Pope Benedict XVI said divisions and conflicts "cast dark shadows" on the future of humanity, warning of the danger coming from more countries possessing nuclear weapons. He urged authorities to step up negotiations for a "progressive and mutually agreed dismantling of existing nuclear weapons." "Humanity today is unfortunately experiencing great division and sharp conflicts which cast dark shadows on its future."
Cardinal Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, presented the Pope's message for the 2008 World Day of Peace, celebrated each Jan. 1. "Throughout the message, the Pope shows us how the family and peace are constantly linked in a fruitful union. This constitutes one of the most stimulating conditions for creating an appropriate cultural, social and political vision of the complex questions associated with achieving peace in our times."
Dresdner Stollen baked in the grand city of Dresden is the queen of German Christmas cakes and has gained a growing popularity abroad. But the small town of Torgau is risking the wrath of Dresden's bakers by claiming it invented the cake 550 years ago, and launching its own Stollen to mark the occasion.
Celebration of the powdered-sugar-coated delicacy reaches religious proportions in this eastern city. Thousands turned out last Saturday to cheer the world's biggest Stollen, a 3-tonne monster, as it was hauled through the streets on a horse-drawn cart in an annual ritual not unlike a crowd of Aztecs worshipping a sun god.
A German intelligence agency has spoken out against outlawing the Church of Scientology in Germany. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution, a domestic intelligence and security agency, said a ban at the moment "is not realistic."
The positions that Chancellor Merkel has taken in the recent period with regard to Russia, China, and Iran, not only damage German economic interests and thereby, jobs; they also infringe fundamentally upon the security interests of Germany, because they send Germany out of bounds in pursuit of a neoconservative agenda, and contribute to an atmosphere of confrontation. Either Merkel is impervious to advice, or she really does not understand the complexity of historical processes.
It is in the fundamental self-interest of Germany, that in the face of the coming hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis of the world economy, we seek close collaboration with Russia, China, India, and the actual America, which is now making itself heard in the tradition of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Diggin' up bones...
Karlheinz Schreiber said Tuesday for the first time that foreign interests and money were involved in the campaign to unseat Canadian Tory leader Joe Clark at the 1983 Progressive Conservative convention.
He told the House of Commons ethics committee that the money he used to help arrange and pay for jets that transported anti-Clark delegates from Quebec to the convention in Winnipeg came from himself; the late Franz Josef Strauss, the chairman of Airbus Industrie; and probably from Strauss's political party, the Christian Social Union. "The money came from myself, and from the Strauss family, and probably from the [Christian] Social Union."
History shedding light on present and future...
We know that, acting on the instructions of his Bavarian masters, whose leader was Franz Joseph Strauss, Minister President of Bavaria and the dominant voice in the Christian Social Union, the fervently right-wing partner in German politics of the more moderate CDU, Schreiber helped finance the overthrow of Joe Clark as leader of the Progressive Conservatives.
Strauss and his CSU henchmen saw it as their role to support the rise to leadership of conservatives of their ilk in the right-wing parties of the West. Schreiber and the Bavarians had played a role, quite likely decisive, in nudging the support to dump Clark.
What I can't fathom are the media pundits whose line of analysis is that what went on in the 1980s was the bad old days of influence peddling and that all this has happily been put behind us. Are they kidding?
Secret deal with Iran?...
Germany has released and repatriated 2 men involved in a 1992 assassination of Iranian dissidents in Berlin. A chorus of criticism follows the release both abroad and from German critics who believe it was part of a deal with Iran.
Israelis strongly opposed the release in the hope that Germany would hold on to Darabi to use him as leverage in learning the fate of Israeli fighter pilot Ron Arad, who was shot down in Lebanon in 1986. It suspects Iran, or the Iranian-supported extremist group Hezbollah, of knowing the pilot's fate. In 2004, Germany offered to trade Darabi for information about Arad, but Hezbollah did not agree to the deal. In October, Prime Minister Olmert telephoned Chancellor Merkel to ask her to block the men's deportation.
In a surprise move, Swiss lawmakers ousted leading far-right politician Christoph Blocher from the nation's cabinet, threatening to plunge the country into political crisis.
The majestic Jeronimos monastery in Lisbon where EU leaders sign a new treaty Thursday was built 500 years ago when Portugal was a monarchy and the country's seafarers changed the course of European history.
EU governments say the Lisbon Treaty will ensure their bloc's international influence and prosperity in the 21st century. Like Portugal's 16th-century kings, though, most will not be checking whether their citizens agree.
The new treaty is intended as a more palatable version of what was a grander project — the European Constitution, which leaders signed with much pomp in Rome in 2004.
(Also: Brown to sign EU treaty himself)
Behind the regional ruling elites stand rival major powers, which are using them as pawns in the struggle to consolidate and expand their global economic and strategic interests. Kosovo has become a volatile arena, reminiscent of the terrible years preceding WW1, of great power rivalry.
The US, along with the major European powers, is asserting its interests in the former Soviet republics and spheres of influence. Russia, encouraged by rising oil revenues and the crisis in Iraq, is seeking to realise its own aspirations as a regional and world power.
The catastrophic conditions facing the people of the Balkans demonstrate the reactionary implications of the various forms of nationalism that have been promoted in the region by both imperialism and Stalinism.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Balkans have assumed exceptional strategic importance as a staging post for the projection of imperialist power towards the vital energy reserves of the Caspian Sea and Central Asia.
The renewed push for Kosovan independence raises once more the spectre of ethnic cleansing and direct imperialist military intervention. But this takes place under conditions where tensions between the US, Europe and Russia are running even higher than they were in 1999. What is posed, therefore, is not merely a re-run of that earlier conflict. If the first 21st century war on European soil breaks out, it could easily develop into a far wider conflagration.
The Russian government has ordered the British Council to close down virtually its entire operation in the country by the beginning of January, worsening the already poor relations between Russia and Britain. Moscow said that the council, which promotes British culture and offers English language lessons through its 15 regional offices in Russia, had no legal basis for its operations.
Russia is alarmed by Israel's plans to build new settlements in East Jerusalem, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday. "The plans to go ahead with the settlement activities on the occupied Palestinian territories, among them East Jerusalem, cause deep regret in Moscow. Their implementation is fraught with putting an end to positive trends that are taking shape in the region."
Israeli tanks and bulldozers have moved deep into the southern Gaza Strip in the biggest incursion into the territory in months.
A top general in the Lebanese army was killed early Wednesday when a powerful car bomb exploded beside his vehicle in a residential suburb of Beirut. General Hajj, the chief of operations in the Lebanese army, died instantly along with at least 4 other soldiers.
US casualties are down in Iraq. But a retired Army Colonel argues that the surge and American payoffs to Sunni tribal leaders may eventually backfire—producing more instability and possibly a regional war.
What happens in Iraq will not stay in Iraq. That is, other states have an interest in the Sunni-Shiite fight. In many Arab countries, particularly the US's oil-providing protectorates in the Persian Gulf, the ruling elite fear Iran and oppose the emergence of a Shiite-dominated Iraq.
This brings us to the big concern: The unresolved (if not heightened) instability within Iraq could lead to unforeseen consequences of a strategic nature—say, a war between Turkey and the Kurds. It's hard to imagine a worse outcome for the US than the sudden intervention of 100,000 Turkish troops in northern Iraq.
Pakistan's military vowed a strong response to any international attempt to seize its atomic arsenal as the army successfully test-fired a nuclear-capable cruise missile on Tuesday. The security of Pakistan's estimated 50 nuclear warheads has been under global scrutiny since President Musharraf imposed a state of emergency.
But the chairman of Pakistan's joint chiefs of staff blasted reports by "vested and hostile elements in the international media" about the security of its nuclear weapons. "Suggestions have been made that our assets could either be neutralised or taken away towards safer place to prevent them from falling into wrong hands. We remain alert to such threats and are fully capable of handling these."
"Though no responsible state in the world can contemplate such an impossible operation, yet if someone did create such a scenario he was confident that Pakistan would meet the challenge strongly. Pakistan's nuclear assets are very safe and secure, and the nation need not to worry on that account. There is a very strong security system in place, which can ward off all threats, internal as well as external."
Whatever...
Teheran resumed its nuclear weapons programme soon after it was reported to have been halted in 2003, claims an Iranian dissident. The unofficial spokesman for opposition group Mujahideen e Khalq, said the Iranian regime closed the Lavizan-Shian plant, the centre of the "weaponisation" of nuclear materials and technology, late in 2003 because it feared reprisals from the international community. It opened a new installation early the following year.
Ehud Olmert said a US intelligence report will not undermine international pressure on Iran to curb its uranium enrichment. He told an international conference in Tel Aviv that the report "generated an exaggerated debate" worldwide. "Some of us even interpreted the report as an American retreat from its support of Israel. This is groundless. The US led the global campaign against Iran and mobilized its full international strength to set in motion the adoption by the UN Security Council of 2 resolutions imposing sanctions on Iran, since America was convinced that Iran constitutes a real threat to peace in the region and to vital American interests."
President Sarkozy said in an interview published today that there is a danger of war erupting over Iran's nuclear program if "the Israelis consider their security is truly threatened." In the interview with Le Nouvel Observateur magazine, Sarkozy said France was more worried about tensions between Iran and Israel than between Iran and the US.
"I have never been for war. The problem for us is not so much the risk that the Americans could launch a military intervention, but that the Israelis consider their security is truly threatened. The danger of a war exists."
President Bush on Tuesday called on Iran to explain why it had a secretive nuclear weapons program, and warned that any such efforts must not be allowed to flourish "for the sake of world peace." "Iran is dangerous," Bush said after an Oval Office meeting with Italian President Napolitano. "We believe Iran had a secret military weapons program, and Iran must explain to the world why they had such a program. ... Iran is dangerous, and they'll be even more dangerous if they learn how to enrich uranium."
President Bush still argues that "if Iran were to develop the knowledge that they could transfer to a clandestine program it would create a danger for the world" and that "Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous, and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."
The logic is simply astounding: even though Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons program they are still a threat. How so? Because Iran could have covert nuclear weapons program. (Of course, a covert program – by definition – means that we would not know about it, so we would not have to prove such a program exists to argue that Iran is a threat.)
But even without any kind of program, Iran will continue to be a threat as long as they have knowledge that could be used to build a nuclear weapon. Taken to its logical extreme, that means as long as there are nuclear physicists in Iran, that country somehow represents a grave and mortal threat to the security and survival of the US.
Not surprisingly, absurd logic leads to absurd policy. Hence, President Bush argues that the US and the international community should continue to isolate Iran. In other words, a non-nuclear Iran should be punished even more for not having a nuclear weapons program.
Reality doesn't matter. According to one aide, "That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality." Just as it did with Iraq, the administration is creating its own surreality with regard to Iran. The results are likely to be just as disastrous and dangerous.
The war party faction in the Bush Administration has suffered a pair of stunning political setbacks to their plans for further military confrontations in Southwest Asia. The danger of yet another Persian Gulf war is not over; but the prospects of perpetual war in the world's oil patch is reduced, for the first time in a long while.
Predictably, Beltway neocons and their Israeli co-thinkers have gone ballistic over the Annapolis conference and the NIE. Any fundamental shift in Bush Administration policy towards Iran, even at this late date, hinges on the removal of Cheney from office, now. As the neocon uproar shows, the war party is smarting from a pair of significant setbacks; but they are not about to give up on their confrontation agenda—unless and until their man at the White House is removed from the scene.
As someone who was involved in that long-ago affair (during Carter admin) said to me recently, if the bureaucracy wants to change a president's mind, you can't just argue. You need "a new fact." You need something to change the whole equation.
The new National Intelligence Estimate presents a "new fact" with which to maneuver toward a policy change. As for the intelligence community, it seemed determined this time not to let political pressure push it toward conclusions Cheney and Bush might want to hear.
When the new evidence that Iran had no nuclear bomb program was presented to the most senior members of Bush's national security team, including Cheney, the discussion was described by one participant as "a pretty vivid exchange." I'll bet it was.
The hawks need a nuclear Iran to fit into their world view. They need the fear factor to motivate the American public. Cheney would not have gone quietly into that good night of no Iranian bomb.
Peace? Israel doesn't need it or want it. Oh, sure, the people of Israel may want it, at least in theory. In practice, however, the successive governments they keep electing are not the least bit interested in real negotiations with the Palestinians or anybody else in the region. Where's the payoff? From the Israeli perspective, things are going just swimmingly, thank you: no need to upset the apple cart.
Israel is sitting pretty, right now, openly threatening its patron and financier, the US government, with taking the Iranian nuke matter into its own hands and launching an attack on suspected nuclear facilities – leaving US troops in Iraq to face the Iranians and their Iraqi allies. Gee, thanks a lot, guys.
This kind of blackmail wouldn't be tolerated by Washington coming from any other country on earth: it would be considered a hostile act, carried out by a rogue nation. Yet Israel is not just any other country: it has the distinction of commanding Washington's most powerful lobby in the foreign policy realm.
A computer security breach at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in which hackers stole a database of visitors' personal information, was a highly sophisticated cyberattack and part of a concerted effort to penetrate numerous US labs and other scientific facilities. Although the identity of the attackers remains unclear, security researchers have linked some Internet addresses recently used in similar attacks to computers in China.
In an e-mail message sent to staff last week, the Oak Ridge Director said the breach "now appears to be part of a coordinated attempt to gain access to computer networks at numerous laboratories and other institutions across the country."
Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, asks in an upcoming article, "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?"
For years, no military program has sparked more fevered speculation from conspiracy theorists than the mysterious High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP. And for years, the Pentagon has been pooh-poohing speculation that the enormous collection of transmitters, radars, and magnetometers in Alaska was some sort of superweapon. But, it turns out, the conspiracy theorists may not have been entirely off-base, after all.
As the worst drought in a century grips much of the country, the nation's 130,000 farmers are bearing the brunt of the impact as their hopes for an income again die as their crops fail. "There's a lot of emotion. These people haven't had an income for 2 years."
In a further blow to farmers, the optimistic start to the season meant many sold their projected wheat crops on the futures market for the security of a fixed price. When the crops failed, they were left without the means to pay back the advance. To make matters worse, they have to repay it based on the current wheat price, which has skyrocketed given global shortages.
"It's a very difficult time. It's very, very disappointing to see that most of the crops here have failed. No one alive today would know of anything worse than the past 5 or 6 years."
Andrew O'Hagan, continuing his journey to assess the strength of the Union, finds mixed feelings south of Hadrian's Wall.
Global oil supplies will remain tight through 2008 as demand grows "much faster" than the world's major oil producers are able, or willing, to boost their petroleum output to meet, the US government's top energy forecasting agency said on Tuesday. The collective oil inventories held by the US and other industrialized countries will drop to just 49.3 days of expected supply needs by next February.
"The oil balance outlook remains characterized by rising consumption, modest growth in non-OPEC supply, fairly low surplus (oil production) capacity and continuing risks of supply disruptions in a number of major producing nations. Expectations that tight market conditions will persist into 2008 are keeping oil prices high. Both motor gasoline and diesel prices are projected to average well over $3 per gallon in 2008, with gasoline prices peaking at over $3.40 per gallon next spring."
What is playing out these days on the international financial markets, is unprecedented. Even if ordinary citizens don't yet understand it, the bankers and financiers are finding themselves in a state of shock. The collapse, which began in July with the US mortgage crisis, and in August led into an international credit crunch, is proceeding inexorably and encompassing all sections of the world financial and economic system.
The global financial system has "frozen up," and even though the financial institutions have not admitted it, in reality all the beautiful "creative financial instruments" which Alan Greenspan established, and which provided the foundation for "the greatest casino-economy of all times," have evaporated. We find ourselves in an advanced phase of the greatest collapse in the history of financial markets.
US stocks plummeted Tuesday after the Federal Reserve Board announced a quarter-point cut in short-term interest rates and indicated in an accompanying statement that it remained concerned over the potential for an inflationary surge.
These moves are aimed at cheapening the cost of loans and pumping liquidity into the credit markets. They come at a time when major banks and investment houses in both the US and Europe are reeling from massive losses resulting from the collapse of assets linked to US subprime home loans.
Wall Street is clamoring for a bailout by the Fed, in the form of drastic interest rate cuts, with scant concern for the medium- and longer-term implications for the status of the dollar and the position of American capitalism in the global economy.
The Fed is attempting to balance the threat of a US banking collapse with the dangers arising from soaring energy, food and commodity prices and the relentless fall of the dollar on world currency markets.
This crisis is an expression of the increasingly parasitic and speculative character of American and world capitalism. It effects are rapidly spreading throughout the US economy, with job growth slowing, consumer spending falling off, US corporate profits tending downward and rising delinquencies on all forms of consumer credit—from home loans to auto loans and credit card payments.
(Also: Global markets gloomy)
Joy, joy, the Fed has cut rates again. Picture the Joker from the movie Batman throwing money from his float on the parade and you can see where this is going. Or imagine the alchemist of medieval lore, attempting to conjure up wealth from chemical mixtures.
The sea of inflationary credit is the core problem behind the falling dollar, the subprime crisis, the housing meltdown, not to mention the rise in the national debt and a thousand other problems. And how do they deal with it? More credit and more calls for controls.
No one in Washington seems to understand the reason for the crisis, much less how to fix it. The markets go for this stuff for a while until it looks like Washington is in panic mode. Even Wall Street is starting to sense that something is very wrong.
A good indication is President Bush's freeze on subprime mortgage rates. It is a classic case that provides serious lessons for all of us.
China told the US today to fix its own economic problems rather than deliver lectures, as the two sides warned at top-level talks here that protectionism threatened their trade ties.
The US came to the 2 days of talks on the outskirts of Beijing with a long list of complaints about China's economic and trade practices, with the value of the Chinese currency, the yuan, chief among its concerns.
But China's vice minister of commerce said a weakening US dollar was a bigger global economic concern than the value of the yuan. "(The yuan) is not the key issue. Currently my focus is more on the depreciation of the US dollar and its possible impact and repercussions for the world economy. I sincerely wish to see a scenario where the US economy is getting stronger and the US dollar is getting stronger."
Many have confused natural selection with evolution itself. Yes, Charles Darwin did show that natural selection occurs in nature, but what many don't understand is that natural selection itself does not produce biological traits or variations.
This month in Scripture
"In the 9th month of the 5th year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah, a time of fasting before YAHWEH was proclaimed for all the people in Jerusalem and those who had come from the towns of Judah ... It was the 9th month and the king was sitting in the winter apartment, with a fire burning in the firepot in front of him." (Jer 36:9,22)
[WAR: Well, well, well ... here' something I didn't notice before - read right over it last month when I was reading Jeremiah: The 9th month was during the winter - which "technically" doesn't start until just over a week from now. So according to the way I've been counting the days (Psa 90:12), the 9th month does occur during the winter. (As a matter of fact, right now I'm looking out at the snow on the mountains around Tucson.) But the vast majority (90%+) of those attempting to observe the appointed times had their 9th month during the fall.]
==============
==============
