Members of different religions can coexist in a cordial and peaceful atmosphere, and unite in the common values of hospitality and compassion, Benedict XVI says. He affirmed this Thursday in an address given to the new ambassador to the Holy See from Gambia.
(Also: Full text of address)
Here, drink some wine...
The Church, which has played a key role in the history of your region, continues to share its peoples' aspirations for peace, social harmony and economic stability. I cordially invite the people of your nation to draw from the deep well of the Church's social teaching as they plan for the future. Upon you and all the people of your country, I invoke the abundant blessings of Almighty God.
The very explicit association John makes between the "throne of Satan" and the city of Pergamon suggests that something visible in the city inspired the phrase. Taken together, the archaeological and textual evidence points to the same candidate: the Great Altar of Pergamon, one of the most significant (and stunning) monuments to survive from the Greco-Roman world. To John of Revelation, it is the "throne of Satan."
The purpose of Pergamon's Great Altar is uncertain and continues to provoke debate. Was it a real altar on which meat from sacrificed animals would be burned or was it a victory monument with no sacrificial function? In my judgment, the Great Altar probably served as an altar of burnt offering for the 2 temples dedicated to Zeus and Athena, respectively.
The Pergamon altar itself is now housed in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. The Great Altar and many of its sculptures were removed with permission of the authorities in Turkey and taken to the museum in Berlin.
There's big trouble in little Belgium. The historically shaky marriage of 6.3 million Flemish in Belgium's North to 4 million French-speaking Walloons in the South, is seriously on the rocks.
Political tribal warfare between Protestant Flemish and Catholic Francophone Walloons has become so intense that Belgium, a constitutional monarchy, has been without a government for the past 6 months.
There are increasing calls on both sides to split the troubled nation along linguistic lines. In an act of political desperation, a provisional government under former PM Verhofstadt is about to be appointed. If that fails, King Albert II might be forced to take over.
Russia's foreign ministry warned of a possible "uncontrollable crisis" in Kosovo and called for continued talks over the future status of the Serbian province. "The situation is threatening to slip towards an uncontrollable crisis if international law is not upheld." The "indulgence" of some countries towards allowing Kosovo to become independent "could lead to serious negative consequences for regional and international stability."
If there is an unacceptable public face of the Israeli Government it is Avigdor Lieberman, the Strategic Affairs Minister. Lieberman, a Russian immigrant to Israel, leads a right-wing, predominantly Russian party.
In some ways, he is more open to compromise than many Israelis. He would be willing to cede Israeli land to a Palestinian state. What makes him controversial, and unacceptable to many, is his view that as well as territory, Israel should give away people, too, in particular its Muslim Arab citizens. He doesn't want to expel them exactly, just redraw some borders so that some Arab towns and villages move into a new Palestinian state nextdoor.
After 2 years of debate, the Israeli government officially confirmed the man enthroned here as Greek Orthodox patriarch, amid accusations the religious figure would cancel the sale to Jewish groups of land comprising much of a key entrance to Jerusalem's Old City.
Telephone terrorism...
A new coalition of religious hard-liners with ties to President Bush seeks to scuttle any plans for dividing Jerusalem between Israelis and Palestinians.
On Nov. 26, the US State Department got hit with an unexpected barrage of phone calls. The Coordinating Council on Jerusalem, a new coalition of American groups with hard-line views on Israel, was on the line - all of the lines. Or so the group said 2 days later in a press release, proudly proclaiming that with 10,000 calls in less than 48 hours it had managed to overload the State Department's voice-mail system.
The government of Prime Minister Olmert has embarked on policies that are questionable at best when one examines them from a purely Israeli standpoint; they are nothing less than a betrayal of the US when examined from a broader perspective.
The insidious manner in which the current Israeli government has manipulated the domestic political machinery of the US to produce support for its policies constitutes nothing less than direct interference in the governance of a sovereign state.
The degree to which the current Israeli government has succeeded in this regard can be tracked not only by the words and actions of the administration of President Bush and the American Congress, but also by the extent to which a pro-Israel lexicon has taken hold within the mainstream media of the US.
Israel at present can have no friends, because Israel does not know how to be a friend. Driven by xenophobic paranoia and historical grievances, Israel is embarked on a path that can only lead to death and destruction.
The US backed Turkish air raids on Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq overnight with intelligence and clearance to enter Iraqi airspace, Turkey's army chief said. "The US gave intelligence. But what is more important is that the US last night opened northern Iraqi airspace to us. By doing that, the US approved the operation."
Russia has made its 1st shipment of nuclear fuel to Iran's Bushehr plant, which is at the center of the international tensions over Tehran's nuclear program, the Foreign Ministry said today. "All fuel that will be delivered will be under the control and guarantees of the International Atomic Energy Agency for the whole time it stays on Iranian territory."
Construction at Bushehr had been frequently delayed. Officials said the delays were due to payment disputes, but many observers suggested Russia also was unhappy with Iran's resistance to international pressure to make its nuclear program more open and to assure the international community that it was not developing nuclear arms.
Iran's president said on Sunday the publication of a US intelligence report saying Iran had halted a nuclear weapons program in 2003 amounted to a "declaration of surrender" by Washington in its row with Tehran. "It was in fact a declaration of surrender ... It was a positive action by the U.S. administration to change their attitude and it was a correct move."
Bush is now trying his best to twist and warp the published report so that it complements rather than contradicts his dire warnings about Iran a professor of journalism at Stanford University says.
"Still, even by historical standards, President Bush has been unusually averse to admitting error. But Bush's reaction to the considered view of his own intelligence agencies sets a new standard. He and his aides quite obviously wish the intelligence community had kept its views to itself."
Paranoid Philadelphian "Prophet"...
Indirectly, America has just announced to the world that we lack the will to ever stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. That is what the National Intelligence Estimate was all about.
When Iran gets nuclear weapons [never!], it is more likely to start a nuclear WW3 than any nation on Earth [wrong!]. President Ahmadinejad already said he would wipe Israel off the map [no he didn't!].
Anybody who doesn't think Iran has a crash program to build nuclear weapons is simply refusing to face the truth. ... all we have to do is sit back and wait for Iran to test its first nuclear bomb. [Don't hold your breath!]
President Bush's foreign policy is in free fall and puts the nation's security at risk, former ambassador to the UN John Bolton told a German magazine. He told the Der Spiegel weekly that Bush needed to rein in Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. "His foreign policy is in free fall. The president is acting against his own judgment and instincts (and is) under the influence of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Bush does not supervise her enough. That is a mistake."
Ultra-rare news footage from the crash site of United Flight 93 which has never been seen again since 9/11. Do you see any airplane?
When a suspect who is confronted with a direct question repeatedly tries to change the subject and refuses to answer the question, that's evidence that he's guilty. In
addition, everyone knows that when a witness is caught lying or changing his testimony, it effectively discredits him. If the witness is himself the accused criminal, then perjury, inconsistent testimony or destroying evidence tends to implicate the defendant's guilty.
After a record-smashing year with oil peaking at $99 a barrel in 2007, a triple-digit world of crude oil awaits in the coming year, energy experts say. With its price spiking so quickly, the impact of record crude has yet to fully filter through the economy, but that's expected to change next year. Gasoline prices, which have held at about $3 a gallon for much of the year, could rise to about $4 a barrel in the new year.
Based on early reports from analysts and malls on Sunday, sales results were generally unimpressive this past weekend. Meanwhile, for online retailers, which likely finished their busiest days last week, their fate appears to be already sealed: holiday sales didn't live up to industry's hopes as lower-income shoppers pulled back on spending amid a housing slump
A slowdown in the world economy, with Europe bearing the brunt of international adjustment is the most likely result of a big correction in the US balance of payments deficit, according to Italy's finance minister, and the chairman of the international monetary and financial committee of the International Monetary Fund.
Bush legacy is one of cuts to programs and cuts to taxes for the rich, staff shortages cause backlogs in receiving disability benefits, elitist hairbrained schemes to fix the dollar, The unfolding mortgage crisis hits Washington DC area, Morgan Stanley issues recession warnings.
Last week's effort by the world's central banks to relieve the global credit crunch with a cash injection failed to impress the markets. But the move is bound to win round the sceptics within the next few months. The decision is likely to be just the precursor to much more important, but controversial, operations to ensure the "solvency" of the international financial system.
Because of worldwide fears about a housing meltdown, the market value of mortgage-related assets has been downgraded. These downgrades have created doubts about the underlying solvency of some banks and forced all of them to curtail their lending.
The role of central banks in this process would simply be to provide temporary liquidity to the markets until the repricing process was completed. In the past few weeks, however, it has become obvious that this assumption was overoptimistic.
As a result, the summer liquidity crisis has been turning into a loss of confidence in the long-term solvency of the global banking system banks. That collapse in confidence has, in turn, aggravated pessimism about next year's economic prospects, intensifying doubts about bank solvency.
If movie-going masses are any indication, the Neo-con Washington war machine has the people right where it wants them. Munching popcorn with their kids watching Bee Movie or sitting on the edge of their seats through Saw IV. So, despite a heavyweight cast, Lions for Lambs only banked $6.7 million its opening weekend.
Weary veteran reporter Roth (Streep) jousts with the Senator (Cruise) gamely, but ultimately realizes that she and the rest of the Fourth Estate are part of the problem, serving as government mouthpieces to spin every story Washington's way. She exasperatingly tells her boss that they in the media "should have connected the dots," at the War on Terror's start. The American public still isn't connecting the dots, and doesn't want to.
Conservative Anglican leaders are secretly planning a meeting next summer for the hundreds of bishops expected to defy the Archbishop of Canterbury by boycotting the Lambeth Conference. The unprecedented event will be widely seen as an "alternative Lambeth", further damaging Dr Williams's hopes of averting a formal schism over homosexuals.
The Codex Sinaiticus contains the oldest complete copy of the New Testament—from the mid-4th century. Originally, it contained the Old Testament too, but most of that is now missing.
The Codex Sinaiticus is one of the big 3 (Sinaiticus, Vaticanus and Alexandrinus) 4th/5th century codices of the Septuagint (Greek) that include the New Testament as well. Vaticanus is at the Vatican. Alexandrinus is at the British Library. And Sinaiticus is, well, in 4 different places.
If you'd like to see what may be a piece of the 2nd Temple (Herod's Temple), pay a visit to St. Paul's Cathedral in London.
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