Sunday

The Daily WAR (08-27)

 
 
    Benedict XVI wished good health to Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia upon receiving in audience Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad. Interfax, a Russian news agency, reported that after extending his greetings to the patriarch, the Pope discussed with Metropolitan Kirill topics concerning Orthodox-Catholic relations, as well as the need to cooperate on an international level to promote commonly-held Christian values.
    In his greeting to those present, reported by Vatican Radio, the Orthodox metropolitan said that "Catholics and Orthodox feel that they belong to the same family, since they share the same Christian values. In order to overcome the divisions the most important thing is that the East and the West leave aside considering the other as foreigners."
 
    The Vatican will release a new document on evangelization this week, with officials in Rome indicating that it will be an important statement on the duty to spread the Catholic faith. The subject of the new document, which is being released under the auspices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is evangelization.         The importance that the Vatican attaches to the subject is reflected by the list of ranking officials who will participate in a news conference introducing the document. Three cardinals will join in presenting the subject to the press.
    While Vatican officials have not announced a title for the document, or given a topic more specific than the broad theme of evangelization, informed officials suggested that this important new statement would address a lingering controversy over the claim that the Catholic Church is the one true Church of Christ.
 
    Catholics began marking Saturday 150 years since a young shepherdess saw visions of the Virgin Mary, with thousands of pilgrims expected at her shrine at Lourdes over the next year, including Pope Benedict XVI. The town of Lourdes in southwestern France is one of the main pilgrimage sites in the cult of Mary maintained by the Catholic Church, attracting millions of Christians from around the world.
    The series of visions experienced by Bernadette Soubirous included confirmation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, proclaimed 4 years later by Pope Pius IX, which declares that Mary was "without sin" when Jesus Christ was conceived.
 
 
 
It's their business, not anyone elses...
    Germany's interior ministers announced Friday that they consider Scientology to be unconstitutional. They have asked the country's domestic intelligence agency to prepare a dossier on the organization's activities with a view to ban it next year.
 
German press...
    Caught between the rock of the subprime crisis and the hard place of inflation, the European Central Bank has reacted by keeping euro zone interest rates steady at 4 percent. German commentators warn of a recession and argue that the inflation risk is being exaggerated.
 
    Germany, one of the few rich countries without a minimum wage, may be undergoing a slow-motion revolution. Germany prides itself on letting unions and employers hammer out contracts without interference from the government. But such "wage autonomy" is under pressure. Industry-wide contracts cover fewer workers, real wages have slipped and fear of "wage dumping" by competitors from China and eastern Europe haunts German workers.
    The danger, though, is that Germany will instead succumb to pressure for ever-higher wage floors for individual sectors, leading to a workers' wage spiral that will be more damaging, if more popular, than the pay rises of fat cats. In their quest for votes, Germany's leaders are courting economic danger. It was ever thus.
 
 
 
    The German interior minister has expressed strong reservations about an EU-wide "Blue Card"at a meeting of ministers in Brussels. But the need to attract skilled foreign workers was widely acknowledged.
 
    Signing up for the EU reform treaty in Lisbon on Thursday is a matter of profound consequence. It locks the UK into a process of further integration, with consequences that are hard to foresee. Yet the repercussions of Britain rejecting this treaty, albeit flawed and dangerous, would also be profound.
 
    The EU, compelled by the WTO to reach new trade deals with African nations by Dec. 31, on Saturday faced accusations of dividing and rushing its African partners. The AU's top official criticised the EU for pushing through the new Economic Partnership Agreements with individual nations or groups of nations, to Africa's disadvantage.
 
    General Sir Mike Jackson has warned that the Balkans could be engulfed in violence unless the crisis surrounding the future of the province of Kosovo can be resolved. Sir Mike fears that British troops will be sent to intervene if Kosovo's leaders unilaterally declare independence from Serbia. "The situation is volatile and likely to become more so."
(LT cartoon: Balkans stand-off)
 
    EU leaders are expected to agree this week that efforts to reach a negotiated solution to the Kosovo problem are exhausted, and offer to take responsibility for security and justice in the breakaway Serbian province. The West supports independence for the Albanian-majority territory, but insists it would not set a precedent. Other breakaway regions around the world disagree.
 
 
 
    Extremist Jewish settlers from West Bank settlements, who are opposed to a political settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, threatened to break away from Israel and set up their own Jewish state. The settlers say that if the Israeli occupation government decided to evict the settlers, from the settlements they built on confiscated Palestinian lands, within the framework of a final peace agreement with the Palestinians then they would not abide by the government decision and would declare secession from Israel.
 
    Construction of a Jewish settlement in east Jerusalem will continue despite criticism from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, an Israeli minister said. "Construction will continue at full flow, and our friends must be told this," Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman told public television. "It is clear to the whole world that Har Homa is an integral part of Israel and that Har Homa will remain an integral part of Jerusalem."
 
    Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen is set to arrive in Israel on Sunday as the first US military official of this rank to visit the country in a decade. He will meet with Israel's Chief of General Staff and the Defense Minister.
 
    Nationalistic jingoism was at fever pitch prior to the deployment of British forces to the Pashtun dominated south of Afghanistan. Then, the British dream encountered the Pashtun reality and became a nightmare. The British government naturally blamed fellow NATO allies for Britain's reverses – Germany especially came in for particular opprobrium for restricting its forces to peacekeeping duties in the North.
 
 
 
    When most Americans think of Iran, they probably think of its incendiary president, Ahmadinejad. Since his election in 2005, he has gleefully shocked the world. But while Ahmadinejad is surely the regime's face, he's not its boss. Since Ayatollah Khomeini's death in 1989, the real power in Tehran has belonged to Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Khamenei. Ahmadinejad makes the noise, but Khamenei pulls the strings.
    Under the Iranian system, a president matters far less than the supreme leader. For all Ahmadinejad's bluster, he is not "the decider." It's the unelected and unaccountable Khamenei who sits atop Iran's labyrinthine political structure. He gets the last word on whether Iran should try to get the bomb or try to talk to the US. So to deal with Iran, the West must get to know Khamenei.
    The supreme leader is an enigma even to most of Iran's 70 million people. In fact, he's far more cautious, conservative and pragmatic than the bellowing Ahmadinejad. Khamenei wants a "Goldilocks" kind of Islamic Republic - not too hot, not too cold. He's reluctant to tilt too far in any one direction and keen to keep squabbling factions on board. He says that nuclear weapons are un-Islamic but heartily approves of the knowledge and fuel required to build them. And he is even willing to work with the US to bring stability to Afghanistan and Iraq - as long as Iran gets to expand its regional influence by keeping its feeble neighbors under its thumb.
 
    Iran has completely stopped carrying out its oil deals in dollar following the OPEC proposal to trade crude in non-dollar currencies. "The dollar is no longer a reliable currency, considering its devaluation and the loss suffered by oil exporters," said Iran's Oil Minister. "Iran proposed in the last OPEC summit that member states use a reliable currency in their oil transactions to prevent further losses."
 
    Iran's deputy Energy Minister says Iran will soon start transferring electricity to European countries through Russia.
 
    A spokesman for Iranian foreign policy officials said the US politicized a report stating Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003. "The claim that Iran had changed its nuclear weapons programs since 2003 is a mere lie to show that it was the US pressures that forced Iran to stop its nuclear weapons program. Unlike what was claimed by the 16 US intelligence bodies, Iran has never pursued a program to develop nuclear weapons even before 2003 and this is another lie to deceive international community."
 
    A report says the Zionists are to present "hardcore evidence" on Iran's nuclear plans to the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. In a bid to defuse the negative impact the US National Intelligence Estimate has had on US dreams of attacking Iran, the Israeli intelligence community plans to present the US with "evidence", hoping to reverse the effect of the report.
    Political pundits believe the Zionist regime will not stop leveling threadbare accusations against Tehran until a case is made for the approval of a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.
 
    The neocons were dealt an unexpected body blow with the Dec. 3 release of a stunning US intelligence assessment that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program 4 years ago. The report knocked the wind out of the neocons' hope for a military confrontation with Iran before the end of Bush's term.
    Though Bush and the neocons again find themselves on the defensive, the political battle is far from over. The neocons retain extraordinary strength within the US news media as well as in the leading Washington think tanks and inside many of the presidential campaigns. So, the neocons may have been staggered a few times in recent months, but it would be premature to count them out.
 
    Pentagon chief Rober Gates lashed out at Iran for seeking to cause chaos "everywhere you turn" regardless of the blood spilled and said its neighbors must demand that Tehran renounce any intention of pursuing nuclear weapons. Members of the audience challenged his rebukes of Tehran, evidence of the divide among Arab nations over the Bush administration's tough stance.
 
    Gulf countries, cautious about the nuclear standoff between the US and Iran, signalled loudly at a regional security conference on Saturday their opposition to any military option against Tehran. "We want the military factor to be eliminated," the secretary general of the Gulf Cooperation Council told AFP.
    In a surprising move, Qatar invited President Ahmadinejad to attend a GCC annual summit on Monday, making him the first Iranian president to take part in a Gulf leaders summit.
 
    Despite Monday's announcement that US intelligence agencies now believe Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003, officials continue to insist that "all options are on the table" with regard to Iran.
    Indeed, the US military has been doing detailed planning for years now for a possible attack on Iran. Earlier this month, the Federation of American Scientists obtained a planning document from the US Strategic Command which revealed that the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review and White House guidance issued in response to the attacks against the US led to the creation of new nuclear strike options against states seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
 
Good video...
    Former UN Iraq weapons inspector Scott Ritter discusses the crisis in US-Iranian relations in a talk at the Sanctuary for Independent Media.
 
 
 
    Bush and Cheney and the rest of the Pod people are really starting to sound out of touch. They are crying about the recent National Intelligence Estimate and how wrong it is, how biased its creators, and how mistaken the world would be to believe a word of it. Neoconservatives everywhere are getting eye tics and cocking their heads as if receiving encrypted messages from the mother ship.
    The Bush-Cheney denial of the strategic and political import of the latest NIE on Iran, and their demand for continued aggressive, pre-emptive wars should surprise no one. American tyranny and instability has already frightened the world, and domestic awareness of executive and legislative tyranny is growing each day.
 
    Well, it should be 2 strikes and you're out for the foam-at-the-mouth warmongers. These so-called foreign-policy experts are a contemptible lot. If they were honorable people, they would confess their error and apologize to the people they tried to discredit, but of course they are not honorable people.
    The warmongers have blood on their hands. And don't expect them to let up on trying to paint Iran as an imminent danger to the world.
    The worst of the lot are those who pose as journalists but who really are water-carriers for the administration, the Republican Party, the neoconservative clique or, in some cases, Israel. A real journalist has loyalty to only one group – his readers or listeners. He has an obligation to tell them the truth as best as he can determine it and not to pass on propaganda from someone behind the scenes.
    The future grows dark for the US. We have a bad administration that is corrupt, secretive, incompetent and disdainful of liberty. We have a press that for the most part cannot distinguish news from celebrity gossip. We have an education system that is manufacturing functional illiterates. We have a public that seemingly believes the only things worthwhile in life are entertainment and consumption.
 
    In his new book, "The Fall of the House of Bush," the reporter Craig Unger attempts to turn an all-encompassing, wide-angle lens on the Bush presidency, looking at the rise of George W. Bush and his support from the religious right; his relationship with his father, and its impact on foreign policy; the alliance between Israeli hard-liners and Christian Zionists, and the neoconservatives' push for the war against Iraq; the administration's use of flawed intelligence before the invasion; and Vice President Dick Cheney's efforts to expand executive power. The resulting book is a sprawling hodgepodge of the persuasive and the speculative, the well researched and the hastily assembled, the original and the highly derivative.
 
    If you don't know where your birth certificate is, you better find it. Because of new federal ID requirements coming late next year, you're going to need it when your driver's license expires.
 
    Our latest poll has revealed a large majority English voters believe everyone in the United Kingdom is better off remaining aboard the good ship Britannia - but many think it won't be long before the order goes out to abandon ship.
 
 
 
    Living expenses in the US have risen dramatically in the past few years, in ways that are not reflected by official measures of inflation or considered in already grim economic outlooks for the coming year. Soaring energy costs and a spike in the costs of basic foods relative to wages have had a significant impact on living standards for working class families already hurt by the ongoing collapse of the housing market and tightened credit market.
 
    Rising incomes in Asia and ethanol subsidies in America have put an end to a long era of falling food prices. In early September the world price of wheat rose to over $400 a tonne, the highest ever recorded. Earlier this year the price of maize (corn) exceeded $175 a tonne, again a world record. The Economist's food-price index is now at its highest since it began in 1845, having risen by 33% in the past year.
    World cereals stocks as a proportion of production are the lowest ever recorded. Yet what is most remarkable about the present bout of "agflation" is that record prices are being achieved at a time not of scarcity but of abundance. That the biggest grain harvest the world has ever seen is not enough to forestall scarcity prices tells you that something fundamental is affecting the world's demand for cereals.
    Two things, in fact. One is increasing wealth in China and India. This is stoking demand for meat in those countries, in turn boosting the demand for cereals to feed to animals. Because this change in diet has been slow and incremental, it cannot explain the dramatic price movements of the past year. The second change can: the rampant demand for ethanol as fuel for American cars. America is easily the world's largest maize exporter—and it now uses more of its maize crop for ethanol than it sells abroad.
    Ethanol is the dominant reason for this year's increase in grain prices. Ethanol accounts for some of the rise in the prices of other crops and foods too. Rising prices will also hurt the most vulnerable of all. In every country, the least well-off consumers are hardest hit when food prices rise.
 
 
 
 
    If you want to avoid cancer, live like a monk. That is the inescapable conclusion from research into one of the world's most renowned monastic communities. The austere regime of the 1,500 monks on Mount Athos, in northern Greece, begins with an hour's pre-dawn prayers and is designed to protect their souls.
    Their low-stress existence and simple diet (no meat, occasional fish, home-grown vegetables and fruit) may, however, also protect them from more worldly troubles. The monks, who inhabit a peninsula from which women are banned, enjoy astonishingly low rates of cancer.
    [WAR: So is it really the diet that makes the difference ... or the lack of women?!! ;-)]
 
Once upon a time...
    It's ironic to hear Religious Right groups portray themselves as the great defenders of Christmas - their spiritual forebears hated the holiday and even banned its celebration. The Puritans of Massachusetts Bay frowned on Christmas revelry, considering the holiday a Roman Catholic affectation. A law in the colony barred anyone from taking the day off work, feasting or engaging in other celebrations on Christmas, under penalty of a 5-shilling fine. Many Protestant churches refused to hold services, considering the holiday "popish."
    It might also surprise Religious Right activists to learn that many of the Christmas traditions they defend so vociferously have, at best, a tenuous connection to Christianity. Several of the holiday's most common features grow out of pre-Christian religions. Germans were early boosters of the Christmas tree and brought it to America.
    As strange as it may seem, when Religious Right legal groups go to court to battle the "War on Christmas," they may really be defending practices historically associated with the worship not of the son of God but the sun in the sky.
 
Cool tools...
 
 
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