WAR: Even though I'm not currently conducting a Daily WAR, I am still monitoring the news - just not to the depth I've been doing. So as I come across good articles, I'll throw them on a WAR to send out every few days, or so . . .
1582 -- Pope Gregory XIII implements the Gregorian Calendar (via his papal bull Inter Gravissmas - which you should read in English, especially the 2nd-to-last, and last paragraphs). Spain, Portugal, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and most of Italy implemented the new calendar on Friday, October 15, 1582, following Julian Thursday, October 4, 1582.
[WAR: Well today (Thursday the 4th) is my papal/pagan "birthday." And isn't it ironic that the person born on the "last day" of the Julian Calendar is going to challenge the legality of the Gregorian Calendar, which started the next day. (So 10 days were taken away with the stroke of a papal pen.) The law -- actually lack of, since it's not de jure -- is on my side, but the weight of tradition (de facto) is heavily against me ... which makes this all the more challenging and necessary. I'll be firing the first shot (probably across the Mexican border) in 2-4 weeks ... "Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for (because of) 10 days." (Rev 2:10)]
Benedict XVI will open the 21st International Encounter of Peoples and Religions, organized by the Catholic lay Sant'Egidio Community and the Archdiocese of Naples. He will meet with participants, including Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I; the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury; Israel's chief rabbi; and the rector of the Al-Azhar University in Egypt.
Benedict XVI told the newly enthroned patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church that he can count on collaboration from Catholics. The Pope sent a delegation to Bucharest to participate in the solemn enthronement celebrations of Patriarch Daniel Ciobotea, the new leader of 19 million Romanian Orthodox.
Here is the address Archbishop Mamberti gave to the general assembly at the United Nations.
Following 9 months of internal conflict, a congress of Bavaria's right-wing Christian Social Union, held at the end of September in Munich, elected the Bavarian Economy Minister Erwin Huber as new head of the party and Interior Minister Günther Beckstein as state prime minister. After the vote, the party leadership made a show of unity, although Edmund Stoiber had been pressured to stand down against his will. Stoiber praised his successors and was duly appointed honorary chairman of the party.
Beckstein is a notorious right-winger. He is virulently opposed to Turkish membership in the European Union and advocates a ban on wearing the Islamic headscarf. Huber, Beckstein's favoured candidate for the party chairmanship, embodies the pro-business, neo-liberal wing of the party, which has increasingly determined the course of the CSU in recent years. Huber was appointed general secretary of the CSU back in 1988 by its most prominent post-war leader, Franz Josef Strauss.
The former arch-conservative programme of the CSU has been revised with the addition of further right-wing, nationalist components. With regard to domestic and foreign policy, the new programme strictly rejects any admission of Turkey into the EU. It expressly supports the maintenance of "German interests" abroad and the international missions currently being carried out by the German army. In his speech, Stoiber declared that German soldiers fighting abroad would have the complete "protective cover" of the party. The programme acknowledges the necessity to secure economic interests and ensure "energy security" through reliable supplies of oil and gas.
(German press: Bavarian power shift)
Is the German government ready to support US aggression against Iran in exchange for a seat on the UN Security Council? The first appearance by Chancellor Merkel at the UN General Assembly points in this direction. In her speech in New York on September 25 Merkel supported the demand for increased sanctions against the Islamic republic. Merkel went to call for a permanent seat for Germany on the Security Council. "Germany is ready to take more responsibility with the assumption of a permanent seat on the Security Council" she declared, and went on to stress the urgency of such a move: "Time is short, there are various crises to be dealt with."
It is significant that Merkel has linked her policy swing toward Bush's course against Iran with the demand for a German seat in the UN Security Council. Behind the endlessly intoned formula that Germany is ready to assume "more responsibility" lies the drive by the country's ruling elite to once again operate as a major imperialist power and to support this by military means.
The EU came one step closer to having a new treaty on Tuesday when legal experts from the 27 member states agreed its content. The draft has been "provisionally accepted" by the lawyers and "will be translated, revised and made available" by the end of the week, said Portugal, which is chairing the EU until the end of the year. Currently mainly in French, the text has to be translated into the other official languages of the EU, after which it will be further scrutinised by national experts.
A group of European politicians and intellectuals have started a new think tank aimed at pushing EU capitals to creating a "more coherent and vigorous" foreign affairs policy in an attempt to make Europe a stronger player on the global stage. The new think tank - European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) - was launched on Tuesday by 50 founding members such as former prime ministers, presidents, European commissioners, MEPs and ministers as well as intellectuals, business leaders, and cultural figures from the EU member states and candidate countries.
Expectations here for an independent Kosovo, often dashed in the past, are on the rise again, as the world powers that will help determine the province's fate are again pushing to separate it completely from Serbia despite continued resistance from the Serbs and their allies, the Russians. There is a sense of growing momentum as European and American officials make preparations to set up a mission, led by the EU, that would oversee the establishment and running of an independent state under a plan set forth in April by a UN mediator.
German press...
President Putin is not letting the end of his 2nd presidency prevent him from holding onto power. He announced Monday that he intends to run for parliament and suggested that he would then become prime minister. The German press decries this manipulation of democracy and wonders if it will really ensure stability.
Five former State Department and Pentagon officials are proposing Israeli and Palestinian capitals in Jerusalem and excluding Arab refugees from returning to Israel as part of an Middle East accord. Jerusalem's future and that of Palestinian refugees have snarled past US peace efforts.
Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, yesterday claimed the target hit by an Israeli airstrike last month was a military building under construction, but denied it had anything to do with a nuclear programme. He said he could not understand the motives for the mysterious September 6 airstrike on Syria. "We found the building construction was related to the military but it's not used. It's under construction so there's no people in it, there's no army, there's nothing in it and we do not know the reason, it wasn't clear."
Before Washington makes policy on the basis of his bizarre and often offensive statements, they should consider one important fact: his actual authority as Iranian president is very limited. Contrary to the assertions of Columbia President Lee Bollinger last week, Ahmadinejad is no "petty and cruel dictator." He is an elected president with very little power, frequently at odds with the country's religious leadership and its parliament.
Iran has often played the part of an imperial and hegemonic battleground between great nations and empires, and clearly, not much has changed. If a war takes place with Iran, orchestrated by Israel, the US and other allies, then there will be a massive transformation of not only the Middle East as a whole, but the entire geo-political structure of the world. Simply stated, if a war on Iran occurs, everything changes.
Iran has slashed the use of the dollar in payment for its oil exports to 15%, an official said on Tuesday, amid growing pressure from arch-foe the US on its financial system. The vast majority of transactions for oil from OPEC's #2 producer are now being carried out in euros. "Currently, about 65% of the oil sale income is in euros and 20% in yen.
A foreign ministers meeting of the UN Security Council permanent members plus Germany broke up last Friday without agreeing to the Bush administration's call for the immediate imposition of tough new sanctions against Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons programs. Russia and China, which both hold a veto in the Security Council, opposed the US demands. Behind these bitter divisions are the contending economic and strategic interests of the major powers. Even among the European powers, there appear to be differences.
Leaving treadmarks...
The Khorramshar News Agency, which is published by the ethnic Arab underground of Iran's oil-rich Khuzestan, reported early Oct. 1 that the entire staff of Russian nuclear engineers and experts employed in building the nuclear reactor at Bushehr had abruptly packed their bags Friday, Sept. 28, and flew back to Russia.
A lengthy article by veteran journalist Seymour Hersh published in the New Yorker on Sunday provides further confirmation of the Bush administration's well-developed military and political preparations for attacking Iran. According to Hersh, the Pentagon has drawn up new war plans, the CIA has allocated substantial extra resources and the White House has already sounded out US allies, including Israel, Britain and Australia, for support in any military strike. All of Hersh's sources stressed that the President had not yet issued a final, formal "execute order". But in emphasising that the US military is not about to attack Iran tomorrow, their comments only confirm that the administration's plans for war are far advanced and can be executed at short notice.
Hmmm...
The Defence Ministry of the Russian Federation today ordered a 'high alert' status after a 'suspected' nuclear device was reported to have detonated in the Red Sea on an island controlled by US Military and Yemeni military forces. Western news reports, however, on this 'catastrophic explosion' are reporting that it was caused by an erupting volcano.
Russian seismic scientists, in their reports to the Defence Ministry on this incident, were quick to point out that there have been no earthquakes of any kind measured in the Red Sea area, and which has been verified by all of the World's seismic reporting stations. Russian Military Analysts are stating that the explosion is 'most likely' linked to the ongoing power struggle currently underway in the US among its War Leaders and that the nuclear device that was exploded can be linked to the missing American nuclear weapon incident we had previously reported.
Immediately prior to this catastrophic explosion in the Red Sea the only detected aircraft in the region was an Israeli Air Force squadron, and which frequently use the air corridors of the Red Sea for war flight training against both Saudi Arabia and Iran. But Russian Strategic Forces had previously been notified by the US Air Force Space Command that an unspecified number of the Americans most advanced fighter aircraft, F-22 Raptor's, were to be operating in the Gulf War Theatre of Operations this week, and leading to speculation that any Israeli Aircraft targeting Iran with a nuclear weapon 'could possibly have' been targeted by US Forces.
Just when you thought that things could't get worse, Congressional Democrats, having failed to support Rep. Dennis Kucinich's (D-Ohio) H.R. 333, calling for the impeachment of Cheney, have now gone one step further towards capitulating to another devastating Cheney-Bush war, through legislative acts of treachery that have given the White House a green light to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age. Once again, the stage has been set for a Bush-Cheney preemptive war. As Lyndon LaRouche has been warning for months, the only sure-fire war avoidance option left is the immediate ouster of Cheney from office. Failure to do this could go down as the fatal act of cowardice that destroyed the American Republic.
A Freedom of Information Act request of the FBI for documentation confirming the recovery and positive identification of debris from the commercial aircraft allegedly used in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, has been denied.
The American project is to live out the consequences of Judeo-Christian humanism, Archbishop Dolan said in the presence of 6 Supreme Court justices at an annual Red Mass. The Mass at St. Matthew the Apostle Cathedral in Washington was attended Sunday by some 1,500 civil leaders. The annual Red Mass is held each year before the Supreme Court begins its fall session.
[WAR: I can't wait until the day when these Catholic justices will have to make a ruling on the legality of the Gregorian Calendar. They will be between a Roman rock and a very hard place!]
In an unlikely marriage of desire to secede from the US, 2 advocacy groups from opposite political traditions — New England and the South — are sitting down to talk. Tired of foreign wars and what they consider right-wing courts, the Middlebury Institute wants liberal states like Vermont to be able to secede peacefully. That sounds just fine to the League of the South, a conservative group that refuses to give up on Southern independence.
The dominoes are toppling. What began as a credit crunch has turned into a dollar crunch. We are witnessing a run on the world's paramount reserve currency, an event that occurs twice a century or so, and never with a benign outcome. The US dollar has fallen through parity against the Canadian dollar and plummeted to all-time lows against a basket of currencies. This is dangerous. None of the mature economic blocs seems able to take the strain, let alone step in to restore order. Ultimately, Europe and Japan are in worse shape than the US. A mood of sauve qui peut is taking hold. Until now, the euro has served as the "anti-dollar", the default choice for Asians and petrodollar powers wary of US assets. This cannot last. Europe will not let America export its day of reckoning to the rest of the world. It will counter with its own devaluation.
What would it mean if China ever threw its economic weight around by dumping dollars in a major way? Suffice it to say it is referred to in some quarters as China's financial "nuclear option," because it would be the economic equivalent of detonating a thermonuclear weapon in the world's financial markets. But the American dollar's fate is hardly in the hands of the Chinese alone. Other foreign parties suspected of participating in a new "Currency Cold War" are Iran, Russia and Venezuela.
Vietnam is planning to cut its purchases of US Treasuries and other dollar bonds, raising fears that Asian central banks with control over two thirds of the world's foreign reserves may soon join the flight from US assets. The concern is that once 1 or 2 members of the region jump ship, it could set off a broader scramble. None of them want to be the last one left holding a devalued asset. Vietnam's central bank said this week that it would move "gradually" to a floating currency.
Eurozone policymakers will urge the US and other countries at the next G7 meeting to take a strong stance against exchange rate volatility in an effort to halt the dollar's decline against the euro. Jean-Claude Juncker, chairman of the eurozone finance ministers' group, on Monday said that the euro's rise "tends to worry us a lot" and that it was no longer acceptable that Europe was bearing the brunt of "the consequences of the existing global imbalances".
Has deregulation left the economy at risk of another 1929-scale crash? Should the Fed keep bailing out speculators? Robert Kuttner testified before the House Financial Services Committee.
An era ended November 16, 2006 when economist Milton Friedman died. Rarely had so much praise been given anyone so undeserving in light of the human wreckage his legacy left strewn everywhere. Once anointed, well funded and nurtured, he could never admit he was wrong or apologize to millions of victims who proved his ideology was hokum. Never have so many suffered so much to reveal the flimflam of one man and the movement he led until his death. That's the dark side of "capitalism and freedom" unmasked that his torrent of eulogies left out.
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