Sunday

The Daily WAR (11-16)

Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
 
 
 
    A new exhibition gives the public a first glimpse of centuries-old Vatican documents about the Inquisition, including a 400-year-old order detailing how to crack down on heresy. The curiosities allow fascinating insights into how the Vatican once systematically tried to gain control over many aspects of life that had nothing to do with faith.
    The archives of what was once known as the Holy Office had been kept secret for centuries. They were opened only to scholars in 1998 but for the first time to the public on Thursday.
    The Inquisition was a systematic crackdown by Catholic Church officials to defend doctrinal orthodoxy. Catholics suspected of being heretics, witches or others considered of dubious faith — including Muslims and Jews who had converted to Catholicism — were among the targets.
    But, as the exhibit makes clear, the Inquisition went beyond mere doctrine. The Holy Office "wanted total control," said one of the show's curators, who's on the staff of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, previously known as the Holy Office. The Church in past centuries had its hand in everything, from "culture to literature to economics, even architecture," he said.
 
    When Pope Benedict XVI visits the United States this spring, he will not be stepping into the unknown. Through his many personal contacts with American church leaders and papal diplomats, his past trips to the US and his ability to remember much of what he hears and reads, Pope Benedict has his finger firmly on the pulse of the church in the US.
    Bishops from around the world coming to Rome consistently have expressed awe and admiration for the pope's remarkable depth of knowledge, his familiarity with everyday events worldwide, and his recollection of minute or even obscure facts and past events.
    Pope Benedict regularly thumbs through the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, which carries a variety of international news. Staffers at the Vatican's Secretariat of State comb through other news sources for a daily news roundup for the pope.
 
 
 
Press review
    In one of the biggest tax evasion scandals in recent German history, an informant last week provided the government in Berlin with data on hundreds of people hiding their wealth in nearby Liechtenstein. On Thursday, the scandal widened to include German banks. The social implications, commentators say, are massive.
 
    Germany's investigation of hundreds of suspected tax evaders will help cement the arrival of Oskar Lafontaine's opposition Left Party as a force capable of frustrating Chancellor Merkel's plans for government. The Left Party, which includes former Communists and disaffected former Social Democrats, may be the biggest political beneficiary of the widening scandal.
 
    History records that the Liechtenstein family originally began purchasing the lands that now comprise the tiny European principality in 1699 in order to secure a seat on the council of the Holy Roman Empire.
    Tens of thousands of companies and individuals now take advantage of Liechtenstein's lax financial controls, banking secrecy laws and low taxes, many tucking their money into a bank owned by direct descendants of the original prince. So when the acting ruler, Crown Prince Alois von und zu Liechtenstein, rails against Germany for launching a massive tax-evasion investigation involving funds hidden away in Liechtenstein, well, he would, wouldn't he?
 
 
 
    This week will see 2 important ministerial meetings; one tackling energy liberalisation and the other US travel security demands.
 
The European Commission is wrong to think opinion polls can provide it with a democratic mandate
    Barring last-minute problems with ratification in some member nations, the new Lisbon treaty is expected to come into force around the end of this year, triggering big and unpredictable shifts in the institutional balance of power in Europe.
    The European Commission has always been a strange hybrid: a civil service run by politicians, with a monopoly on proposing new EU laws and rules. In power-struggles with national governments, claiming voter support must be tempting. But Brussels should remember that detecting public support is not the same thing as actual democracy: just ask any Soviet-era comic.
 
    The Bush administration Friday urged the EU to stop dithering over the building of a $6bn gas pipeline from the Caspian basin to central Europe and reduce its growing dependence on Russia's Gazprom. A US deputy assistant secretary of state argued that the troubled Nabucco project made sound commercial sense and would cut Europe's dependence on Gazprom by up to a quarter.
    His outspoken comments came after talks with senior EU officials, including its energy commissioner, and took sideswipes at the "gigantic rents" [excessive prices] Gazprom is charging Europe for gas.
    They underline the growing geo-political importance of gas. The Nabucco pipeline would bring gas from US ally Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and possibly Kazakhstan via Turkey to Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Austria and perhaps Germany.
 
    This week, the notion that common decency and legality bear more importance than the rule of the mob, the precept that the rule of law holds more sway than the law of the jungle, were all dealt a deadly blow by a handful of nations which in a moment of madness, swept away centuries of progress towards building an international community based upon a global state of law.
    In declaring support for an independent Albanian Kosovo, these handful of nations have made it clear that treaties are not worth the paper they are written on, these countries have admitted that they do not respect the law, the UNO, its Charter or any precept that decisions must be taken on a multilateral basis.
    For their part, the European nations which jumped at the opportunity to follow suit have either sold their souls and their character to Washigton DC or else have understood that only by creating an independent Kosovo can they rid themselves of the scourge of Kosovar Albanian refugees plaguing their societies. It is not by chance that these very European nations are the ones with the largest numbers of Kosovar refugees.
    So this week, the Devil was uncaged and let loose. Let the History book register these names, these countries and these governments as being those responsible for doing the Devil's work, destroying the noble precepts Mankind has striven so long to achieve, in this, the week that "God" died.
 
    Kosovo is facing a partition of its territory only a week after it unilaterally declared independence from Serbia. The mostly Serb-populated northern region around the divided town of Mitrovica, next to the Serbian border, has begun preparing a de facto secession.
 
    Kosovo's declaration of independence creates dangerous problems on multiple fronts. The decision by Washington and the major EU countries to encourage Kosovo's secession will go down as a colossal foreign policy blunder.
    In short, Washington and the "EU 3" -- Britain, France and Germany -- have created a multitude of international problems with their policy regarding Kosovo. All 4 governments claim that the Kosovo situation is unique and sets no precedent, but that is an extraordinarily naive view, and other influential countries clearly do not agree.
 
    The biggest Serb newspaper, Novosti, in an article published today justified the violent attack on the US embassy in Belgrade.
    "The US embassy was set on fire. It was not set on fire by Serb nationalists, as some media have reported, it was set on fire by Americanism and contemporary fascism." The "united totalitarian evil" embodied by the US had been responsible for the violence on Belgrade's streets on Thursday.
 
    Kosovo is turning out to be a huge source of conflict, both in the Balkans and across Europe. Europe's lack of unanimity over recognizing Kosovo revealed what a heterogeneous entity Europe still is. It also raises the question of whether such a divided Europe will ever be capable of conducting an effective joint common foreign policy.
    Six EU member states are against recognizing Kosovo's independence, because they fear it could lead to problems with their own ethnic minorities. But what are these conflicts, and why has resolving them proved to be so difficult? Spiegel profiles 6 countries that are refusing to toe the EU line.
 
    The declaration of the "independence" of Kosovo is, first and foremost, a vast step forward for one of the pet projects of the US in the Balkans, the creation of a "Greater Albania." A clear understanding regarding the aims of this imperialistic policy is of paramount importance.
    To start with, the Balkans are the South-western tip of Eurasia, an immense region that has come up for grabs. It was imperative for imperialism to prevent the survival of a state (Federal Yugoslavia) that had the capacity of obstructing imperialist plans in the Balkans.
 
    Formal recognition of Kosovo as an independent state by the EU or NATO obligates Moscow to resort to "brute force," Russia's envoy to NATO says.
    "If the European Union works out a common position, or if NATO breaches its mandate in Kosovo, these organizations will be in conflict with the United Nations. We too will have to proceed from the view that in order to be respected we must use brute force, in other words armed force."
 
    Russia's Orthodox Church, despite decades of brutal repression under Soviet rule, is putting its trust in the KGB to ensure that a remarkable religious revival does not fade with the departure of President Putin. In an unusual move, Alexei II, the Church's patriarch, has endorsed deputy prime minister Dmitry Medvedev ahead of next week's presidential election.
    The influence of his support on Russia's estimated 100 million Orthodox worshippers is immense. It also illustrates the unholy alliance the Church has forged with the Kremlin since Putin came to power 8 years ago. The president, a proud adherent, has allowed the Orthodox Church to regain much of its Tsarist-era lustre and has won the enthusiastic support of religious leaders in return.
    Although he has never confirmed it, the patriarch, like the president, is a former KGB agent codenamed Drozdov, according to Soviet archives opened to experts in the 1990s. Many in the Orthodox hierarchy are also accused of working as KGB informers, a fact that critics say the Church has never fully acknowledged.
    Yet it is not just the KGB that binds the Church and the Kremlin. In the Tsarist era, the Church was a committed supporter of the imperial rallying cry "orthodoxy, autocracy and nationhood."
 
 
 
    Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah on Friday vowed to avenge the death of one of his group's top militants through the destruction of Israel, which he said was destined to disappear.
    "The disappearance of Israel is inevitable, it is divine law. The presence of Israel is but temporary and cannot go on in the region. Oh Hajj Imad, I swear by God that your blood will not have been spilled in vain."
    Nasrallah said that Mughniah's killing was a clear sign that Israel was preparing a new war against Lebanon but said his troops stood ready for a new "victory". "We will kill you in the fields, we will kill you in the cities, we will fight you like you have never seen before. Israel will be left without an army, and without an army Israel cannot exist."
 
    Arab officials are warning they could withdraw their landmark offer of peace and full ties with Israel in exchange for a return of Arab lands, unless Israel explicitly accepts the initiative. The warnings reflect increasing Arab impatience with the long-stalled peace process with Israel.
    Arab leaders are planning to hold a summit in March in Damascus, at which they are expected to reiterate their adherence to the peace plan. But ahead of the gathering, they have stepped up their warnings it could be rescinded.
    The head of the Arab League said the Arabs extended the hand of peace to Israel with the peace proposal but now face unprecedented Israeli obstinacy. "The key to solving the Arab-Israeli issue is to hold serious negotiations, not fictitious ones."
 
    Salam Fayyad, premiere of the Palestinian Authority, met with presidents of Jewish organizations in Jerusalem, the closest thing to the "Elders of Zion" who run the "Israel Lobby" of anti-Semitic fable. This improbable meeting was an accomplishment in itself, but what he had to tell the assembled Elders and the Jerusalem Post was very bad news.
    He made it clear that there has been very little progress in the peace process, and without that progress, everyone understands that days of the PA are numbered. It will fall and be replaced by a regime of Islamist extremists manipulated from Iran.
 
    Thousands of Turkish army troops crossed the border with Iraq Friday in a major military operation. The attack was the first ground invasion of Iraq by Turkish troops since the US invaded and occupied the country in 2003.
    The government of Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan called the operation "limited" and said it would be concluded as quickly as possible. But it was not clear that Erdogan was in full control of the military command.
    It is thus quite possible that Erdogan's hand was forced by the military commanders, who have been pressing him to authorize a ground assault on the PKK in addition to the sporadic air strikes conducted since last November.
 
    A string of attacks against NATO forces and their local collaborators in Afghanistan signals the beginnings of the annual upsurge in fighting as the harsh winter gives way to better climatic conditions for organising guerilla operations.
    Kandahar province—the heartland of the Taliban movement and one of the centres of the insurgency—has been hit by a string of bombings this week. Insurgents have also struck NATO targets over the past weeks in the capital Kabul and northern Afghan provinces, demonstrating their ability to operate in wider areas of the country.
    On Tuesday, 5 rockets were fired at German troops occupying an airport near the city of Kunduz.
    Thousands of Taliban guerillas will soon be able to move down from their mountain safe havens in Pakistan to extend operations against the NATO occupation. The major motivation for the Taliban to conduct an offensive this spring is the open recriminations and divisions within NATO over the failure of more than 6 years of fighting to suppress the resistance.
    The aim of the Taliban's spring offensive will be to inflict as many casualties as possible on the Canadian, European and Australian contingents in the hope that it will increase political pressure for an even more rapid withdrawal.
 
    France, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates began joint military exercises involving land, sea and air forces in the UAE on Saturday, the official WAM news agency reported. The military training, which will last for several days and whose exact location was not disclosed, is part of the Gulf Shield manoeuvres held regularly by France and the UAE, WAM added.
 
The world's 2nd-biggest economy is still in a funk
    The ghost of Japan's "lost decade" haunts the US. As the consequences of America's burst housing bubble are felt through financial markets, it has become popular to ask whether Japan's awful experience of boom-and-bust has lessons for other rich countries facing, at best, sharp slowdowns.
 
 
 
    Prime Minister Olmert today headed to Japan on a rare visit expected to focus on bilateral economic ties as well as efforts to halt Iran's controversial nuclear drive. Olmert will press his hosts to stop buying Iranian-produced petrol in order to keep economic and diplomatic pressure on Tehran.
    Japan, which depends almost exclusively on the Middle East for its oil needs, maintains friendly ties with Arab countries and Iran.
 
    The International Atomic Energy Agency says all major issues that were raised by the agency about Iran's past nuclear activities have been resolved. In its latest report on Iran's nuclear program released Friday, it said the issues have either been "fully" resolved or are "no longer outstanding at this stage."
    (And: An Iranian diplomat has said the report by the UN nuclear watchdog proves that certain countries had made false claims against Tehran. The IAEA regards all 6 issues included in the Action Plan as "closed and finalized", he said, adding that certain countries, which are against Iran's constructive cooperation with the IAEA, have launched a political campaign against Tehran and put ElBaradei under pressure. He added that no legal or logical basis remains for discussion of Iran's nuclear case by the UN Security Council.)
 
    Iran today warned it would hit back with an appropriate response to new UN Security Council sanctions. "In the case of the adoption of the resolution, we will make a deserving action. We will announce our decision at the right time based on the content of the resolution," the foreign ministry spokesman said.
    President Ahmadinejad on Saturday warned of "firm reprisals" against any country leading the way to impose new sanctions, adding that Iran was "not joking." "They could spend 100 years passing resolutions but it will not change anything."
    Neither Hosseini or Ahmadinejad gave any details over exactly what Iran's response could involve.
 
 
 
    The easiest way to carry out a false flag attack is by setting up a military exercise that simulates the very attack you want to carry out. As I'll detail below, this is exactly how government perpetrators in the US and UK handled the 9/11 and 7/7 "terror" attacks, which were in reality government attacks blamed on "terrorists."
    My aim, as a former military intelligence officer who spent five years with the US Army 75th Division conducting military war games, is to convince the American people that the "next 9/11" -- constantly promised by officials and the media -- is likely to be carried out under the guise of future military exercises.
    My 2007 3 most likely cities for the next 9/11 were Houston, Chicago and Portland. This year the same 3 cities are still most endangered, in light of the fact that the US military has designated Texas, Indiana and Oregon as 3 of its 4 target states in the 2008 version of its Noble Resolve military exercises. Granted, Chicago is in Illinois, not Indiana, but Indiana is quite close, and has been used to stage forces for terror exercises conducted in Chicago in recent years.
    Over the past 4 years military and police veterans like me have been alerting the public to government exercises aiming at the nuclear destruction of Houston petro-suburbs. Five times in those 4 years we were able to predict to within a day major petrochemical explosions in those petro-suburbs. The odds against this kind of accuracy are astronomical.
    As the center of Big Oil and the Bush Family, Houston remains the most endangered city in America.
 
    Canada and the US have signed an agreement that paves the way for the militaries from either nation to send troops across each other's borders during an emergency. Neither the Canadian government nor the Canadian Forces announced the new agreement, which was signed Feb. 14 in Texas.
    The new agreement has been greeted with suspicion by the left wing in Canada and the right wing in the US. On right-wing blogs in the US, it is being used as evidence of a plan for a "North American union" where foreign troops, not bound by US laws, could be used by the American federal government to override local authorities.
 
    There is an organization that is quietly and secretly becoming very large and powerful. Initially, while under the direction of the National Infrastructure Protection Center, the focus of InfraGard was cyber-infrastructure protection, but things have gotten much more interesting since September 11, 2001. NIPC then expanded its efforts to include physical as well as cyberthreats to critical infrastructures.
    InfraGard is an organization cloaked in secrecy. It holds secret meetings with the FBI. It also, according to the FBI Director, shares information (what information, we don't know) with the Secret Service and all government agencies involved with security in the United States.
    Is this a new kind of conscription by government meant to increase its surveillance capabilities so that it can monitor our lives even more than it does now?
 
    The Bush administration has long taken the position that if you're not with it, you're against it. This holds true, it seems, for everyone except Vice President Cheney, who gets to have it both ways. This month Cheney joined a brief filed by 305 lawmakers in the Supreme Court case over the constitutionality of the District's gun control laws.
    The problem is, Cheney's position puts him at odds with the administration's official stance in the case. How did he manage to weigh in against an administration he is a part of? By signing on to the lawmakers' brief as "President of the Senate."
    His move appears unprecedented; it is irresponsible, selfish and unnecessary. It's yet another indication that Cheney thinks the normal rules of American democracy don't apply to him.
 
To hell with democracy...
    A top Hillary Clinton adviser boldly predicted his candidate would lock down the nomination before the August convention by definitively winning over party insiders and officials known as superdelegates, claiming the number of state elections won by Barack Obama would be "irrelevant" to their decision.
    The special class of delegates, which make up about 20% of the total delegate haul, are not bound to vote the way of their states and districts, as pledged delegates are.
 
Connecting the dots!...
    If anything was going to derail John McCain's White House bid, it was the fear that he was too old to be president, not the likelihood of being embroiled in a sex and favours scandal. But when the Arizona senator reached for the lawyer who steered Bill Clinton through his women troubles, it was a sign that he was seriously rattled.
    The essence of the tale is fairly simple. Vicki Iseman, a blonde telecommunications lobbyist, became friends with McCain, 71, eight years ago. Some advisers thought the relationship might be romantic.
(And: 2001 flashback: "Fox News, beginning mid-December, reported a 4-part series on alleged Israeli spying on the US telecommunication systems through firms which provide telephone billing and assist FBI wiretaps. Recently the series was withdrawn by Fox News without explanation."
(And: The Israeli spy ring: "What Israel has done in return was to set up government subsidized telecommunications companies which operate here in the US.
    One of these companies is Amdocs, which provides billing and directory assistance for 90% of the phone companies in the USA. Amdocs' main computer center for billing is actually in Israel and allows those with access to do what intelligence agencies call "traffic analysis"; a picture of someone's activities based on a pattern of who they are calling and when.
    Another Israeli telecom company is Comverse Infosys, which subcontracts the installation of the automatic tapping equipment now built into every phone system in America ... and maintains its own connections to all this phone tapping equipment, insisting that it is for maintenance purposes only. However, Converse has been named as the most likely source for leaked information regarding telephone calls by law enforcement that derailed several investigations into not only espionage, but drug running as well.
    Yet another Israeli telecom company is Odigo, which provides the core message passing system for all the "Instant Message" services. Two hours before the attacks on the World Trade Center, Odigo employees received a warning. Odigo has an office 2 blocks from the former location of the WTC.
    [WAR: Does Israel have McCain by the balls via Vicki? Is this WHY McCain is sooooo intent on "Bomb, bomb, bomb; bomb, bomb(ing) Iran"?!!]
 
    I think it's pretty clear that Conspiracy is a dirty word for a reason: the Establishment engages in conspiratorial acts on a daily basis. "Conspiracy Theorists" are not crazy for wanting to expose the men behind the curtain. The real crazies are the statists blinded by the curtain of red, white, and blue.
 
    America's entire B-2 stealth bombing fleet, which has played a crucial part in all major conflicts since 1999, has been grounded after one of the jets crashed near a military base in Guam. A senior US military source said that all remaining B-2 stealth bombers were on a "no-fly" order and that there would be no further take-offs until the initial investigation into the crash had been completed.
    The grounding means that a major component of the US military is out of action. The jets are normally stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, but have been deployed to the Pacific territory of Guam.
    [WAR: Are they really grounded, or is that what we want Iran (and/or others) to think? Just wonderin'...]
 
Peeing in the wind...
Event calls on evangelicals to seek return to respect for God's authority
    The focus of the event is just what its title suggests: Restoring America to its original acknowledgment of being "under God." The goals are to call all voter eligible evangelical Christians in America to register to vote and then to vote, call Bible-believing pastors and Christian leaders to encourage their congregations to participate in the political process, and "call all Christians to vote for those who acknowledge our Christian heritage and respect God's authority…"
 
 
 
    If history is any guide, we should be looking at an extended period of economic weakness, probably extending well into 2010 or beyond.
 
    A money management shop whose stratospheric growth propelled it to the ranks of the financial elite is closing its 2 biggest hedge funds after investors demanded $2 billion of their money back.
 
    Citigroup is facing further financial write-downs after revealing it has an exposure of $4bn to the troubled bond insurance sector and has been forced to move a $10bn hedge fund on to its balance sheet after significant losses.
    The banking conglomerate also warned that further deterioration in the US housing market could lead to further write-downs in its sub-prime and leveraged loan books.
 
Back to the future...
    It's a real estate reality facing millions of Americans. Economists believe nearly 8.8 million Americans are now saddled with homes worth less than their mortgages. And they say this figure is only going to rise.
    The chief economist of Moody's Economy.com, said, "The last time we saw so many homeowners with so many home values that were worth less than the amount of mortgage they owed was back in the Great Depression."
 
    The $2 trillion market for collateralized debt obligations, the multi-trillion dollar mortgage-backed securities market and the $1.3 asset-backed commercial paper market have all shut down draining a small ocean of capital from the financial system and pushing many of the banks and hedge funds closer to default.
    Many of the banks are technically insolvent already, drowning in their own red ink. Public confidence in the nations' financial institutions has never been lower. Monetary policy and deregulation have failed. The system is self-destructing.
 
    It doesn't look like an old-fashioned bank run because it involves the biggest financial institutions trading paper assets so complicated that even top executives don't fully understand the transactions. But that's what it is -- a spreading fear among financial institutions that their brethren can't be trusted to honor their obligations.
    Frightened financiers are pulling back from credit markets -- going on strike, if you will -- to escape the unraveling daisy chain of securitized assets and promissory notes that binds the global financial system.
    The public, fortunately, doesn't understand how bad the situation is. If it did, we might have a real panic on our hands.
    The hubris in this system was Wall Street's confidence that it could value paper securities that had been sliced and diced so many times that they no longer had solid connections to their underlying assets.
    The nation's leading financier, Warren Buffett, had warned years before that "derivatives," whose value was balanced loosely on the real assets underneath, were the equivalent of "financial weapons of mass destruction." But in the rush for profits, nobody listened.
    I've saved the worst for last. Do you want to know who is bailing out America's biggest banks and financial institutions from the consequences of their folly -- by acting as the lender of last resort and controller of the system?
    Why, it's the sovereign wealth funds, owned by such nations as China and the Persian Gulf oil producers. The new titans are coming to the rescue, if that's the right word for their mortgage on America's future.
 
    The FED has not been inflating. The FED has been deflating. Hard to believe? It surely is. I find it difficult to believe myself. I had thought the FED would inflate. So did everyone else. But the data are clear. The FED has shrunk the money supply since mid-August, 2007.
    At some point, the FED will reverse its current tight-money stance. But until it does, I suggest that you do not "fight the tape." The FED is not printing money to save the economy. It is doing the exact opposite. It is burning money, conceptually speaking.
    On the one hand, the FED is making loans to banks based on dodgy collateral. On the other hand, it is selling high-quality credit instruments, primarily Treasury debt. I see no other explanation that is consistent with the data: liquidity for banks coupled with falling monetary base and falling M1. Why would the FED adopt such a policy? Because it has to choose between 2 competing goals.
    First, save the banks. Central banking is the fractional reserve commercial banking system's ace in the hole. The FED is the lender and therefore stabilizer of last resort.
    Second, save the dollar. The FED receives its monopoly over the money supply from the US government.
    The bullish stance of American investors is being hit hard by a falling stock market and falling real estate prices. The hope of most investors who are long – and most are long – is that the FED will intervene on the side of the bulls. In fact, the FED has been intervening on the side of the bears. Because this is so far out of character, the media are blind to the data.
 
    The nature of the fatally flawed risk models used by Wall Street, by Moody's, by the securities Monoline insurers and by the economists of the US Government and Federal Reserve was such that they all assumed recessions were no longer possible, as risk could be indefinitely diffused and spread across the globe.
    All the securitized assets, the trillions of dollars worth, were priced on such flawed assumption. All the trillions of dollars of Credit Default Swaps—the illusion that loan default could be cheaply insured against with derivatives—all these were set to explode in a cascading series of domino-like crises as the crisis in the US housing market unraveled.
    The sub-prime sector was merely the first manifestation of what was to unravel. The process will take years to wind down.
    As of this writing, the next ratchet down in the US financial Tsunami was the monocline insurers where, short of a US government nationalization, no solution was feasible as the unknown risks were so staggering. Next to explode will be the imminent probability of meltdown in the $45 trillion market in Over-the-Counter Credit Default Swaps, the brainchild of J.P. Morgan.
 
 
 
 
    The Archbishop of Canterbury is backing secret plans to create a "parallel" Church for American conservatives to avert fresh splits over homosexuality. He has held confidential talks with senior American bishops and theologians who oppose the pro-gay policies of their liberal leaders.
    According to insiders, he has given his blessing to the plans to create an enclave for up to 20 conservative American bishops that would insulate them from their liberal colleagues. The scheme would allow them to remain technically within the Episcopal Church but under the care of like-minded archbishops from abroad.
    A handful of hardline American dioceses are already defecting from the Episcopal Church, the American branch of Anglicanism, and transferring their loyalties to a conservative archbishop in South America.
 
The drive for Christian unity has seen dashed hopes, and strange successes
    In the aftermath of both the global conflicts of the 20th century, lots of utopian projects seemed not just feasible, but imperative. Both in the 1920s and after 1945, there was a surge of hope among well-intentioned Christians that all doctrinal differences could be put aside as believers built a brave new world.
    That, in a nutshell, was the impulse that led to the creation, in 1948, of the World Council of Churches, a body that now groups about 350 Christian groups (with the huge exception of the Roman Catholics) and hence claims to speak for about 560m people.
    Six decades on, the WCC finds that some of its early hopes have been sadly disappointed, while others have been partly fulfilled, albeit not always in ways that the founders would have wanted.
    There are still yawning doctrinal gaps between the liberal Protestants, Anglicans and Orthodox churches who make up the bulk of the council (and between the Catholics and all of them). The Christian world is still very divided—but the angriest splits are often within, not between, denominations.
 
Biology invades a field philosophers thought was safely theirs
    Whence morality? That is a question which has troubled philosophers since their subject was invented. Two and a half millennia of debate have, however, failed to produce a satisfactory answer.
    So now it is time for someone else to have a go. And at a panel discussion at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting, a group of biologists did just that.
    Mark Hauser, of Harvard University, opened the batting by asking whether morality is more than just the refined application of the emotions. He thinks that it is. Human brains, he believes, have a separate morality module. Brain-scanning experiments show that when a volunteer is faced with a moral dilemma his emotional centres are not involved in the decision.
 
 
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