan al-Turabi, Sudanese Islamic ideologue, is back on the news again by conducting a long and elaborate interview with Sudan Tribune where he addressed topics on Sudan that cover pretty much from the general political history to the current predicament the country is facing today. Al-Turabi is perhaps one of the skillful Sudanese politicians with ambition to rule who managed to maneuver his way through the power struggles and survived all the political turbulence in Sudan's history.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has announced he is resigning as Japan's prime minister after a bruising election in July and poor poll ratings. His announcement came as a surprise to some as he had been due to answer questions in parliament later today over plans to extend the Japanese naval mission in support of US-led operations in Afghanistan.
President Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday that the Iranian nation is of a great civilization with clear message for salvation of humanity. He said in his address to nationwide conference of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps commanders that neither the terrorists nor the arrogant powers are capable of guiding the mankind. He likened the stand-off between Iran and the arrogant powers to 'light and darkness'.
President Putin is to visit Iran on October 16 to attend the summit of the Caspian Sea littoral states. He will discuss major issues, including all-out bilateral relations, with senior Iranian officials.
Iran's foreign minister said today that Tehran was demanding an explanation from Germany over the supposed presence of the head of an outlawed Kurdish militant group on German soil.
UN nuclear chief Mohamed ElBaradei walked out on an afternoon session of his IAEA to protest an EU speech which did not fully support his deal for new inspections in Iran, diplomats said. "The Europeans gave a nasty statement and the director general walked out of the room."
The new head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards warned the US that Tehran has identified its "weak points" in Iraq and Afghanistan and would launch a crushing response to any attack.
British forces have been sent from Basra to the volatile border with Iran amid warnings from the senior US commander in Iraq that Tehran is fomenting a "proxy war". In signs of a fast-developing confrontation, the Iranians have threatened military action in response to attacks launched from Iraqi territory while the Pentagon has announced the building of a US base and fortified checkpoints at the frontier.
If you go through the Petraeus report, the key passages are those that deal with Iran. Petraeus continually points the finger at Tehran as an explanation for the lack of "progress" in Iraq. The "surge," as the escalation of the war is being euphemized, is working, albeit not in the way the hapless Democrats and the American public understand it. "Progress" in Iraq, insofar as this administration is concerned, means we're closer to war with Iran.
Yes...
Predicting imminent war on Iran has been 1 of the top 2 items in Cassandra's repertoire for a couple of years now. So, whether in 24 hours or 24 days or at some point before the end of his term, we should predict Bush will send the bombers on their way to Teheran to destroy the usual targets - power stations and kindred civilian infrastructure, hospitals, maybe a few bomb shelters crammed with women and children.
Sen. Joseph I Lieberman, who is among the Senate's fiercest hawks, blamed Iran for the deaths of "hundreds of American troops," and claimed the US has evidence that Iran is training insurgents outside Tehran before sending them to Iraq. He asked whether the US should expand its invasion into Iran.
Covert destabilization and increasing military escalation towards a full-scale Iran attack have been underway for months. In recent weeks, the bellicose, cocky and certifiably insane George W. Bush named Iran as the "world's leading supporter of terrorism." His administration is openly constructing an attack plan against Tehran. With an empire and its survival at stake, the most "unthinkable," apocalyptic and criminal options are "on the table." And the table is getting smaller.
When Ron Paul appeared on The O'Reilly Factor Monday, host Bill O'Reilly repeatedly pressed Paul to agree that Iran is a dangerous enemy which will pose an imminent threat if the US leaves Iraq, meanwhile interrupting every one of Paul's attempts to explain his own views on the negative results of US policy in the Middle East.
A recent decision by German officials to withhold support for any new sanctions against Iran has pushed a broad spectrum of officials in Washington to develop potential scenarios for a military attack on the Islamic regime, FOX News confirmed Tuesday. Germany notified its allies last week that the government refuses to support the imposition of any further sanctions against Iran that could be imposed by the UN Security Council. The Germans voiced concern about the damaging effects any further sanctions on Iran would have on the German economy — and also, according to diplomats from other countries, gave the distinct impression that they would privately welcome, while publicly protesting, an American bombing campaign against Iran's nuclear facilities.[??]
This week we learned that the US Air Force flew a B-52, locked and loaded with nuclear warheads, from North Dakota to Louisiana. To take a single M-16 rifle from the arms room of a stateside military unit requires the permission of several military officials, along with numerous keys, combinations and codes. It is inconceivable to me, and to every other military veteran with whom I have spoken this week, that the loose nukes were a mere accident of oversight, or that the order to fly them came from any source other than the White House.
Kucinich issued a press release before the vote, criticizing the resolution as "incomplete," and saying that Congress needs to "wake up to the truth and exercise its obligation under the Constitution to save our nation from being destroyed from the lies that took us into Iraq, the lies that keep us there, the lies that are being used to set the stage for war against Iran and the lies that have undermined our basic civil liberties here at home."
The past 6 years have seen an avalanche of books excoriating President Bush, the key figures in his administration, and the ideologies, policies and practices they have embraced. So was there a need for yet another anti-Bush book? Well, it turns out there was. The subtitle of "Cowboy Republic" is "Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law" - and this book is about the law.
Just as George Bush and Dick Cheney have done on politically important occasions, Gen. Petraeus (along with Ambassador Ryan Crocker) last night selected Fox News' Brit Hume as the "journalist" rewarded with an exclusive "interview." Whereas Hume, in the past, at least has pretended to play the role of journalist when interviewing high Bush officials, he dispensed entirely with the pretense here. This "interview" took government propaganda to a whole new level, and really has to be seen to be believed. The whole production was such transparent propaganda that one doubts that Pravda would have been shameless enough to present it.
There's a phony story going around about a mythical currency that's supposed to replace the dollar called the "amero." A Canadian economist came up with the mythical currency's name in a 1999 paper, "The Case for the Amero: The Economics and Politics of a North American Monetary Union." It seemed like a good idea at the time, but he says he's abandoned it in the face of the resulting political uproar over erosion of sovereignty. "In the US, at the Federal Reserve, I'm told this is not on the horizon at all. It just has never entered their mind as far as something the Fed would be involved in."
Oil prices extended gains today after finishing at a record close the previous session on worries about tight supplies. An announced increase in output by OPEC failed to calm market concerns about the ability of producers to meet strong Northern winter demand in the final quarter of the year, analysts said.
(IHT: Oil prices stay above $78)
The US dollar has fallen to a record low against the euro as investors bet that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates to help the economy. Many analysts are predicting that the Fed will cut interest rates next week as it looks to reassure markets and consumers amid a global credit crunch. At the same time, there is speculation that European rates may rise.
Investors who smell an impending interest rate cut at Wall Street are not waiting around for the central bank. They have been pulling their money out of investments that might be hit by lower interest rates, including the dollar, and plowing it into gold. That hasty exit has created a mini gold rush, sending the price of gold through the psychological barrier of $700 an ounce to its highest levels in 16 months.
Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke said Tuesday that a global "savings glut" has helped keep interest rates low, but he warned that major trade imbalances between emerging and industrial nations may prove "counterproductive" to the global economy over time.
A compound extracted from tangerine peel can kill certain human cancer cells, research shows. A team from Leicester School of Pharmacy found Salvestrol Q40 was turned into a toxic compound in cancer cells, destroying them. The compound tends to be produced at higher levels when infection levels among crops are high. Therefore, the use of modern pesticides and fungicides, which have cut the risk of infections, have also led to a drop in Salvestrol levels in food.
Celebrations have been taking place in the streets of Addis Ababa as Ethiopia ushers in the new Millennium. Ethiopians gathered together in churches all over the country to mark the occasion. In the 6th Century, the rest of Christendom revised its estimate of the date of the birth of Christ - but Ethiopia stuck with the old date, which means it was stuck more than 7 years behind the rest of the world.
[WAR: So the Catholic Church has "changed times/seasons" by adding this 7+ years and taking away the 10 days between Oct 4th and 15th in 1582. And speaking of "10 days" ... in Revelation 2:10 it states: "I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for 10 days." Now, is this persecution to last for 10 days, or is it because of 10 days?!! Will there be a future persecution because of refusing to acknowledge (forehead) and use (right hand) the papal/pagan Gregorian Calendar - the Whore's "mark" of her international authority? I'll (again) be testing the US legal waters shortly - to get the ball rolling...]
And speakin' of wrong calendars...
The Jewish [and not Yahweh's!] High Holy Days of Rosh Hashana, the beginning of the traditional new year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, are the most sacred holidays of the Jewish year. Beginning this week, Jews around the world will celebrate these days - and the 10 Days of Awe between them - with traditional religious services, music and food.
Cool websites/software
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