Sixty one Italian scientists have signed a letter protesting against a planned visit this week by Pope Benedict XVI to Rome's Sapienza University because of his stated views on Galileo. In a letter to Renato Guarini, the university rector, the scientists said the visit was "incongruous".
The letter said scientists felt "offended and humiliated" by a statement made in 1990 by the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - the modern descendant of the Inquisition - suggesting that the trial of Galileo for heresy because of his support for the Copernican system was justified in the context of the time. "At the time of Galileo the Church remained much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself. The process against Galileo was reasonable and just."
Chancellor Merkel said there are "no taboos" in the campaigns for 3 state elections in 2 months. "I think we're of the same opinion that we have too much crime in Germany, that we have too much crime among young people, and that we can't be relaxed about this. We must have discussion about this; there can't be any taboo subjects in an election campaign."
Syria's Foreign Minister is to visit Berlin at an unspecified date for talks on the Middle East peace process, a German foreign ministry spokesman said Monday. The German government wants to assess with Syria its readiness to make a constructive contribution to the Middle East peace process.
Deny God, but don't dare deny Holocaustism...
A German court on Monday jailed the lawyer of a convicted Holocaust denier for calling the Nazis' WW2 slaughter of European Jews "the biggest lie in world history." Judges in the western city of Mannheim sentenced lawyer Sylvia Stolz to 3 1/2 years in prison on charges that include inciting racial hatred, and barred her from practicing law for 5 years.
Fannin' the flames...
A candidate campaigning for the Graz city council in Austria says it is time that Islam was "thrown back ... behind the Mediterranean," and alleges Muhammad wrote the Koran in "epileptic fits."
FT Deutschland reports that the French government plans a euro area summit either during the French presidency, or before. A German government spokesman confirmed yesterday that Berlin was open to this idea, as long as there is no attempt to challenge the independence of the ECB.
The world economy is continually changing, but one constant is dissatisfaction with the euro. Toward the beginning of the decade the main complaint was that the euro was too weak for booming economies. Now the complaint is that it is too strong for growth-challenged countries.
Already in June 2005, following 2 years of euro appreciation, then Italian welfare minister Roberto Maroni declared that "the euro has to go." Then-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi followed by calling the euro "a disaster."
So is the euro doomed? If one country leaves the euro area by reintroducing its national currency, will others follow? Will the entire enterprise collapse? [Yes, yes, yes!]
The saying goes, "He who forgets history is doomed to repeat it." The world stands poised and waiting for what will be regarding Kosovo. Will we see another Munich, another Czechoslovakia, another Sudetenland, another appeasement to criminals, another murderous, bloody European war brought forth by despicable men selling a false sense of securing peace?
Serbia yesterday adopted an "action plan" to be implemented if Kosovo declares independence. The plan is believed to include the downgrading of diplomatic ties with Western states and the economic blockade of the breakaway province. The government said the measures were adopted at an urgent Cabinet meeting. The minister for Kosovo said the plan was "top secret" and that no officials could provide any details.
Serbian Foreign Minster Vuk Jeremic spoke with Spiegel about how his country is going to deal with any declaration of independence by Kosovo, and explained that the upcoming presidential elections are really a referendum on how much Serbia wants to be a part of the EU
Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday urged Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu to leave the government in wake of the first meeting between Foreign Minister Livni and Chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qureia over the core issues.
"Until now, Olmert made tactical concessions, but from today they are strategic and crucial to the future of Israel. The first concession will be realized today, now that negotiations over a permanent settlement have begun, and the cessation of terror has been dropped as a preliminary requirement for entering negotiations. We know that they will relinquish half of Jerusalem and that we will withdraw to the 1967 lines, leaving them indefensible."
France and the UAE have signed an agreement that allows France to establish a permanent military base in the Persian Gulf region. The deal allows for the stationing of up to 500 permanent military personnel in the UAE's largest emirate Abu Dhabi. Observers say the move could signal Paris's determination to regain its influence in the oil-rich region.
Turkish warplanes have bombed camps used by Kurdistan Workers Party guerrillas in northern Iraq, Turkish television channels quoted Iraq officials as saying today.
The US plan to send an additional 3,200 Marines to troubled southern Afghanistan this spring reflects the Pentagon's belief that if it can't bully its recalcitrant NATO allies into sending more troops to the Afghan front, perhaps it can shame them into doing so, US officials said. After more than 6 years of coalition warfare in Afghanistan, NATO is a bundle of frayed nerves and tension over nearly every aspect of the conflict.
Benazir Bhutto stated in November that the Osama bin Laden had been killed. According to her, he was killed by Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh – one of those convicted of kidnapping and killing US journalist Daniel Pearl.
Bhutto's interview to Al-Jazeera received very little attention from the media. There was practically no newspaper in the world who published the news on its front page. There was no official who commented on the information. Not a word was said from the CIA and the FBI. They did not even lift a finger to reject it. Absolute silence.
The Wall Street Journal quotes the head of the nationalist Sindh Taraqi Passand movement saying: "Bhutto was the last hope (for unity). Now this Pakistan must be broken up." The theme of the article is that calls for unity are falling on deaf ears, and one PPP veteran sums it up: "What we need is separation."
That suits Bush administration officials fine, they're likely stoking it, and one thing is clear: US forces are in the region to stay, and Washington under any administration (Democrat or Republican) intends to dominate this vital part of the world with its vast energy reserves.
The strategy appears similar to the divide and conquer one in Yugoslavia. There it worked, but the Middle East and Central Asia aren't so simple. Stay tuned as events will likely accelerate, the media will highlight them, and it looks like stepped up conflict (and its fallout) is part of the plan.
At a conference in the city of Port Sudan, the head of Sudan's Popular Congress Party, Hassan Al-Turabi, called yesterday to launch a popular revolution to topple the government, saying, "The regime came to power by force, and it must be removed by force."
The top commander of the US Pacific Fleet raised concern over China's military build-up and urged Beijing to clarify the intentions of its increasingly sophisticated armed forces. "China's military is developing very impressively. We are concerned about the development of long-range cruise and ballistic missiles, we are concerned about their anti-satellite technology (and) we are concerned about area denial weapons."
All eyes are now on the report of ElBaradei at the IAEA meeting in March. Tehran, naturally, is pinning high hopes that the Iran nuclear file may become a routine affair involving a nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty member country. But the most important outcome of the ElBaradei visit is perhaps its impact in molding regional opinion in the Middle East and in the Persian Gulf region.
It gives the decisive push to the "pro-West" Arab regimes to turn their backs on Bush's desperate pleas to join an anti-Iran coalition. Even for the most ardent "pro-West" Arab regimes, there is a serious problem now in identifying with the US-Israeli chorus.
Equally, this "new thinking" will have implications for the Palestine-Israel peace process, as well as the situation in Lebanon and Iraq. Simply put, Tehran may be on the verge of breaking through to mainstream Arab regional politics - a historic breakthrough.
Anglo-neocon stooge?...
Chancellor Merkel said Tuesday that Germany's stance toward Iran remains unchanged by a US intelligence assessment that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program 5 years ago. It is too early to say there is no threat, she argued. Merkel said last month's report did not provide a signal to "give the all-clear and to say that Iran is only engaged in activities that we can all find right."
The recent, and escalating, tension between Iran and the US in the narrow corridor of the Strait of Hormuz has once again drawn attention to the strait's international maritime status, and to the ramifications of this tension as a flashpoint in the Middle East.
Tension spiked markedly last week when Iranian speedboats were involved in an "incident" with 3 US Navy vessels, which claimed they were international waters. Yet there is no "international water" in the Strait of Hormuz, straddled between the territorial waters of Iran and Oman.
The lesson of the incident in the Persian Gulf, and the political hay that was made out of it by both sides, is that as long as the US refuses to talk to Iran, the potential for something very small turning into something that would be devastating to both countries remains. President Bush still apparently dreams of confronting Iran. Israel makes no secret of the fact that it would like Washington to act, and Israel's wishes are seldom denied in Washington.
(Also: US plays "monkey politics")
European press
The mainstream Italian media are reporting both the rigging of the New Hampshire primary for Hillary Clinton and the official demands for a swift, accurate and impartial recount. In an analysis of the hand-counted ballots, an influential Milanese newspaper reports that all Democratic candidates except Clinton made gains when the New Hampshire ballots were manually tabulated, while Clinton made inexplicably large gains where ballots were tabulated by computerized scanners.
According to the report, Ron Paul should have finished 3rd in the Republican primary rather than 5th. Thus, it would appear that both Barack Obama and Ron Paul were the primary targets of vote-rigging operations in New Hampshire.
(Also: New Hampshire drama)
Here is an event I have no intention of honoring: American Religious History Week. OK, it's not official yet. But it is spelled out as Resolution 888 in the bowels of a House committee, sponsored by Republican Congressman Randy Forbes and backed by thirty-one other Representatives.
This is an insidious attempt by the radical Christian right to rewrite American history, to turn the founding fathers from deists into Christian fundamentalists, to proclaim us officially to be a Christian nation. If you want to know why Mike Huckabee is dangerous, why his brand of right-wing Christian populism is so frightening, you should read this resolution.
The Christian radicals have broken free from the fetters of their corporate and neocon handlers. They have unleashed a frightening populism that, in the event of an economic meltdown or period of instability, could see the movement ride the wave of a massive right-wing backlash.
The US, with its claims of exceptionalism, is usually thought of as free of historical analogies. But comparisons with the fate of earlier empires are becoming more common. Of course, America is not like imperial Germany. But there may be a lesson from a country whose wartime rulers, quarrelling among themselves, inflicted unimaginable harm on their people and to the world with their mendacious, secretive and paranoid style. The consequences of their leadership became manifest only later, as an aggrieved nation's people turned against each other in their deep political and moral divisions and hatreds. It took a worse catastrophe, a world-historical scourge, to teach these people a lesson.
The United States of America is a political union of 50 states and a federal district, commonly considered to be operating under the authority of the US Constitution that was first adopted in 1787. The Union known as the USA was a creation of the then-existing 13 states of the Union.
Lysander Spooner has provided ironclad arguments that this Constitution is an invalid authority for Americans of today. If that is so, and I believe it is, then no "legal" moves need to be taken to dissolve the USA. It is already an entity that has no legal authority. In this case, the Union does not legally exist.
Why should the USA be dissolved? Why should we get rid of our national (federal) government? Why should Americans have something of a fresh start politically? The reasons for doing this are voluminous. Dissolving the USA is becoming more and more an urgent and visible matter.
(Also: There is no American creed)
Wholesale inflation last year shot up by the largest amount in 26 years while retailers suffered their worst December shopping season in 5 years as mounting economic woes caused consumers to put away their wallets.
If this had been a mere subprime crisis, it would now be over. But it is not, and nor will it be over soon. The reason is that several other pockets of the credit market are also vulnerable. The CDS market is worth about $45 trillion. This is not an easy figure to imagine. It is more than 3 times the annual gross domestic product of the US. Economically, credit default swaps are insurance. But legally, they are not, which is why this market is largely unregulated.
It is not difficult at all to see how the CDS market has the potential to cause serious financial contagion. The subprime crisis came fairly close to destabilising the global financial system. A CDS crisis, under a pessimistic scenario, could produce a global financial meltdown.
(Also: Subprime nation)
The rot in the US financial system is spreading and becoming more menacing. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, who is determined that it not become a self-fulfilling spiral, signalled that the Federal Reserve stood ready to supply more aggressive rate cuts if needed.
Two more major banks reported heavy mortgage and consumer-loan losses Monday for the 4th quarter of 2007, reinforcing fears that that US financial crisis will likely trigger a recession, not only in America, but worldwide.
And the spectacle of giant US financial institutions going hat in hand to the oil sheiks and the government investment agencies of China, Taiwan and Singapore is one indicator of the deteriorating world position of American capitalism.
Further cuts in US interest rates, carried out at the behest of Wall Street to stave off a collapse of confidence in the financial system, ultimately make the crisis even worse, since reducing the rate of return impels foreign investors to dump their dollar-denominated assets and shift their holdings into other, more lucrative, investments.
The bursting of the housing bubble is only the initial stage of a financial crisis of unprecedented dimensions, one that will call into question the viability of the capitalist system worldwide.
Citigroup's talks with the China Development Bank to make a multibillion-dollar investment in the company have reached an impasse after the Chinese government spurned a possible deal, according to a person close to the situation.
While Chinese investment groups have bought big stakes in Wall Street firms like Bear Stearns and Morgan Stanley, the scuttled deal suggests there may be limits on how much the Chinese government is willing to invest in the Western banking system.
(Also: Citigroup posts $9.8bn loss)
Rumours of an emergency rate cut over coming days by the US Federal Reserve have swept the global markets, setting off a fresh plunge in the dollar. Gold surged to an all-time high of $914 an ounce in New York on bets that the authorities will flood the global system with further liquidity to stave off a mounting debt crisis.
A member of the European Central Bank's executive council warned that the tumbling dollar may now start to foreclose the option of US rate cuts and force the Fed to keep monetary policy tighter than it would like. "I would not be so sure about the movements of the Fed. There is a serious problem with the dollar in America. We will see what margins they have for further rate cuts."
US Treasuries should be downgraded to junk bond status, not given a "triple-A" government rating, economist John Williams says, supporting a warning issued by Moody's last week that the credit rating of the US government may be plunging in the next decade. "The US Treasury is currently issuing 10-year notes and 30-year bonds. Yes, the US government can always print money, but the question is whether the investors buying these Treasury securities will get paid off when they get their money back."
Glance at a chart of EADS currency hedges, and you can see instantly that Europe's aerospace champion faces corporate death within three years unless it can escape the crippling costs of the euro. This year's dollar contracts are hedged at $1.13, rising to $1.17 for 2009. Then disaster strikes. Costs will rocket to market levels near $1.50. EADS is already losing money as it is.
Louis Gallois, the Knight Templar and ascetic socialist brought in to cleanse the enterprise of its infighters and hydra-head egos, knows it must shift chunks of its productive base to America and Asia, and quickly. "The dollar's decline is life-threatening for Airbus. We should not speculate. We have to reduce the sensitivity of EADS to the exchange rate. Even if we were able to sell airplanes in euros it would not solve the problem of costs."
UN Secretary-General Ki-moon joined the prime ministers of Turkey and Spain on Tuesday to open a forum of some 80 nations seeking to encourage understanding between the West and Muslim countries.
Opening a 2-day conference of the Alliance of Civilizations, Spain's Prime Minister said the UN-backed initiative aimed to prevent a "clash of civilizations by promoting security, understanding, tolerance and mutual respect in a globalized world. It aspires to build bridges that can help us to manage the differences existing in the world, particularly those linked to religious or cultural issues."
While approximately 10,000 per year die from the effects of illegal drugs, an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that an estimated 106,000 hospitalized patients die each year from drugs which, by medical standards, are properly prescribed and properly administered. More than 2 million suffer serious side effects.
Today in Scripture
"In the 12th year of our exile, in the 10th month on the 5th day, a man who had escaped from Jerusalem came to me and said, 'The city has fallen!'" (Eze 33:21)
Tonight's sky
The moon is not flat, but at tonight's first quarter phase, the moon does appear to have a "flat" edge. The apparently flat edge of the moon at the quarter phase is called the "terminator" - referring to the fact that sunlight "terminates" or ends at this line.
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