Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
Fantasy...
For this year's Lenten Message, I wish to spend some time reflecting on the practice of almsgiving, which represents a specific way to assist those in need and, at the same time, an exercise in self-denial to free us from attachment to worldly goods.
According to the teaching of the Gospel, we are not owners but rather administrators of the goods we possess: these, then, are not to be considered as our exclusive possession, but means through which the Lord calls each one of us to act as a steward of His providence for our neighbor.
As the Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us, material goods bear a social value, according to the principle of their universal destination. Jesus explicitly admonishes the one who possesses and uses earthly riches only for self.
Reality...
Lent was not observed by the first century Church! It was first addressed by the church at Rome during the Council of Nicea in A.D. 325. Lent may seem like a sincere, heartfelt religious observance. But it is deeply rooted in pagan ideas that counterfeit God's plan.
Coming from the Anglo-Saxon Lencten, meaning "spring," Lent originated in the ancient Babylonian mystery religion. "The 40 days' abstinence of Lent was directly borrowed from the worshippers of the Babylonian goddess…Among the Pagans this Lent seems to have been an indispensable preliminary to the great annual festival in commemoration of the death and resurrection of Tammuz."
The election results in Hesse and Lower Saxony express a shift to the left by the population as a whole, a process that has been under way for some time. Sections of the German ruling elite are fearful that the increasing economic and social crisis could lead to sharpened social conflicts.
Any conception that the SPD would react to globalisation and the international financial crisis by returning to policies based on some sort of social consensus is quite frankly absurd. Those who seek to maintain such illusions are in for a very rude shock.
The latest state elections in the state of Hesse, which includes Frankfurt, will have important long-term implications for German poltics, and indirectly for international investors. Germany is now a 5-party republic. The Communists are now a firm force in both East and West Germany. Germany has shifted politically decisively to the left.
The possibility of German combat troops being used in Afghanistan has drawn criticism from a former military chief of staff. Afghan President Karzai sees the proposed increase of troops in the country as unnecessary.
[Europress] / [Russopress]
Slovenia and Malta have approved the new EU Lisbon treaty by a large majority, but in Slovakia the treaty vote has become tangled up in a dispute over a separate law. For ratification of the EU treaty, the Slovakian government is short of 5 votes as its approval requires support by two thirds of parliamentarians. If it goes ahead with the vote today, the treaty vote could fall short of the majority needed.
(Also: Slovakia row threatens EU treaty)
Kosovo will declare independence from Serbia with Western backing the weekend after the February 3 Serbian presidential election if the nationalist candidate wins, political sources said on today. The major Western powers are "pushing for February," one of the sources added.
Startling developments in Gaza highlight the need for a change in Western policy toward this troubled territory of 1.3 million persons.Washington and other capitals should declare the experiment in Gazan self-rule a failure and press President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt to help, perhaps providing Gaza with additional land or even annexing it as a province.
An Israeli panel investigating the conduct of the 2006 war against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon publishes a final report today that could rock Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government.
The Air Force commander used the term "nightmare" to refer to the possibility of an attack on Israeli satellites. "It could be done by a state or a terrorist organization and I suggest that we don't close our eyes because we're talking about a real battlefield and this could potentially occur."
NATO and Israel:
The Project for a "New Middle East" will come at a high price and that price is war. The militarization of the Gaza Strip is multi-faceted in rationale and is linked to preparations for a broader Middle Eastern conflict.
The deployment of foreign troops to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, like in Lebanon, and the walling up of the West Bank also serve the purpose of keeping the Palestinians at bay should a major war break out in the Middle East between Israel, America, and NATO on one side and Syria, Iran, and their allies on the other.
After returning from his trip to Western Europe and conferring with NATO Headquarters the former Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs, Avigdor Lieberman, said in early-July, 2007 that he received the tacit blessing of the EU, the US, and NATO to initiate an Israeli military strike on Iran. He also affirmed that the US and NATO would intervene on the side of Israel once the war with Iran and its allies were started.
NATO allies are already tiring of the Afghan campaign. Canada now says it will only extend its mission there if Germany, France, Spain or Italy agrees their soldiers should also be involved in harm's way missions. NATO's future is now clearly at stake in the Pakistan-Afghan mess.
Afghanistan risks sliding into a failed state and becoming the "forgotten war" because of deteriorating international support and a growing violent insurgency, according to an independent study.
"Afghanistan stands at a crossroads. The progress achieved after 6 years of international engagement is under serious threat from resurgent violence, weakening international resolve, mounting regional challenges and a growing lack of confidence on the part of the Afghan people about the future direction of their country."
EU foreign ministers have finally agreed to help victims of the violence in Darfur by sending a peacekeeping force to states neighboring the troubled region. German commentator are skeptical of the true purpose of the mission, pointing to French interests in the country.
Kofi Annan has rarely been blunter, more heartfelt or more anguished in his appeal. Kenya, he told its leaders yesterday, was in turmoil, its people suffering, its land untilled, its tranquillity rapidly descending into chaos. The former UN Secretary-General knows that he is racing against time in his desperate attempt to halt the downward spiral.
Ancient tribal animosities, stirred by feuding politicians, have revived historic arguments over land and grazing rights, inflamed the loathing among the rural poor for the corrupt elites, shattered the tolerance engendered by prosperity and stability.
President Ahmadinejad said today that Iran would not make concessions over the country's nuclear drive despite pressure by world powers. "The Iranian nation will resist the pressure and not withdraw one iota from its rights - if you (the West) believe that Iran would give in to pressure, then you are making a grave mistake."
President Ahmadinejad called on the West Wednesday to acknowledge Israel's "imminent collapse." Speaking to a crowd on a visit to the southern port of Bushehr, where Iran's first light-water nuclear power plant is being built by Russia, Ahmadinejad further incited his listeners to "stop supporting the Zionists, as [their] regime reached its final stage. Accept that the life of Zionists will sooner or later come to an end."
Iranian lawmakers have called for minimizing economic ties with France due to its 'unfriendly' policies towards the Islamic Republic. "Given the hardline, irrational and unfriendly policies of the government of the French President towards Iran, in particular, on its nuclear program and at the UN Security Council, no reason exists for continuation of the current trend."
Iran says Persian Gulf littoral states should make efforts to defuse Washington's attempts to fuel sectarian violence in the Middle East. An Iranian official said that the so-called sectarian conflict between the Sunnis and Shias in Iraq are a complete fabrication of Western media.
If it is true Bush — or rather the neocons, using the sock puppet Bush — plan to attack Iran before the decider-commander leaves office in a little less than a year, then the State of Union address seems to send up a couple red flags in that direction.
Bush and the perfidious neocons are way behind schedule and they realize even flimsily crafted lies work well enough on millions of Americans who, like well-trained monkeys, jump when they are told there's a turbaned Muslim lighting a fire under their posteriors.
(Also: Iran calls Bush remarks "boring")
By now most of us are familiar with the President's feelings and rhetoric concerning Iran. They have a familiar ring. They sound a lot like the buildup to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. In this light we should examine carefully any statement the President makes concerning Iranian threats to world peace.
The President appears to be using the same strategy which worked so well in 2002-2003: simply to repeat falsehoods until a majority of Americans believe them. He appears to be gambling that we are either so apathetic or so foolish we will accept the lies and approve yet another war.
A look at a map of the region helps put things in perspective. We see that Iran has 13 "next-door neighbors." Seven share land borders with Iran while 6 countries lie directly across the Persian Gulf. Of these 13 all but 5 contain U.S. military bases.
In sum, Iran is nearly encircled by the air, land and naval forces of the world's most powerful military. The Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, has pledged there will be no Iranian nuclear weapons, nor will Iran start a war.
A Baptist church in Ohio is being accused of religious intolerance for allegedly thwarting a plan to build a mosque on nearby property. "We just feel that Christianity is right and that Islam is wrong. Therefore, we take a stand to see (a mosque) not in our community."
If George Washington were alive today, and President of the United States, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg would be tried and hanged for treason.
Bloomberg, the financiers' candidate for a Mussolini-style fascist takeover of the US, through a "Third Way" Presidential candidacy—a plot being implemented even as you read this—openly denounced the American Revolution.
Over the past week, the drive to establish Bloomberg as the "man on a white horse" has gone into high gear. For the last several months, as Bloomberg has demurely insisted that he is not sure if he will run for President, a nasty operation to secure ballot status for the Independence Party of American in all 50 states has been afoot.
This "stealth" plan would relieve Bloomberg of the impossible task of getting on the ballot in all states, after the GOP and Democratic candidates are already chosen.
Rather than the "American Century" the Bush administration neo-conservatives predicted, it is increasingly a world where regional alliances and trade associations in Europe and South America have risen to challenge Washington's once undisputed domination.
(Also: An Asian century?)
The heroic whistleblower on nuclear secrets corruption at the highest levels attacks the cowardly US press and warns she has much more to reveal. "You need to consider that the entire US press corps has failed on this story; not only the regular print and TV media, but the alternative media has failed on this too. Part of the reason is that journalists are simply too close to their official sources. Those sources might tell the journalist that there's nothing to the story, and so the journalist gives up on it, or the official sources might 'request' that the journalist to stay away from the story, and the journalist is then concerned about losing access to the source in the future."
As former FBI translator and whistle-blower Sibel Edmonds has revealed, there was a curious failure of the government before 9/11 to act upon intelligence pertaining to an al-Qaeda attack. Most importantly Edmonds, defying the gag order that former Attorney General Ashcroft imposed on her in 2002, is implicating Marc Grossman, formerly the #3 man in the State Department, in efforts to provide US nuclear secrets to Pakistan and Israel.
The number of homes receiving default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions rose by 75% between 2006 and 2007. The report was one of a series issued in recent days, which detail the scale of the ongoing housing crisis in the US and its catastrophic impact on millions of working and middle class families.
In the face of this social calamity, the economic stimulus and mortgage relief packages offered by the Bush administration and leading Democratic Party presidential contenders are, at best, band-aids, aimed, above all, at bailing out the big lenders and Wall Street banks which profited from the subprime loan industry, not the millions of working people facing the loss of their homes.
UN World Food Program officials at the World Economic Forum at Davos warned that food supply shortages are threatening their humanitarian mission. "We have never seen this before: We went begging for wheat, and for 2 weeks we could not find it.
Behind the scarce market of food staples such as grains, are record-breaking price increases over the past months. Wheat, rice, and soybeans have reached all-time highs in the commodities markets, with corn at a 12-year high. Commodities dependent on these items—poultry, livestock, dairy, and eggs, are also inflated.
To save Wall Street speculators and influential financial institutions (that took absurd risks), the Fed now appears willing to drive the real rate of interest (rates adjusted for inflation) to near zero. Now if that doesn't deepen and aggravate all of the on-going economic distortions already in place, I don't know what will.
In conventional terms, the only thing worse than a recession in the US would be world-wide INFLATIONARY recession. Well, the Federal Reserve and the Bush Administration have now set us up for exactly that dismal scenario. As Betty Davis growled in All About Eve: "Fasten your seat belts; it's going to be a bumpy ride."
Make no mistake about it: the central economic problem facing the US is out-of-control federal spending and the massive federal debt that continues to pile up. The debt will continue to mount. The Federal Reserve will continue to print the money to pay off the debt. The dollar will continue to plummet.
My advice? Given that the American people and their federal officials are not yet ready to give up on either their welfare state or the warfare state – and the massive expenditures that are needed to fund them, my advice would be the same I'd give to people on a ship heading directly toward an iceberg: Brace yourselves.
Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, UBS and other banks may be forced to post up to $70 billion in writedowns should bond insurers lose their top credit ratings.
UBS, the largest Swiss bank, said today that it would write off $14 billion in exposure to the troubled US housing market and post a net loss for 2007. The bank had already announced a $4.4 billion loss on subprime investments in the 3rd quarter. The figures today bring its 2007 losses to $18.4 billion.
Banks worldwide have announced more than $135 billion in credit losses and write-downs since the turmoil in the US housing market started last year, and some analysts estimate that total write-downs could reach $800 billion.
The hyperinflationary frenzy which engulfed Weimar Germany in the years immediately after WW1, is a dramatic example of what can happen to a nation when its productive capacity is destroyed, and it turns to the printing of money to preserve its economy. It also serves as a road map of where the US, indeed the world, is headed, if we continue down our present path.
The crisis in Weimar Germany came about as the result of a coordinated effort to destroy the nation of Germany after WW1, orchestrated primarily by the British Empire, with the assistance of France.
Thus, the productive capacity of the German agro-industrial economy was deliberately stripped, at the same time that Germany was hit by debilitating demands for war reparations payments, leaving it in the position of either imposing savage austerity upon its own population, or cranking up the printing presses.
Unwilling to commit national suicide through austerity, the Germans chose the printing-press method, in the hope that they could muddle through, and in the process unleashed a hyperinflationary dynamic which destroyed the value of their currency. The Germans wound up triggering the very austerity they had hoped to avoid.
The parallels to our current situation should be obvious. Today, the entire global economy is in a period equivalent to Weimar Germany in the Autumn of 1923, conditions primed for the same sort of hyperinflationary shock which exploded then.
The insane injections of ever more cash by the central banks is the monetary equivalent of throwing gasoline on a fire. The stimulus plan being pushed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is more of the same. Pumping more money into a hyperinflationary system is the worst possible move, a repeat of the error of Weimar Germany, and one which will produce similar results.
(Also: Bernanke pressure mounts)
(Also: All eyes on the Fed, again)
Spanish banks are issuing mortgage securities and asset-backed bonds on a massive scale to park at the European Central Bank, using them as collateral to raise money at favourable rates from the official credit window in Frankfurt. The data appear to confirm suspicions that the EU authorities have carried out a covert rescue of the Spanish mortgage banking system.
A veiled method is necessary since the eurozone lacks a clear-cut lender of last resort. The IMF has warned that this gap in the architecture of of the single currency could prove serious in a crisis.
As Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown met for dinner in London last night, there was a distinct sense that both leaders were having an Enron moment: The sudden realization that the country's most-respected industries are going to need more government oversight.
Both the French President and the British Prime Minister, who met to discuss the rattling economy and banking crises in an emergency summit with other European leaders, have discovered that their governments will need to take an active role - either in regulation or bailouts, or both - after recent disasters that have afflicted some major financial institutions.
(Also: Don't panic, say EU leaders)
(Also: Leaders call for global watchdog)
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