Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
Today the Pope received participants of the plenary assembly of the Congregation for Catholic Education and advised them that in their work of reform, they must seek to effectively communicate the Truth in the modern world.
The Vatican held a press conference today to present the upcoming congress theme: "Canon Law in the Life of the Church, research and perspectives in the context of recent Pontifical Magisterium." Canon Law "contains the law of the Church, just as a State code contains the laws of a particular nation. And it is called 'Canon Law' because it is made up of 'canons', which are equivalent to the 'articles' of a State code." However the Code of Canon Law "is not just a collection of norms created by the will of ecclesiastical legislators", but it "indicates the duties and rights inherent to the faithful and to the structure of the Church as instituted by Christ." [?]
No!!...
Senior officials of Germany's far-right National Democratic Party move around with bodyguards, and the party's headquarters in suburban Berlin have security cameras outside. Successes by the NPD, which has cultivated support among neo-Nazi toughs, worry many Germans. They see a chilling resemblance to the rise of the Nazis, who won 37 and then 33% of the vote in 2 snap elections in 1932.
The Vatican has been accused of trying to bring down the Italian government after a Catholic minister abandoned Romano Prodi's coalition government, leaving it facing collapse. The prime minister was forced to call a vote of confidence after the former justice minister withdrew his support on Monday.
The impetus for his change of heart appears to have come from the Vatican, which has voiced its disapproval at Mr Prodi's stance on gay rights and abortion. La Stampa, a newspaper, said that the Holy See was trying to meddle in Italian politics. "Prodi's government dared to challenge the ecclesiastical hierarchy for the 2nd time and this time it has had its hands burned."
A study conducted for the German finance ministry has concluded that an EU-wide tax would lead to unfair differences between EU citizens and that the resulting correction mechanisms would make it too complicated to introduce.
US Secretary of State Rice has warned Europe against further delays in resolving the status of Kosovo. "There is some danger in continuing to wait for what needs to be done. I don't think we have a gap with Europe on Kosovo. What we are really now trying to do is to see if there is anything more that can be done to smooth the transition."
According to one well-placed Israeli source, the Olmert cabinet has approved a large-scale military invasion, to occur anytime after April. This, however, is premised on the survival of the Olmert government. If the Winograd report focuses the blame on Prime Minister Olmert, there could be further cabinet resignations, forcing early elections.
In that case, Benjamin Netanyahu is waiting in the wings. He has been an open advocate of Israeli preventive strikes against Iran's purported nuclear weapons sites. Recent polls suggest that Netanyahu would win a snap election for prime minister. A close ally of Vice President Cheney and others in the pro-British war party in Washington, Netanyahu would also likely launch a full-scale invasion of Gaza.
The Israeli sources, with close ties to the Olmert government, warned that the Israeli war plans against Hamas's presence in the Gaza Strip, could easily careen out of control, and spread to a second northern front, if Hezbollah carries out rocket attacks against Israel, in sympathy with Hamas. Under those circumstances, the sources warned, Israel could be drawn into a simultaneous war against the Palestinians, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Syria. According to some Israeli contingency plans, Iran could also be a target.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians poured from the Gaza Strip into Egypt today after masked gunmen with explosives destroyed most of the 7-mile wall dividing the border town of Rafah. Egyptian border guards took no action.
The 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany agreed Tuesday to impose new sanctions on Iran over its suspect nuclear program, yet the measures appeared to fall short of what the Bush administration had wanted. The document, hailed by US officials as a victory for the Bush administration's tough line on Iran, was not released.
And participants in the 2-hour negotiating session that produced it here pointedly refused to discuss details. In addition, the foreign ministers of the 6 nations represented canceled a planned news conference and left it to the host of the meeting, Germany's Foreign Minister, to announce the result.
(Op-ed: More sanctions won't help, may hurt)
Britain's foreign intelligence service is investigating whether al-Qaida hackers – described as some of the best in the world – broke into the state-of-the-art computerized systems of the British Airways flight that crash-landed in London last week.
Sources have confirmed hackers could have tampered with the Boeing 777 before it left Beijing en route to Heathrow Airport, where it landed at the very time British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was about to take off in an identical aircraft on his visit to China.
Nine out of 23 Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee favor starting impeachment hearings against Vice-President Dick Cheney. Articles I and II of H.R. 799 accuse Cheney of purposely manipulating intelligence to deceive Congress and the American people about a fabricated threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and about an alleged relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, respectively. Article III charges Cheney with openly threatening aggression against Iran absent any real threat to the US. All 3 articles say Cheney's actions have damaged our national security interests.
The bankers can claim all they want that the multi-billion-dollar injections by foreign institutions into the banking system is a sign of strength, but what it really is, is proof that we are bankrupt—not just our banks, but our nation. Thanks to the combined effects of deindustrialization, deregulation, and globalization, we have become not only a net borrower of capital, but are so dependent upon borrowing from the rest of the world that we can't even keep the doors of our banks open without multi-billion loans from overseas, loans for which we pay above-junk-bond interest rates. What was once the most productive nation on Earth has been reduced to the pathetic status of debt junkie.
Our short tenure as the world's "lone superpower" has come to an end, and we face probable national insolvency and a long depression.
(Also: Empire and the economy)
Global stocks remained highly volatile a day after the Federal Reserve's emergency interest rate cut, with European shares falling today on a suggestion from the European Central Bank chief that no monetary easing was in the cards, and Asian shares gaining sharply - but not big enough to erase the losses suffered there in recent days.
There are undoubtedly European Central Bank governors who would want the ECB to react by cutting rates, but the ECB's lethargic policy process is now working in the other directions. Stark and Weber of the Bundesbank in particular did not get the rate rise they wanted, but they sure can stop the rate cut. The ECB majority will probably not go against the 2 Germans on the board.
(But: ECB slams door on rate cut)
(Cartoon: For Sale)
Father of Reaganomics and former editor of the Wall Street Journal Paul Craig Roberts warned that the Fed's shock 75 basis points interest rate cut would only succeed in putting average families through the ringer and could even portend the collapse of the dollar as the world reserve currency.
Roberts added that a total breakdown of the global economy would take place, "If the destruction of the dollar's role as world reserve currency continues and there's not a clear alternative that arrives to take its place," warning that it was the biggest danger and there would be "no way to survive" its impact.
(Cartoon: The bear returns)
* EIRNS: "The fevered efforts to save the financial system, typified by today's panicked three-quarter-point interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve and the Bush/Paulson stimulus plan not only will not work, but will backfire spectacularly, and soon. The financial system is dead, and any attempt to save the fictitious values of the trillions of dollars of worthless financial paper will not only fail, but will destroy any nation foolish enough to attempt to do so."
The system is failing because it was designed to fail. The impending economic crisis is no accident, but the predictable outcome of deeply flawed policies that are pushing the country towards a 1930s-type catastrophe.
(Also: Fearing the worst from rate cut)
(Also: Fed to cut rate to 2.25%?)
The US central bank made its deepest interest rate cut in a quarter of a century Tuesday in an attempt to prevent a 2-day wave of sell-offs on world financial markets from sweeping through Wall Street. The clear aim was to dissuade investors from a panicked run on US equities similar to those seen in Asia and Europe while Wall Street had remained closed.
The 2-day global sell-off signaled a growing realization that the US "credit crunch" that has been developing since last summer, forcing major Wall Street finance houses to write off hundreds of billions of dollars in assets, poses a mortal threat to the functioning of the world capitalist economy as a whole.
Alarm is increasing in the bond markets, as Fitch Ratings has downgraded the rating of Ambac, the 2nd-largest insurer of municipal and structured bonds, by 2 levels—from AAA, to AA. This means that Ambac will no longer be able to insure bonds, which is the majority of its business, and will have to sell itself to a bank if it is to avoid bankruptcy.
The loss of the AAA rating may lead to downgrades of the $2.6 trillion of municipal and structured bonds they guarantee. This would force banks to increase the amount of capital they hold against bonds.
Over the next 5 days, the tiny Swiss ski resort of Davos will host its annual invasion of the powerful, rich and famous, filling the rarefied atmosphere with opinion, policy and not a little of their own hot air. This year, more than 2,500 participants and scores of journalists are gathered in the snow-bound, high-security cocoon of the World Economic Forum, which boasts some of the planet's top movers and shakers, often accused of championing an exclusively capitalistic and free-market world view.
(Also: Panic at Davos!)
(Also: Another global elite gathering)
(WEF founder: Davos and the power of collaborative innovation)
More and more, it appears that in the 21st century we are returning to the economics of the 19th, where wealth was overwhelmingly concentrated in the hands of a few owners and astute speculators. Neither the Right nor the Left seem capable of creating a society in which all benefit from increased prosperity and economic security.
Right-wing claims that free markets will enrich all sections of society are palpably false, while the traditional European welfare state appears to penalize innovation and wealth-creation, thereby locking the poor and unskilled into institutionalized poverty and unemployment.
Thus in the new age of globalization, both ideologies create the same phenomenon: an underclass caught between welfare and low wages, a heavily indebted middle class increasingly subject to job and pension insecurity and a new class of the super rich who escape all rules of taxation and community.
This photo of what looks remarkably like a female figure with her arm outstretched, was taken on Mars.
Tonight's sky
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"The Great Altar of Pergamon is in the Pergamon Museum, Berlin. It was this altar, believed dedicated to Zeus, that John of Patmos referred to as 'Satan's Throne' in Rev 2:12-13. ... It can be seen alongside other monumental structures such as ... the Ishtar Gate from Babylon. ... [which] was the 8th gate to the inner city of Babylon. It was constructed in about 575 BC by order of King Nebuchadnezzar II on the north side of the city."
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