"I don't come to impose the faith, but to ask of you the courage for the truth," these were the opening words of Pope Benedict's speech that he was supposed to deliver at La Sapienza University in Rome. "What has a Pope to do or say at a University? Certainly not to impose the faith on others in an authoritarian way, which can only be given to others in freedom."
"Many things said by theologians in our [Church] history or even practiced by Church authorities, have been proven false by history. Nevertheless, it is true that the history of the saints, the history of Humanism grown on the foundations of the Christian faith, demonstrates that at its essential core is the truth of the faith, thus giving it a role in public reason."
Benedict XVI concludes his speech by highlighting that because of his role as Shepherd of the Church, "it is my duty to keep alive the sensibility for the truth, which means to always invite reason to go in search of the truth, the good, God."
(Also: Full text of speech)
With Cardinal Lehmann resigning as head of the German Bishops' Conference, are the winds of change blowing in the country's Catholic Church? Catholic theologian Uta Ranke-Heinemann doesn't seem to think so.
Germany's Foreign Minister has urged Syria to support what he called the "critical" phase of reviving the long-stalled Middle East peace process.
(Also: FM criticized for courting Syria)
As Europe's biggest farm produce trade fair opens in Berlin, Germany set an altogether different stall out when its agriculture minister squared up to the EU over plans to scrap outdated farm subsidies. Speaking before the International Green Week opened in the German capital Friday, Horst Seehofer [CSU] announced he was spoiling for a fight over the EU commissioner for agriculture's planned changes to the Common Agricultural Policy.
Tony Blair should not be president of Europe, 2 former French leaders have declared in response to the backing the former prime minister has been given by President Sarkozy. Valérie Giscard d'Estaing, the former French president and the father of the now defunct EU constitutional treaty, said that Europe's first president must have majority support from his home country, which should be a nation that "respects all its European commitments". Something that he claimed Britain did not do.
"Tony Blair cannot be president of Europe," agreed Edouard Balladur, the former conservative French prime minister close to Sarkozy. Another contender for EU president is Bertie Ahern, the Irish prime minister.
Russia continues putting pressure upon the British Council in spite of statements of official figures, which argues that this scandal that has been lasting since the end of the previous year, has no attitude to the policy. Now the FSB joined the conflict. The FSB Centre for Public Relations informed that officials of special services began the outreach among Russian officials of the British Centre in order to "guard Russian nationals from being involved as tools into provocative games of the British."
A former chief of the KGB's covert operations department even argues that Great Britain is Russia's official enemy, a potential occupier which aspires to seize a part of our territory. "Why is the British Council being so provocative? For the simple reason that some foreign politicians in Britain and the United States are planning to divide up Russia, so that the landmass from Petersburg to Yekaterinburg will eventually become British territory and the Siberia will pass to the United States."
President Putin said today any unilateral recognition of Kosovo's independence by Western states would be "illegal and immoral". "A unilateral declaration of independence and support for that process from other members of the international community would be an illegal and immoral solution. We believe negotiations on the Kosovo settlement should be continued in order to find a compromise."
Two major al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan's tribal areas near Afghanistan have called upon their followers to intensify holy war against security forces and seize control of the capital Islamabad, media reports said. "Jihad is compulsory in Pakistan as it is compulsory in Afghanistan. Pakistan came into being on the name of Islam, therefore Islam should be enforced in the country."
(Also: The Pakistan conundrum)
Iran's new envoy to Brussels called for the enhancement of fully-fledged cooperation with the 25-member EU. At a meeting between the EU Commission President and Iran's new ambassador, the two sides vowed to fight terrorism and drug trafficking and realizing the potential of regional and international cooperation.
Tehran has shown that it will not cede the Middle East to the US, especially after the Iranian president for the first time attended the summit of the GCC countries in December. So far, Tehran has been moving one step ahead of the US. It appears that Iran is deliberately exacerbating tensions. Why? The truth is that all the conditions are in place to make 2008 a crucial year for Iran's nuclear program.
President Ahmadinejad said on Thursday that Israel "would not dare attack Iran", after Israel said it tested a missile following warnings against Iran's controversial nuclear programme.
"The Iranian response would make them regret it, and they know this. It knows that any attack on Iranian territories would prompt a fierce response.The Zionist regime has always used all the capabilities of America and some Western countries ... still it has limited armament even after announcing this new weapon. This criminal regime will not gain legitimacy through threats ... it has lost its philosophical reason to exist."
President Ahmadinejad said in response to President Bush's recent visit to the Middle East that "the region's countries are about to erupt like a volcano," the Islamic Republic News Agency reported Thursday
The Hormuz hoax
Notice how quickly the official story is changing. First the transmission was a threat coming from the Iranians: now they're "unsure." Whoever told the Americans that they were going to explode "in a few minutes" was certainly monitoring the scene at sea, perhaps in sight of the encounter: in any case, the voice did not sound Iranian, according to Farsi speakers interviewed by the Washington Post. "Some have even said the voice sounds more like Borat than a real Iranian," quips Editor and Publisher.
Just how close might a military confrontation between Iran and the US be? Though a war of words eased a bit recently, President Bush's strong Iran warnings during his just completed Mideast trip, coupled with a ship standoff, are raising fears that a small incident could someday spiral - even by accident - into a real fight.
The scenario Bush outlined - a rash decision on the water, spilling over into real fighting - is just the thing that many US military officers, and much of the Gulf Arab world, are sweating over. The worry: That in a heated political climate, such cat-and-mouse maneuvers could spiral into a more-serious exchange of fire, difficult for either side to pull back from. As long as Bush and Ahmadinejad are both in office and focused on each other, said a Gulf political analyst, the threat of "accidental war" will keep many people on edge.
I called Seymour Hersh on a lark trying to score an interview regarding his New Yorker article "Shifting Targets: The Administration's plan for Iran," an explosive piece outlining the Bush Administration's strategic and aggressive preparation for a potential attack on Iran. When Hersh writes, everyone reads, and the world pays attention.
US stocks plunged on Thursday, falling a 3rd straight day, as a drop in regional factory activity and a hefty loss at Merrill Lynch further clouded an increasingly dire view of the economy. Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, raised expectations of an aggressive interest rate cut to stave off a sharp economic slowdown, which would normally prompt a rise in the market.
But sentiment turned down after a report of a steep drop in US factory activity further stoked fears of a US recession. "Basically every day now, you have more and more investors leaning toward the camp that yes, this is going to be a recession, and it could be a severe one."
(Also: Tears on Wall Street)
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. Another is the continued fall in the dollar, both against the currencies of rival capitalist powers, and against gold and other precious metals.
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.
(Also: US economy teeters on the brink)
One year ago, LEAP/E2020 anticipated that the year 2007 would mark the US entry into what our team then called "the Very Great US Depression". In the course of 2007, facts however proved that a global systemic crisis was indeed throwing down all the principles the global economy was based upon since 1945; and that, along with the GEAB's analyses in September 2007, the 7 sequences of the impact phase of the global systemic crisis would simultaneously reach climax in the course of the year 2008.
Simultaneously, the diving of the US into the Very Great Depression will bear a full direct impact on global economy altogether. The Eurozone will step into a perdio of stagflation while the rest of the EU will be sucked up in a recessionary process.
(Also: US plunges into poverty)
The price of gold tells us a lot about ourselves. It holds up a mirror to the way we are governed, our economy and its prospects. It reflects not only the physical dangers of floods, famine, terrorism and war, but also the financial perils of systemic addiction to debt and budgetary incontinence. With gold trading at about $900 an ounce - more than 200% higher than it was at the turn of the millennium - today's message from the bullion market is not comforting.
So why have investors been abandoning conventional assets, such as government bonds and stakes in blue-chip businesses, in favour of a metal that appears to offer no reward for holding it? The answer, I'm afraid, is crumbling faith in the world's central banks, and in particular the US Federal Reserve, where the presses have been working overtime.
"Practically all governments of history," said Friedrich von Hayek, "have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people." Gold stands in the way of this process; it is a protector of property rights.
Bobby Fischer, the reclusive American chess master who became a Cold War icon when he dethroned the Soviet Union's Boris Spassky as world champion in 1972, has died. Over the years, Fischer gave occasional interviews, often digressing into anti-Semitic rants and accusing American officials of hounding him. He praised the 9/11 attacks, saying America should be "wiped out," and described Jews as "thieving, lying bastards."
In 1962, Fischer said that he had "personal problems" and began to listen to various radio ministers in a search for answers. This is how he first came to listen to The World Tomorrow radio program with Herbert W. Armstrong and his son Garner Ted Armstrong.
(Also: Bobby Fischer speaks out!)
If God is everywhere, why do so few people seem to be able to find Him? By "find Him," I don't mean just clinging to a vague notion that God exists, but rather, experiencing an intimate, moment-to-moment flow of understanding, guidance, and the special energy called "grace," coming directly from Him to us.
[WAR: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him ... for many are invited, but few are chosen." (John 6:44 / Mat 22:14) "I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me." (Isa 65:1)]
Islam watchers blogged all weekend about news that a secret archive of ancient Islamic texts had surfaced after 60 years of suppression. Andrew Higgins' Wall Street Journal report that the photographic record of Koranic manuscripts, supposedly destroyed during WW2 but occulted by a scholar of alleged Nazi sympathies, reads like a conflation of the Da Vinci Code with Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail. The story of the photographic archive of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, now ensconced in a Berlin vault, is a case of life imitating truly dreadful art.
What if scholars can prove beyond reasonable doubt that the Koran was not dictated by the Archangel Gabriel to the Prophet Mohammad during the 7th century, but rather was redacted by later writers drawing on a variety of extant Christian and Jewish sources? It has long been known that variant copies of the Koran exist. Many scholars believe that the German archive, which includes photocopies of manuscripts as old as 700 AD, will provide more evidence of variation in the Koran.
Many westerners do not understand why it is that Shia Muslims mourn the martyred Imam Hussein as though the event did not occur a thousand years ago but as if it happened as recently as yesterday.
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