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THE HOLY ROMAN ...
B16's response to Muslim scholars' letter
Here is Benedict XVI's response to the open letter that 138 Muslims scholars addressed to the himself and Christian leaders on Oct. 13. The response was released by the Vatican press office, and signed Nov. 19 on the Pontiff's behalf by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Pope's secretary of state.
B1 accepts B16 primacy - in part
Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople has said that he is prepared to recognize the primacy of the Pope - although he does not accept the Catholic position on the implications of that primacy.
In an interview with a Bulgarian television network, the Orthodox leader - who is himself recognized as the "first among equals" in the Orthodox world - indicated his support for a statement released by the joint Catholic-Orthodox theological commission at an October meeting in Ravenna, Italy. That statement had recalled that during the first Christian millennium, the Bishop of Rome was recognized as the foremost of the patriarchs.
Bartholomew went on to say, however, that he does not believe the primacy enjoyed by the Pope in the early centuries of Christianity included authority over other patriarchs. The primacy of Rome, he explained, involved precedence of honor rather than disciplinary status over the world's bishops.
... EMPIRE OF THE GERMAN NATION
The company she keeps
"As Chancellor, I decide whom I will meet and where." Angela Merkel aimed this salvo not at a foreign potentate but at Frank-Walter Steinmeier, her deputy and foreign minister. Merkel was defending her recent meeting with the Dalai Lama, which Steinmeier had denounced as “display-window politics” that needlessly strained Germany's relations with China. Behind this row lies a bigger one: how to respond to the rising power of China and Russia.
EUROPE/RUSSIA
Germany worried over EU energy plan
Germany is worried the EU Commission will succeed in convincing the country's European allies to give up their resistance against the EU's energy liberalisation package and vote for it. "The opposition front against the unbundling plan is crumbling. The Commission is doing everything in order to get a majority vote for its plan. In the end, that would be an affront to Germany."
The Polish farewell
Manners may change, but it is national interests that still shape the inner life of the EU.
German troops to boost Kosovo
Germany will send an additional 500 troops to Kosovo to ensure stability after delegates failed to reach an agreement on the future of the territory, the defense ministry announced yesterday. The 500 troops will be added to the 17,000-strong NATO-led Kosovo Force. Officials fear renewed violence in the Balkan territory after Serbian and Kosovar delegations failed to agree on Kosovo's final status. A 3-day meeting outside Vienna, Austria, was the last of 6 meetings between Kosovar and Serbian leaders. Kosovo is now expected to declare independence within the next 3 months.
(Also: If Kosovo goes free)
(Also: Kosovo and diplomatic terrorism)
Putin: Vote for me or face disintegration
President Putin has warned Russians to vote for him in parliamentary elections this weekend or face the country's "disintegration". Urging voters to back his United Russia party, Putin warned that the liberal opposition which governed Russia after the 1991 Soviet collapse wanted to "return to a time of humiliation, dependency and disintegration." "We should not allow back into power the people who... want to change and muddle Russia's development plans."
(Also: Putin's phoney election)
Blowback from Moscow
Blowback is a term broadly used in espionage to describe the unintended consequences of covert operations. The nationalism and anti-Americanism rife in Putin's Russia is blowback for our contemptuous disregard of Russian sensibilities and our arrogant intrusions into Russia's space.
(Also: Intrusion: A chronic Western illness)
Russia pulls out from CFE treaty
President Putin today signed a law suspending Russia's participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, the Kremlin announced. The suspension takes effect Dec. 12. Under the moratorium, Russia will halt inspections and verifications of its military sites by NATO countries and will no longer be obligated to limit the number of conventional weapons deployed west of the Urals.
MIDEAST/AFRICA/ASIA
Elusive Biblical wall found
A biblical wall that has eluded archaeologists for years has finally been found, according to an Israeli scholar. A team of archaeologists in Jerusalem has uncovered what they believe to be part of a wall mentioned in the Bible's Book of Nehemiah. The discovery, made in Jerusalem's ancient City of David, came as a result of a rescue attempt on a tower which was in danger of collapse. Artifacts including pottery shards and arrowheads found under the tower suggested that both the tower and the nearby wall are from the 5th century B.C., the time of Nehemiah.
Olmert warns of "end of Israel"
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said failure to negotiate a 2-state solution with the Palestinians would spell the end of the State of Israel. He warned of a "South African-style struggle" which Israel would lose if a Palestinian state was not established.
Netanyahu: Arabs don't respect a weak PM
Arabs do not respect a weak prime minister," Binyamin Netanyahu said following the Annapolis summit, which he described as "a failure."
Playing roulette in Pakistan
The royal family’s favored Pakistani “president-in-exile,” Nawaz Sharif, returned in a triumphant homecoming, throwing down a major challenge to the rule of Gen. Musharraf, who’s still favored, for the moment, by the US.
Although Sharif can claim to be the true pro-democracy choice, given that he was deposed as prime minister by Musharraf’s 1999 military coup, the US is hoping to throw the deeply corrupt but Westernized Benazir Bhutto into the mix out of fear that Sharif is soft on Muslim fanatics in his own country as well as on the Taliban.
US warships pass thru Taiwan Strait
After the Chinese government initially refused to allow a US warship to dock in Hong Kong last week, sources say the Navy ordered the vessels to return to port in Japan, and to specifically travel along the contentious Taiwan Strait on its way back to Yokosuka. The US has cautiously avoided traveling through the Taiwan Strait since 1996. According to Japanese reports, the US Navy carriers deployed aircraft to the flight decks in preparation for launch, if the situation called for it.
PROVOKING PERSIA
Annapolis is part of plan to attack Iran, start WW3
The Deputy Head of Turkey's 'Saadet Partisi' warned that the so-called Peace Conference in Annapolis will be paving the way for WW3: "This war against Iran will be launched by the US and Israel with the support of Turkey. Once the power of these 2 will prove insufficient, UK, France and then finally NATO forces – including Turkey - will also become involved. In that case, Russia will probably side with Iran merely due to its opposition to the US."
Why does Bush invoke the threat of WW3?
On October 17, George Bush made a remarkable statement concerning the mounting tensions between the US and Iran: “If you’re interested in avoiding WW3, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”
Bush’s statement has profound and far-reaching implications. Washington’s deliberate stoking of political tensions with Iran over the last year—with accusations of Iranian military assistance to the anti-US Iraqi resistance, and the branding of portions of the Iranian armed forces as “terrorist”—does not simply threaten Iran. It is a confrontation with a global cast of characters.
What is so crucial about Iran that its acquisition of a few crude nuclear devices—far outweighed by the hundreds of strategic nuclear devices held by Israel, let alone the thousands possessed by the major nuclear powers—would trigger a world war? When Washington contemplates fighting WW3 over an Iranian nuclear weapon, whom does it view as its potential adversaries, and why?
(Also: Biden: Impeachment if Bush bombs Iran)
US wants it both ways on Iranian pact
President Bush and leading Democratic presidential candidates have said a military attack on Iran is a viable option. According to the president, Iran's pursuit of nuclear technology puts the Middle East "under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust."
Yet the 1981 Algiers Accords prohibit such an attack. The Bush administration has defended the validity of the Algiers Accords in court, and the courts agreed, so there can be no doubt of the documents' legality. Issued Jan. 19, 1981, the accords declared: "It is now and will be the policy of the United States not to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran's internal affairs."
By engaging in this covert war and selectively ignoring the Algiers Accords, the US undermines efforts to make Iran follow UN resolutions and international law. To support the Algiers Accords and reject them at the same time is consistent with the general illogic of the Bush administration. But to allow this backdoor war to continue is to court disaster.
ECONOMY
"Snooty" bankers blamed for crisis
The “snooty” attitude of bankers and financiers who thought they were cleverer than everyone else is largely to blame for the global credit squeeze “disaster”, Germany’s finance minister has said. In an interview with the Financial Times, he played down the impact on Europe’s largest economy of the turmoil but said steps had to be taken to raise risk awareness.
Bernanke hints of further rate cuts
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke hinted that another interest rate cut may be needed to bolster the economy. The worsening credit crunch, a deepening housing slump and rising energy prices probably will create some "headwinds for the consumer in the months ahead."
Losing faith in the greenback
How long will the dollar remain the world's premier currency? The long-run value of all paper currencies is zero. That is a fond saying of Bill Bonner, goldbug and publisher of the Daily Reckoning, a contrarian financial newsletter. So why should the dollar be any different?
Iran's president, seems to think the long run is now: 2 weeks ago he decried the dollar as a “worthless piece of paper.” And Jim Rogers, a famously shrewd investor, asks why anyone would buy dollars.
America's currency has been infected by the sense of crisis that bedevils its economy and financial markets. Speculative selling of the dollar is close to an all-time high, reckons Stephen Jen at Morgan Stanley. Many believe—and some evidently hope—that the greenback might be on its way out as an international currency. Worrying parallels are seen between the dollar's recent fall and the decline of sterling as a reserve currency half a century ago.
(Op-ed: The panic about the dollar)
The fallacy of money mania
It's been a grueling Fall 2007, with the continued shocks from the housing mess, the market sell-off, oil still sky high, the dollar hitting new lows, and the rising gold price giving that ever-ominous sign of trouble ahead. Business conditions have deteriorated dramatically.
Ah but wait! One day in November, the stock market soars and traders are wild with glee. The storm clouds are gone and the sun is out. What happened? No fundamentals changed. No new reports came in. No numbers were revised. What happened was but a few words from the vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, spoken at a roundtable at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Paper money is not the same thing as wealth. Wealth comes from trade, investment, and capital accumulation. Money is merely a tool that facilitates the creation of wealth; it is not identical to it.
JapAnglo-Saxon capitalism
The improvement in Japan's economic performance is clear, and at least some of it is due to the adoption of the hybrid model. "Japan has both embraced and rejected American capitalism." Having identified the American style of capitalism as a possible model, Japan's business leaders were highly selective about which aspects of it to adopt.
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