Benedict XVI says the Gospel message needs to affect the way people think, judge and act, and thus, the world needs masters of faith and well-trained heralds. The Pope affirmed this when he greeted students of the Roman pontifical universities gathered in St. Peter's Square. He told them that the chance to study in Rome, "see of Peter's Successor and thus of the Petrine ministry," a city "rich in historical memories, in masterpieces of art and culture, and above all in eloquent Christian testimony […] will help you to reinforce the sense of belonging to the Church and of fidelity to the universal magisterium of the Pope."
The anniversary came and went in silence, in the Vatican, without any official commemorations. But the questions addressed 100 years ago in the encyclical "Pascendi Dominici Gregis" by saint Pius X "on the errors of modernism" are still seen as relevant. The reservation is due, instead, to the specific measures that the Church took a century ago: measures viewed as mistaken by today's Church authorities.
The leaders of 27 EU states met in Lisbon to ratify a pro-business "Reform Treaty." The treaty is due to take effect in 2009. The agreement is the latest stage in a prolonged effort by European leaders to push through a treaty aimed at increasing the powers of the non-elected EU bureaucracy in Brussels and enable the EU to extend its influence as a major trading, political and military bloc on the world arena. The deal struck in Lisbon will, however, do little to overcome the conflicts between rival national bourgeoisies or advance Europe as an independent political power.
In 2 major European states, the election of leaders—Angela Merkel in Germany and Nicholas Sarkozy in France—who favour closer links to the US acts as a brake on the drive to strengthen Europe's status as a world power. And while the centralisation of power contained in the Reform Treaty creates new possibilities for both powers to press ahead with a so-called 2-speed Europe led by France and Germany, the 2 countries have been at loggerheads in recent months on a number of important economic and political issues.
President Putin made a new warning to Europe over the Iran nuclear standoff and Kosovo's push for independence ahead of a summit with EU leaders. The EU had been hoping to patch up differences with Putin at the summit. But the Russian leader outlined sharp differences as he arrived, likening supporters of tough policies against Iran to "mad people wielding razor blades" and calling for "patience" on Kosovo's future.
A former Muslim official in Jerusalem claimed the city's famous Temple Mount never housed a Jewish temple and the Western Wall was once part of a mosque. Ikrema Sabri, the former mufti of Jerusalem, said Jews are incorrect in believing the Western Wall, long revered as a Jewish holy site, was once part of the ancient 2nd Temple. "The wall is not part of the Jewish temple. It is just the western wall of the mosque. There is not a single stone with any relation at all to the history of the Hebrews. There was never a Jewish temple on Al-Aksa (the mosque compound) and there is no proof that there was ever a temple. Because Allah is fair, he would not agree to make Al-Aksa if there were a temple there for others beforehand."
Israel's Science, Culture and Sport Minister said Friday that Israel is ready to pay the price of peace with Syria, which he described as a withdrawal from the Golan Heights in exchange for peace with the entire Arab world. "Syria still sees peace as a strategic goal, and is closer with Israel than with Iran. President Assad knows quite well that the solution is not far away."
World leaders may have spent all week urging restraint — but the reality is that Turkish troops are already well inside Iraq. The Daily Telegraph yesterday witnessed Turkey's military presence, including tanks, 12 miles inside Kurdish northern Iraq. Their presence here could prove invaluable to the 100,000 heavily armed Turkish troops massed at the border awaiting orders to stream across.
The head of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards dismissed the possibility of US military action against Iran and warned that his forces would respond with an "even more decisive" strike if attacked, an Iranian news agency reported Friday. "The Islamic Republic has the strength and power of its people's faith. This power is joined with experience, knowledge and technology in the realms of defense. The enemy knows it cannot make any mistake, so these words are just exaggeration. We will reply to any strike with an even more decisive strike."
Iran's leadership boasts it is safe from US military action, saying Washington knows an attack would find no world support and send oil prices skyrocketing. That confidence is buoying the government in its standoff with the West, despite new sanctions. "Without any war, the price of oil has nearly reached $100 a barrel, so if a firecracker goes off in the Persian Gulf, the price will reach more than $200." "America knows well that while it can start such an attack, how it ends will not be in Washington's hands, and such an attack will lead to America's collapse."
The barely reported highlight of President Putin's visit to Tehran for the Caspian Sea summit last week was a key face-to-face meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. A high-level diplomatic source in Tehran tells Asia Times Online that essentially Putin and the Supreme Leader have agreed on a plan to nullify the George W Bush administration's relentless drive towards launching a preemptive attack, perhaps a tactical nuclear strike, against Iran. An American attack on Iran will be viewed by Moscow as an attack on Russia.
German press...
Rather than wait for the UN to agree on sanctions against Iran, Washington has decided to go it alone, imposing tough unilateral sanctions on the mullah regime. German commentators on Friday are divided on whether the move will have the desired effect.
Former US President Jimmy Carter has strongly criticized US new attitude towards Iran, calling any military attack a "horrible mistake and a tragedy." "I think it would be a mistake. It would precipitate another war for which we're not prepared, when we're already bogged down 100%, maximum capability in Iraq. Iran is a decidedly more formidable military challenge than Iraq ever was. And I don't think we are prepared to undertake that sort of challenge."
A senior foreign policy adviser to Rudy Giuliani has urged that Iran be bombed using cruise missiles and "bunker busters" to set back Teheran's nuclear programme by at least 5 years. The tough message was delivered by Norman Podhoretz, one of the founders of neoconservatism, who has also imparted his stark advice personally to a receptive President Bush. "Unlike a ground invasion where you've got to mass hundreds of thousands of troops, it takes 6 months and everybody knows you're mobilising, with air strikes, we've got 3 carriers in the region and a lot of submarines. I would say it would take 5 minutes. You'd wake up one morning and the strikes would have been ordered and carried out during the night. All the president has to do is say go."
[WAR: I'll just let Scripture speak for itself: "The town of Aczib ("deceit") will prove deceptive to the kings of Israel." (Micah 1:14). "(Judah's Canaanite wife) gave birth to still another son and named him Shelah. It was at Kezib ("false") that she gave birth to him." (Gen 38:5). "Judah has broken faith. A detestable thing has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem: Judah has desecrated the sanctuary YAHWEH loves, by marrying the daughter of a foreign god." (Mal 2:11) "I know the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan." (Rev 2:9). "...those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars..." (Rev 3:9).]
While the Bush administration's decision Thursday on a unilateral escalation of sanctions against Iran has provoked consternation and anger overseas—President Putin, for instance, compared the US policy to "running around like a madman with a razor blade in his hand"—the response from the US political establishment has been generally supportive. In other words, the Bush administration, with the full support of Hillary Clinton and the congressional Democratic leadership, is concocting a case for war, just as it did in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, so that no matter what the Iranian leadership does it will be unable to stave off a military assault by American imperialism.
Nestled deep in George Bush's latest $190 billion request to Congress for emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is a tantalising little item that has received scant attention. The US Department of Defence has asked for an additional $88 million to modify B2 stealth bombers so that they can carry a 30,000lb bomb called the massive ordnance penetrator (MOP). The MOP is an advanced form of a "bunker buster", an air-delivered weapon with an explosive capacity to destroy targets deep underground. Explaining the request, the Administration says it is in response to an "urgent operational need from theatre commanders". What kind of emergency could that be?
Bush and Cheney are steering the US into a collapse. We know that Bush and Cheney are capable of pre-emptive attack. We know that Bush will act if he believes he is right no matter what the costs are. In his distorted worldview, Iran with nuclear weapons is a scenario worth any cost to avoid. Why may an unprovoked attack on Iran lead to WW3 and why may it lead to the collapse of the US?
The first stages of WW3 are economic warfare designed to cripple the US and halt its war-making capacity. The price of oil by this point has already soared to $200 a barrel. Gold soars to $1,500–$2,000 an ounce. The severity of the emergency allows Bush and Cheney to assume emergency powers and begin a dictatorship. Elections are postponed. The US collapses.
Unfortunately, even if this scenario does not occur, the position of the US is so precarious that any number of other scenarios equally disastrous lie in wait. This house needs urgently to be put in order or it will fall, and especially if it does not terminate its imperial adventures. The very fact that Bush and Cheney (or any major US political officials) gain by starting WW3 is a terrible indictment of our entire political system.
It's not civil disobedience, but corporate disobedience - upsetting the corporate control paradigm - that just plain flips out the media oligarchs and their loyal proxies. The most powerful weapon the corporate state has is editorial control. The information clampdown is total, on certain topics. No "debate" is allowed, and opposition voices are not permitted to appear despite the validity of their case, or the amount and quality of evidence they can provide. Opposition is routinely written out of history, and it is demonized when it refuses to remain silent.
President Chavez said US foreign policy is in part responsible for soaring oil prices and predicted that crude will continue its upward spiral. "Oil is headed for US$100. And if the US keeps threatening oil-producing countries or trying to destabilize us like they did in Iraq ... the price of oil is going to continue rising." Chavez, who has warned Washington that any attack on his allies in Iran would trigger a military conflict worse than Iraq, accused President Bush of "threatening WW3 with atomic weapons." "It's enough for him to be taken to the madhouse."
Australia's treasurer has warned that a "huge tsunami" will engulf global financial markets when China bows to international pressure and floats its currency. "That will be a wild ride when that happens. That will set off a huge tsunami that will go through world financial markets. The day they decide to float their currency you are going to get huge reversals of financial flows around the globe, which will affect all exchange rates, that's why I compared it to a tsunami."
Last week, the Freemarket Gold and Money Report broke the news that the US Treasury had been removing gold from its vaults and moving it to banks throughout the country. From there, these supplies presumably made their way on to the world market. The basic thesis is that some of the world's central banks, working with some of the planet's largest financial institutions, have together depressed the value of gold and, thereby, maintained the US dollar as the world's principal reserve currency. They have done this by selling their gold reserves whenever gold prices rallied. But whatever the motives of central bankers, it does seem that until all these bubbles stop exploding, it will remain a good time to own gold.
The Good Ship Bubble Economy has hit a monetary iceberg. The question now is this: Is the scrape long enough so that it has punched a gaping hole in all of the watertight bulkheads? Investors believe that the central bank's ability to lower a target overnight rate enables it to raise stock prices by fiat – not by creating capital, but merely by making a public announcement of a target rate.
The US housing market is down – on paper – by over $1 trillion dollars, CBS News reports. But who knows how much? The report cited one forecast that says it will be down by another $3 trillion in a year. Sellers learn slowly. Their homes will not rebound just because sellers think they are special, that they can beat the market. In a year, there will be real fear. Sellers will not be able to sell. Inventories will be much higher. If you are seller, think "Titanic." Lower your price now and get out while the ship is still afloat. The water will be just as cold next year. Put on a life vest and jump, before the lifeboats float out of swimming distance.
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