An address from Benedict XVI has been used for "political manipulation" in a way that "cannot but provoke amazement," the Holy See says. In a communiqué released today, the Vatican press office responded to the interpretation given by the media of the Pope's address Thursday to representatives from the Latium Region and the Province and City of Rome.
The Pontiff spoke to the leaders about various situations in and around Rome, including the need to support the family based on marriage. Political adversaries of Veltroni portrayed the speech as if the Pope had scolded the mayor for degradation in the city.
"The political manipulation that has followed the words addressed by the (Pope) cannot but provoke amazement. It was certainly not the Pope's intention to undervalue the social work being carried out with praiseworthy dedication by the leaders of the City of Rome and of the Region."
The Jesuits elect their new superior general and discuss the reasons for their decline. But the Vatican authorities have already said what they expect from the order: more obedience to the pope, and more fidelity to doctrine.
It must have turned the bosses of Spain's main political parties green with envy. Less than 3 months before a general election, more than 150,000 people packed into Madrid for what may turn out to have been the biggest rally held during the campaign, in what looks like an increasingly close electoral race.
Those calling the people onto the streets on December 30th, billed as "Christian Family Day", were not professional politicians, but Spain's Catholic bishops. The demonstration added up to an impressive display of strength. As the bishops were quick to point out, the church is Spain's biggest social movement. But they did not limit themselves to spiritual matters. Their words were full of raw politics, and their target was clear.
But the Socialists have hit back. Some bishops are "archaic andultra-conservative", said the party's president. Prime Minister Zapatero said they were trying to sell a false apocalypse.
Senior German conservatives in Angela Merkel's Christian Democrat party fear a row over youth crime could hurt cooperation in the ruling coalition ahead of this month's state elections, German media said today. CDU plans to crack down on young foreign criminals have sparked fierce exchanges between top members of the CDU and coalition partner the Social Democrats.
Deutsche Welle speaks with Chancellor Merkel's advisor for foreign policy and security about Kosovo, Russia and Iran.
It is a sad fact that Germany's banks tend to consolidate only when they are in trouble. Glass-half-full types hoped that America's subprime crisis would lead to a shake-up, particularly among the Landesbanks, the publicly owned lenders that provide wholesale services to regional savings banks. A shortage of eligible buyers also gums up the system. Landesbanks and savings banks are generally protected from private ownership by regional laws.
Even before the Lisbon Treaty was signed, speculation was rife as to who would be the first European president as proposed in the new document. Now it is signed and sealed, one man heads the list of potential candidates.
The next time a politician tries to scare you with the European bogeyman, bear this in mind: Europe's economy is doing okay. It's important to get the facts about Europe's economy right because the alleged woes of that economy play an important role in American political discourse, usually as an excuse for the insecurities and injustices of our own society.
In short, Europe continues to be a big-government sort of place. And that's why it's important to get the real story of the European economy out there. According to the anti-government ideology that dominates much US political discussion, low taxes and a weak social safety net are essential to prosperity. Try to make the lives of Americans even slightly more secure, we're told, and the economy will shrivel up - the same way it supposedly has in Europe.
But the next time a politician tries to scare you with the European bogeyman, bear this in mind: Europe's economy is actually doing okay these days, despite a level of taxing and spending beyond the wildest ambitions of American progressives.
A little humor...
As Kosovo goes, so goes northern Cyprus? That's the way the Turkish Cypriots see it. They can't see any distinction between the West's plans for a new "independent" state of Kosovo and the aspirations of Turkey for an independent Turkish Cyprus. It's just one more reason against the creation of a new state of Kosovo, where none has ever existed before.
This is what happens when globalists start redrawing maps of the world in ways they think are beneficial to them – with or without understanding the consequences of those actions. New rules are being established – new rules that make no sense.
What are the dynamics for conflict here? Russia supports Serbia's position that Kosovo has always been and should always be a part of Serbia. Russia likewise supports Greece in its position on Cyprus. How many times will Russia sit back and accept these pokes in the eye without retaliation? But, making matters worse for the West, Russia happens to be right in both cases.
There is nothing to be gained by supporting the breakup of sovereign nations, unless you view it from the position of those whose real agenda is to break up all sovereign nations – confederating them all under regional and eventually global governments.
Paranoid Protestant Petro-Prophets...
When James Cojanis heard the first rumblings of Armageddon, he was sitting in his San Jose home with the radio tuned to a popular Christian show called The Prophecy Club. Featured that day was a charismatic Texas oilman named Harold "Hayseed" Stephens.
Speaking in the rousing cadence of a Southern preacher, he told listeners that "the greatest oil field on Earth is under the southwest corner of the Dead Sea"—and that his company, Ness Energy International, was about to tap into it. In doing so, he said, it would drain the oil fields of the Persian Gulf, prompt Arab countries to attack Israel, and at last touch off the great battle that would usher in the end of days.
The Palestinian state of which Bush speaks, should such a thing ever come into being, is one that could be imposed on the Palestinians only through a military and political offensive involving the US, Israel, the European powers and the Arab bourgeois regimes, particularly Egypt.
With regard to an international force in Palestine, the European powers, and France in particular, appear to be more than willing to get involved in order to secure their own positions in the region, following on from their participation in the international South Lebanon force.
German press
German editorials are split on the effectiveness of Bush's Mideast visit. But several applauded the US leader for finally taking a bold step and getting the process started.
(Also: Arabic press react to Bush tour)
(Also: Bush's swansong visit)
From East Sudan, Dr Hassan Abdullah al-Turabi has launched a vicious attack on the Government of his arch adversary, Sudanese President al-Bashir. "It has provided a bad example of Islam," he said, renewing accusations that it was corrupt. "Corruption is now being practiced in broad daylight."
He described the tribal bi'a [traditional Islamic swearing of allegiance to a chosen ruler] given to al-Bashir as "blatant tampering with religion, adding that "bi'a is for Allah alone". He also warned against what he described as "growing governmental influence on the judiciary". Al-Turabi said Sudan was more vulnerable to division than at any time in the past.
Two new reports on the assassination last month of Benazir Bhutto suggest that the killing may have been an ambitious plot rather than an isolated act of violence and that the government of President Musharraf knows far more than it's admitted about the murder. A police officer who witnessed the assassination said that a mysterious crowd stopped Bhutto's car that day. Bhutto, apparently thinking she was greeting her supporters, emerged through the sunroof of the bulletproof car to wave.
Taiwan's opposition nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) party has won a landslide victory in parliamentary polls, official results show. The KMT, which wants closer ties with China, secured 72% of the seats.
Iran poses a real nuclear threat and Israel made that point clear to President Bush during his visit this week, an Israeli defence official said. "From a professional point of view the situation is clear: there is an Iranian nuclear threat. After deep scrutiny, the intellience services reached the same conclusion - Iran is striving to obtain nuclear weapons." He did not rule out a military strike against Iran over its disputed nuclear programme, saying "we must consider all the options."
Tehran has warned the US not to try and use the dispute over the Iranian nuclear programme to bring Iran to its knees. The warning came from supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei during a meeting with the head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei. Khamenei insisted that Iran was not building a nuclear bomb. He also said that the issue should not even be considered by the UN Security Council.
(Also: Iran slams US double standards)
The US Navy's admission that a threat radioed to American warships in the Straits of Hormuz might not have come from Iranian speedboats might have disastrous consequences. According to an article on the BBC, the admission could raise new fears about the chances of unintended clashes in the region because the whole affair is very similar to an incident in 1988 when the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian civilian airliner in the Strait of Hormuz.
The US government later justified the destruction of the airliner, saying that a condition called "scenario fulfilment", in which military personnel expect and then execute a particular scenario as if in an exercise, was the main factor behind the incident.
Bush's warning, along with the already inflamed tensions between Iran and the US, raise fears that an incident that could've been settled peacefully if it happened between any other countries could spark another disastrous war in the Middle East.
(Also: About that Straits incident...)
(Also: US-Iran naval dispute deepens)
The incident must be put in a historical perspective. Realities are turned upside down. Known and documented since 2003, the Pentagon has drawn up detailed and precise plans for US sponsored attacks on both Iran and Syria.
Moreover, barely mentioned by the Western media, there has since Summer 2006, been a massive concentration of US Naval power in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea, which are part of those war preparations. Since 2006, US war ships with advanced weapons systems have been stationed almost continuously within proximity of Iranian territorial waters. Large scale US war games have been conducted. Numerous acts of provocation directed against Iran have been undertaken.
President Bush has warned of the dangers he says are posed by Iran, in a speech in its Gulf neighbour, the United Arab Emirates. He said Iran "threatens the security of nations everywhere", and that the US was rallying friends to confront it "before it's too late."
Skeptical observers might think that the 2 countries were being goaded into WW3 – either that, or that someone wanted to convince American viewers that Iran indeed remained a threat. Iran was targeted in the infamous policy paper titled "Rebuilding America's Defenses," published by the Project for a New American Century in 2000.
In "Rebuilding America's Defenses," PNAC called for "the direct imposition of US 'forward bases' throughout Central Asia and the Middle East, with a view to ensuring economic domination of the world, while strangling any potential 'rival' or any viable alternative to America's vision of a 'free market' economy."
Could that be it? Islamic scholars have been seeking to devise a global banking system that would serve as an alternative to the interest-based scheme that is in control of the world economy, and Iran has led the way in devising that model.
Thursday night's debate among the Republican presidential candidates in South Carolina demonstrated a noxious combination of political reaction and willful self-delusion. The only dissenter was Congressman Ron Paul.
The heaping of ever greater wealth for the tiny minority at the top has become the obsessive focus of the American political establishment. This enormous social polarization not only encourages the grossest material corruption—expressed in countless ways in both the Republican and Democratic parties—but a kind of political and intellectual stultification, of which the debate in South Carolina was one more demonstration.
What Europeans make of Iowa and New Hampshire
Voters of America, well done: you are less racist (or sexist) than Europeans had feared. Remember, though, that you are rather naive: please try to pick a competent president this time. This dismissive summary, combining condescension with distrust, captures all too many European reactions to the duel between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. It is striking that many Europeans skate over the political views of Clinton and Obama and instead treat their fight as a simple Rorschach test of the health of the American dream.
A former Irish prime minister warns Europeans against imagining that any president will bow to calls to surrender American sovereignty, or make concessions on trade, in the global interest. The person who gets voters' nod will rule as an American, promoting American interests around the world—and no doubt disappointing many watchers from abroad. For Europeans to imagine anything else would be naive indeed.
(Also: Paul sweeps "primary")
Martial law is perhaps the ultimate stomping of freedom. And yet, on September 30, 2006, Congress passed a provision in a 591-page bill that will make it easy for President Bush to impose martial law in response to a terrorist "incident." It also empowers him to effectively declare martial law in response to what he or other federal officials label a shortfall of "public order" -- whatever that means.
Bush can commandeer a state's National Guard any time he declares a "state has refused to enforce applicable laws." Does this refer to the laws as they are commonly understood - or to the "laws" after Bush "fixes" them with a signing statement?
The more power government seizes, the more easily it can suppress the truth. There is nothing to prevent a president from declaring martial law on false pretexts - any more than there is to prevent him from launching a foreign war on false pretenses.
US leaders have assumed for 60 years that they had replaced their British cousins as the world's elite, that as movers and shakers of the new dominant power they had a mandate from God or history to maintain stability, to make the rules for the economy. But the world has watched Bush lead the US from a bright dream toward an incipient nightmare.
The dangers of a president of trying to do too much
During his election campaign, Nicolas Sarkozy promised a rupture with the past. But who could have predicted how fast he would junk the well-worn traditions of the presidency? Like it or not, hyperprésidentialisation is here to stay. "Only a very few ministers have real autonomy," says one top official. "I've never worked under such a centralised presidency."
The president, as head of the armed forces and with the power to dissolve parliament and change ministers at will, is already hugely powerful. Now Sarkozy wants to change the constitution to allow the president to address parliament. Laurent Joffrin, editor of the left-leaning Libération, this week accused Sarkozy of installing "an elective monarchy".
The Dow Jones Industrial Average has finished the week down 246.79, at 12,606.30, reflecting Wall Street's concern that consumer purchases are being dampened by a weakening economy. Then, after the market closed on Friday, the Wall Street Journal announced Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, one of Citibank's largest shareholder, and the China Development Bank are expected to invest several billion dollars in Citibank, which is facing in excess of $15 billion in 4th-quarter losses from mortgage-related investment vehicles. The Financial Times also reported Citibank was in the process of raising up to $14 billion in new capital from Chinese, Kuwaiti and other public market investors.
A wave of money is flooding into the commodity markets, adding more lustre to gold and pointing a spotlight on obscure markets such as coffee, cocoa and palm oil, as investors take fright from credit risk and the looming spectre of recession. Gold and platinum hit new records Friday as traditional investors sought out safe havens for cash in troubled times.
US Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke warned that the US economy is slowing dramatically and broadly hinted that the Fed would aggressively cut interest rates in response, perhaps before its next scheduled policy meeting at the end of January. Bernanke's remarks reflect growing anxieties within US ruling circles.
The Federal Reserve's answer is to attempt to bail out the banks and major investors by slashing interest rates and pumping tens of billions of dollars into the financial markets through auctions of credit at discounted interest rates. Such measures will do next to nothing to save millions of working families—including heavily indebted holders of prime mortgages—from falling into a financial abyss.
As rebukes go in the close-knit world of central banking, few hurt as much as the scathing indictment of US Federal Reserve policy by Professor Anna Schwartz. The high priestess of US monetarism - a revered figure at the Fed - says the central bank is itself the chief cause of the credit bubble, and now seems stunned as the consequences of its own actions engulf the financial system.
The tale of the early 1930s is intricate, but worth rehearsing in the climate of today's credit crunch. The October 1929 crash did not cause the slump, it was merely a vivid detail. The US economy muddled through for another year, seemingly sound. Then it buckled as rising defaults in the farm belt set off a run on local banks. It was at this juncture that critics claim the Fed lost the plot.
The dawning of a new year is supposed to be about hope, but fear remains the dominant emotion among bankers. This week saw another round of bloodletting as they grappled with the effects of the credit crunch. Far from bouncing back, banks have led the stockmarket down since the start of the year. Even Goldman Sachs, hitherto relatively unscathed, has suffered.
As fears of an American recession grow, so do worries about a general deterioration of credit. Commercial property looks more precarious by the day, as do car loans, student loans and credit-card debt. With futures markets predicting property-price falls of up to 30% and the pain spreading beyond mortgages, the bottom may be months away. As one American banking regulator puts it: "There aren't many places to look now and feel happy."
(Also: R-word warning lights)
The American Bar Association was suppose to be a voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students, which was not specific to any jurisdiction in the US, yet today it lords over them all. The ABA has monopolist mandates: for example, the bar exam requirement in all 50 states. It controls academic and accreditation standards for law schools, and the formulation of model ethical codes related to the legal profession.
In my view, the ABA is a diabolical and needless layer of bureaucracy that has little to no effect in maintaining academic excellence or indicating success as a lawyer, and most people know that one of the least regarded (and most powerful) professions in America is the law profession.
Politically-speaking, the ABA is an extreme leftist, special-interest group with a strong liberal bias regarding it's philosophy, interpreting the Constitution and against giving excellent conservative appellate and Supreme Court nominees a "highly qualified" rating.
The ABA is driving up law-tuition costs, actively creating a litigious society and is basically a needless, bloated, self-serving bureaucracy whose leadership and membership contain a bunch of self-important, shyster lawyers who in many cases aren't in the least interested in "improving the legal system for the public," but merely lust after money, power, prestige and privilege by mandating obedience to this relatively small organzition that weilds such disproportionate amount of political power by no other authority than by its own self-aggradizing decrees.
The Bilderberg group, an elite coterie of Western thinkers and power-brokers, has been accused of fixing the fate of the world behind closed doors. As the organisation marks its 50th anniversary, rumours are more rife than ever. On Thursday the Bilderberg group marks its 50th anniversary with the start of its yearly meeting. For 4 days some of the West's chief political movers, business leaders, bankers, industrialists and strategic thinkers will hunker down in a 5-star hotel in northern Italy to talk about global issues.
Not a word of what is said at Bilderberg meetings can be breathed outside. No reporters are invited in and while confidential minutes of meetings are taken, names are not noted. The idea behind Bilderberg was that future wars could be prevented by bringing power-brokers together in an informal setting away from prying eyes.
"Bilderberg is the most useful international group I ever attended. The confidentiality enabled people to speak honestly without fear of repercussions. In my experience the most useful meetings are those when one is free to speak openly and honestly. It's not unusual at all. Cabinet meetings in all countries are held behind closed doors and the minutes are not published."
Michael Domoretsky has spent the last 4 years studying the works of Leonardo da Vinci to uncover the secrets of the original Renaissance man. What he has found, he says, is a "legacy of hidden messages" carefully concealed in some of the world's most famous paintings and decipherable only to those who know how to read them. He believes the 15th century artist was a Mason who incorporated Masonic symbols into his works. "The best place to hide something is in plain sight."
Domoretsky said da Vinci was a master of optical illusion who created pictures within pictures within pictures - many of them designed to be visible only with the use of mirrors. In 2 paintings, the resulting twinned images reveal hidden faces and objects and forms that include several chalices and what Domoretsky sees as a high priest of the Knights Templar, a Templar shield and cross and a sarcophagus. He believes da Vinci was "heavily involved in Freemasonry and the Knights Templar."
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