Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
Benedict XVI will spend his annual holiday in the German-speaking region of the Italian Alps this summer. He will vacation in the city of Bressanone, located in the northern Italian region Trentino-Alto Adige, from July 28 to Aug. 11.
Pope Benedict XVI will not change a Latin prayer which calls for the conversion of Jews because it is theologically proper, a top German cardinal said Saturday. The prayer calls on believers to pray to God so that he "enlightens the heart of Jews" so that "they can know Jesus Christ."
The grand master of the order of the Knights of Malta - a powerful Catholic body that traces its origins to the Crusades - has been buried in Rome. This was a funeral for a head of state.
The order will meet next Tuesday to select the successor. Grand masters, like popes, are elected for life. The voting continues until one candidate has a simple majority plus one. The result will stay secret until the new grand master has revealed his identity to the Pope.
An ancient Roman Catholic order tried yesterday to dispel the conspiracy theories surrounding it as it buried its Grand Master. The order was founded in the 11th century to protect the Holy Land, and was a rival to the equally powerful and secretive Knights Templar.
In the Middle Ages it became fabulously wealthy, owning more than 140 estates in the Holy Land and around 19,000 manors in Europe. Its membership was drawn exclusively from Europe's aristocracy, which led conspiracy theorists to accuse it of being part of the "Illuminati", a cabal of nobles bent on controlling the world.
"The only mystery here is the one of history. Any organisation with a thousand years behind it is going to have mysteries."
(Wiki: Knights of Malta)
(Wiki: Knights Templar)
(Wiki: Teutonic Knights)
German public sector wage talks between the government and the powerful ver.di service sector union broke down without agreement Friday and are headed to arbitration. Failure to get a deal by the end of the month would probably lead to all-out strikes.
Germany also faces the prospect of new rail strikes next week as train drivers escalate a months-long wage dispute with operator Deutsche Bahn, which economists have warned could cost Europe's largest economy millions of euros.
The European Central Bank is paying close attention, concerned that generous deals could fan inflation.
The fate of Afghanistan is important for the security of Germany, Chancellor Merkel said. She raised the issue of whether Afghanistan can develop in a normal way with a strong central structure or whether "it again becomes an ungovernable country." This was a matter of "essential importance for Germany."
[Europress] [Russopress]
The Spanish go to the polls today to elect a new parliament -- and the country's Catholics are fighting to push the conservatives back into office. Zapatero's reforms have been a thorn in the Church's side.
Madrid's archbishop is leading the fight against abortion, gay marriage and other policies ... and is determined to force politics in Spain under the yoke of the church once again. What the Catholics gathered in Madrid heard from Cardinal Ruoco was no less than a call to rebellion against their secular leadership.
Another Catholic counterreformation began in Spain half a millennium ago, when Ignacio de Loyola founded the Jesuit order and led it in a campaign to oppose the increasingly powerful Lutherans in northern Europe. Spain's history is filled with examples of the Catholics' claim to absolute power.
Few are likely to contest the proposition that the greatest achievement of the European Union has been in drawing the venom of revenge for the past from postwar Western Europe. Only the wars of Yugoslav succession have broken this truce, which is why the eruption of irredentist war there so shocked the world.
It also is why there has in recent months been uneasiness over the renewed assertion of historical grievances in Spain. These concern the Spanish Civil War rather than WW2. What is troubling is the implication in this of major institutions of Spanish society, the political parties and the Catholic Church.
Today's parliamentary elections will supposedly take place mainly on economic issues, but this is what lies in the background.
Energy and climate change are once more set to hit the headlines, as EU leaders will meet to discuss European Commission proposals on how to turn ambitious green goals into concrete laws.
As usual, the high-level spring gathering (13-14 March) will focus on economic matters, but this time particularly on the EU's Lisbon strategy for growth and jobs, climate change and energy policy, and ways in which to strengthen fragile financial markets.
In the run up to the summit, all the issues will be chewed over by EU foreign ministers on Monday. Special attention will be paid to the Middle East peace process.
The European Parliament, marking 50 years since the first sitting of the assembly set up by the Treaty of Rome on Wednesday, will hold its session in Strasbourg.
The risks of climate change have turned from a threat to reality impacting the conflict in Darfur, migration from flood-prone Bangladesh and hopes for stability in the Middle East, according to a new EU report.
From Africa to Asia, and from pole to pole, climate change has become "a threat multiplier which exacerbates existing trends, tensions and instability," warns the 7-page report on "Climate change and international security", to be presented to a European summit in Brussels on March 13-14.
Among the listed threats are "reduction of arable land, widespread shortage of water, diminishing food and fish stocks, increased flooding and prolonged droughts."
Serbian Prime Minister Kostunica announced his resignation on Saturday, saying his government was no longer functioning because of disunity in the coalition. "This is the end of the government,'' he told a news conference.
The Belarussian Foreign Ministry told the US ambassador on Friday to leave the country and recalled its own ambassador from Washington over economic sanctions imposed by the US on the former Soviet nation last year.
Russia's outgoing president praised Russian-German relations Saturday at a meeting with the German chancellor. "I am pleased to note that we have worked well in the past years - both with the previous government and with yours. Political contacts are regular, relations between public organizations are good, humanitarian and cultural relations are constantly developing."
President Putin says NATO's continued enlargement creates the impression that the alliance is trying to replace the United Nations.
President Putin warned the West on Saturday it could expect no easing of Russia's foreign policy under his protege, president-elect Dmitry Medvedev.
"I have the feeling that some of our partners cannot wait for me to stop exercising my powers so that they can deal with another person. Dmitry will be free from having to prove his liberal views. But he is no less of a Russian nationalist than me, in the good sense of the word, and I do not think our partners will have it easier with him."
While defense establishment officials sitting in the Kiriya military headquarters in Tel-Aviv ponder the diplomatic-security implications of last night's attack, a totally different analysis will be taking place this weekend around Shabbat dinner tables across Jerusalem and most West Bank settlements.
This segment of the population, already seething with anger, is going to be extremely unhappy about this attack. Together with the grief and sorrow, there is going to be a lot of angry talk about good and evil, about a religious war over the Holy Land. This will be seen in terms of Ishmael and Isaac.
Being messianic religious people, the religious Zionists are going to see this attack through the prism of messianic prophecy. Already I am hearing on religious Zionist radio stations people talking about the attack in prophetic terms, such as Isaiah 59:20.
Many of the top leadership of the religious Zionist movement, speaking at the funerals, spoke of revenge of the blood. The fact that the Jewish students were killed in a house of God touched the most basic nerve of many Israelis, and especially of the religious Zionist public.
There may even be some on the fringes of the settlement movement who will want to take the law into their own hands and carry out a revenge attack, maybe even against targets in East Jerusalem, where it looks like the killer came from.
(And: The Jerusalem religious college is the ideological heart of Israel's religious-Zionist movement.)
(Analysis: Jerusalem's vulnerability)
(Cartoon: A response to the response...)
Until now, it had appeared, Israel's plan was eventually to persuade Egypt to take over the policing of Gaza, a return to its status before the 1967 war. The view was that Cairo would be even more ruthless in cracking down on the Islamic militants than Israel.
But increasingly Vilnai and Barak look set on a different course. Their ultimate goal appears to be related to Vilnai's "shoah" comment: Gaza's depopulation, with the Strip squeezed on three sides until the pressure forces Palestinians to break out again into Egypt. This time, it may be assumed, there will be no chance of return.
Israeli intelligence chiefs are expected to paint an extremely pessimistic picture in their assessment for 2008 at the cabinet meeting this morning. They are expected to emphasize the danger of a flare-up on the northern front with Syria and Hezbollah, progress in Iran's nuclear program, a possible takeover of the West Bank by Hamas, and the low odds of reaching a deal with the Palestinians.
The US should stop the $3 billion annual gift to the Israelis and tell them that as of now, the US will no longer protect them from UN sanctions or criticism with our veto. Israel is quick to say it is a sovereign and independent country; well, it's time the US put that to the test.
A US Navy expeditionary strike group has been deployed to the eastern Mediterranean in the wake of increasing tensions between Lebanon and Syria. The 6 vessels left the US on 19 and 20 February.
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Nassau group would operate in the region "for a while" and that the deployment signals the navy "is engaged" in "a very important part of the world".
The abuse of Iraq-based German embassy personnel by US soldiers has led to irritations in the relationship between Berlin and Washington, the weekly Der Spiegel said in a report to hit the newsstands today.
The visit to Iraq by President Ahmadinejad highlights the profound impact of the US invasion on political relations throughout the region. The US occupation of the country has unleashed processes that the American ruling elite did not foresee and does not welcome.
The militarist cabal in Washington had a very different future in mind. The Iranian regime was the 2nd on Bush's "axis of evil" list. There is every reason to believe that as US tanks rampaged through Baghdad, the expectation in the White House was that, certainly by 2008, they would have returned Iran to the status of a US client state as well.
Instead, US imperialism has confronted setback after setback in its agenda of establishing domination over the energy resources of the Middle East and Central Asia—nowhere more so than in Iraq itself.
Ahmadinejad's demand that the US leaves the Middle East was answered on Tuesday by the 2nd-in-command of US forces in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ray Odierno. He accused Tehran of supplying weapons to insurgents attacking US troops and labelled Iran as the greatest "long-term threat" to Iraq's stability.
The logic of these geo-political tensions is more likely to be war than US withdrawal.
Iran's Foreign Minister arrived in Damascus on Saturday to hold talks on improving bilateral relations and regional issues.
Israeli officials believe Iranian support for Hamas is behind the increasing number of terrorist attacks - including Thursday's deadly shooting in Jerusalem. Their warnings that Hamas' use of stronger rockets and larger-scale incursions into Israel represent the escalation of a proxy war were echoed on Friday by Jordan's King Abdullah.
There is some confusion over who was behind the attack after Hamas radio on Friday retracted an earlier statement that it had been involved - and a previously unknown Lebanese group, the Martyrs of Imad Mughniyeh, also claimed responsibility.
(And: Hamas denies responsibility)
Israel does not rule out a military solution in the nuclear row with Iran, but it will not unilaterally attack the country, President Shimon Peres said in an interview published in France's Le Figaro newspaper.
"If the development of the bomb is not stopped economically (with sanctions), the non-military options are exhausted. I prefer to stop the development of the bomb without having to resort to war." Israel would "under no circumstances" act unilaterally he said.
A senior Kuwaiti strategist says an Israeli military strike on the Islamic Republic's nuclear facilities is not a bad idea. In an interview today, the former government adviser said Iran's nuclear program has become a major concern for all Persian Gulf littoral states and therefore an Israeli attack may be an appropriate solution.
In a shadowy White House briefing room hung with maps of the Persian Gulf, Senator John McCain is meeting a perfidious cabal of spies and businessmen, including the international financier George Soros, to plot regime change in Iran.
The conversation was in fact featured in an animated cartoon being aired on Iranian television, warning against foreign conspiracies and advertising 113, the Intelligence Ministry's anti-spy hotline.
"Today, global arrogance and international Zionism, with the help of their spy and satellite networks, are planning regime changes. In order to achieve this filthy goal, they will not shy away from any conspiracy," says a voice-over in the 6-minute film.
Well, here we go again. "Information" about Iran's alleged nuke weaponization program, turned over to the Secretariat of the International Atomic Energy Agency late last year, was presented last week to the IAEA Board of Governors.
Iran's Ambassador, who was present, was reportedly enraged that the presentation had been made at all, "forcefully" warning other Board Members "not to go down this path," since most of the allegations involved activities "not directly of a nuclear nature" and, therefore, were "outside the mandate of the IAEA."
Which brings us to the report this week in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, entitled "Who leaked the details of a CIA-Mossad plot against Iran?"
A grand jury wants to know James Risen's (New York Times reporter for national security and intelligence affairs) sources for his revelations about a CIA covert program called Operation Merlin, among other things.
According to Risen, back in February 2000, the CIA (reportedly in collusion with Israeli intelligence and with the approval of President Clinton) sent a "Russian defector" to IAEA headquarters in Vienna with what Risen characterized as "blueprints for a nuclear bomb" with instructions to give them to the Iranian delegate to the IAEA.
"Nuclear bomb"? Well, no. According to Risen, the Russian was actually "carrying technical designs for a TBA 480 high-voltage block " – otherwise known as a "fire set" – for a Russian-designed nuclear weapon.
But what if CIA-Mossad hoped that the Iranians would at least put the Operation Merlin stuff into their files, perhaps even correcting the errors and building working prototypes, to be found by the IAEA at a later date, providing "evidence" that the Russians were helping the Iranians develop nuclear weapons?
Admiral William Fallon, the head of the US Central Command, may lose his job for opposing President Bush's plans to wage war against Iran.
According to a new Esquire article, Admiral Fallon may be prematurely "relieved of his command" as soon as this summer to be replaced with a more "pliable" commander.
"If that were to happen, it may well mean that the president and vice-president intend to take military action against Iran before the end of this year and don't want a commander standing in their way."
Progressive Protestants Playing Politics...
A group of American evangelicals are on a mission to put moral issues at the heart of the most intense presidential campaign in years. Those used to the thundering rhetoric of the religious right will expect a tirade against abortion and gay marriage.
But in an interview this week Jim Wallis says: "Top of the list is what happens to the poor. Poverty is the principal Biblical political issue." Wallis is one of the leading figures in a group known as progressive evangelicals, or Red Letter Christians. They are theologically conservative, but strikingly radical on poverty, the environment and Iraq.
There are signs too that they are making themselves felt politically, and are beginning to close the notorious God gap - the huge Republican lead among regular church-goers. In this year's open and unpredictable election, that could be crucial.
Paranoid Protestant Playing Politics Paddled...
"We've had a dignified campaign, and I repudiate any comments that are made, including Pastor Hagee's, if they are anti-Catholic or offensive to Catholics. I sent 2 of my children to Catholic school. I categorically reject and repudiate any statement that was made that was anti-Catholic, both in intent and nature. I categorically reject it, and I repudiate it."
McCain started to take flak when televangelist John Hagee endorsed him on Feb. 27, but until Friday, his response was simply that he doesn't agree with everyone who endorses him. At the time of the endorsement, McCain called Hagee "the staunchest leader of our Christian evangelical movement," and praised his pro-Israel stance.
This embrace of Hagee's backing provoked Bill Donahue of the Catholic League to point out the pastor's anti-Catholic beliefs. "Indeed, for the past few decades, he has waged an unrelenting war against the Catholic Church. For example, he likes calling it 'The Great Whore,' an 'apostate church,' the 'anti-Christ,' and a 'false cult system'," he pointed out.
(And: What McCain should know)
Russian Military Analysts are reporting in the Kremlin today that China's President Hu has refused the US request for over $2 Trillion in emergency assistance to bolster the collapsing dollar, and asked for in a personal meeting with former President George H.W. Bush.
Of the worst fears of the American Bush-Clinton Monarchy, which has ruled the US these past 20 years, these reports state, is the collapse of their privately owned hedge fund called the Carlyle Capital Fund and which is owned by their secretive war profiteering International behemoth Carlyle Group led by the Bush Family, former British Prime Ministers, and others of the West's ruling elite.
Facing the American people now is the very real coming destruction of their nation. But, in viewing from outside this destruction of the US
They operate from a bare apartment on a Chinese island. They are intelligent 20-somethings who seem harmless. But they are hard-core hackers who claim to have gained access to the world's most sensitive sites, including the Pentagon. In fact, they say they are sometimes paid secretly by the Chinese government -- a claim the Beijing government denies.
"No Web site is 100% safe. There are Web sites with high-level security, but there is always a weakness," says the leader of this group. The 3 belong to what some Western experts say is a civilian cyber militia in China, launching attacks on government and private Web sites around the world.
"There is a saying, 'Know about both yourself and the enemy, and you will be invincible.'"
It's 30 years since The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy made its debut on BBC radio, but its most famous mystery is still waiting to be resolved. Possibly the most famous line in the whole book is the "answer to life, the universe, and everything" given by the supercomputer, Deep Thought.
"You aren't going to like it," Deep Thought warned. "42" it said, with infinite majesty and calm. Ever since, speculation has been rife as to what Adams meant. There is another theory that rests on a complex allusion to 42 in numerical base 13. "The answer is fascinating, extraordinary and, when you think hard about it, completely obvious," a close friend of the author said.
[WAR: Well ... Bush is the 42nd president; ancient Israel/Judah had 42 kings; "...in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for 3 1/2 years (42 months)..." (Luke 4:25); "The woman was given the 2 wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the desert, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time (42 months)..." (Rev 12:14);
"The beast...exercised his authority for 42 months." (Rev 13:5); "The saints will be handed over to him for a time, times and half a time (42 months)" (Dan 7:25); "It will be for a time, times and half a time (42 months)." (Dan 12:7)]
That Australia runs its own empire is unmentionable; yet it stretches from the Aboriginal slums of Sydney to the ancient hinterlands of the continent and across the Arafura Sea and the South Pacific.
With $100-a-barrel here for now, Goldman Sachs says $200 a barrel could be a reality in the not-too-distant future in the case of a "major disruption." With the dollar's fall continuing and financial markets roiled by the credit crunch, commodities like oil have been drawing the fancy of increasing numbers of investors.
A senior Iranian oil official said on Saturday he expected the oil price to fall ahead of November's US presidential election, suggesting Washington would seek to push it down for political reasons. He told the Fars News Agency that "those in political power in the (US) will try to (influence) the market through various factors to create interest in voters to elect individuals of their preference."
Wall Street was roiled by a bleak US jobs survey Friday which pushed the Dow Jones Industrial Average stock index to a 17-month low below 12,000 points amid growing recession fears.
The worst fears of consumers, investors and officials were confirmed as paralysis on Wall Street collided with new evidence of a likely recession.
Though monthly payroll data are notoriously volatile and subject to revision, the jobs report was so bleak that many of the few remaining optimists on Wall Street threw in the towel and conceded that the US was already in a recession. "The credit crisis continues to worsen and has become a full-blown credit crunch, which is depressing the real economy."
Fed officials said Friday that they were not pumping money into the system in response to the poor jobs data but rather to the growing unwillingness or inability of investors to finance even routine business deals.
Fed officials have long feared that anxiety about credit losses would create a "negative feedback loop," or self-perpetuating spiral of rising unemployment, more home foreclosures and yet more credit losses.
Las Vegas gambling revenues are falling for the first time since 2001, adding to the evidence that the US economy is on a losing streak.
Washington Mutual hit a 12-year low Friday as the meltdown of the mortgage sector accelerates. Shares in the Seattle-based lender plunged 15% to $10 apiece after The Wall Street Journal reported that WaMu, under pressure from regulators, has approached private equity and sovereign wealth investors for possible capital infusions.
Wall Street banks are facing a "systemic margin call" that may deplete banks of $325 billion of capital due to deteriorating subprime US mortgages, JPMorgan Chase & Co , said in a report late on Friday. "A systemic credit crunch is underway."
Recession and fears of a crash force US central bank to bolster the credit markets again
The Federal Reserve has again been forced to step in to alleviate extreme stress in the US credit markets, pledging $200bn of emergency liquidity for the banking system.
The move culminates a dramatic week that saw yield spreads on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac agency bonds surge to the highest levels in over 20 years.
A panic flight to safety across the credit universe briefly drove the yield on 2-year US Treasury notes below 1.5%, a sign that investors may be battening down the hatches for a violent storm.
"This will prompt the Fed to slash rates rapidly to 1%. One thing that history teaches us is that when an economy stalls and drops into recession, things get very bad very quickly. There is no going back now: we are well past the tipping point."
The Bernanke circle is now deeply worried about a systemic crisis, fearing that the "financial accelerator" may have set off a downward spiral that could prove hard to stop. The Fed is now starkly at odds with the European Central Bank, which has held rates steady at 4% since the credit crunch hit in August.
Fed officials say privately that they are shocked by the ECB's complacency given that Italy is falling into recession, while Spain and Ireland face property slumps. The transatlantic rift is eerily similar to the disputes leading up to the Black Monday stock market crash in October 1987. Traders say the discord has begun to infect market confidence.
The worst is not behind us. The worst is yet to come. When the public at last figures this out, there will be financial blood in the streets.
Bernanke is presiding over a stock market decline that threatens to turn into a collapse. Yet he pretends that being a boring professor in public will somehow calm international stock markets. It won't.
Why are interest rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages rising even as the Federal Reserve slashes interest rates and yields on Treasury bonds fall? The answer is that the mortgage market is short of roughly $1 trillion in capital.
FBR's Miller estimates that $11 trillion of outstanding US mortgage debt is supported with roughly $587 billion of equity. That's a leverage ratio of 19 to one. Now the banks that finance most of these leveraged mortgage investments have started to pull back and impose margin calls, demanding more cash or collateral to back their loans.
This has sparked a de-leveraging cycle in which some highly leveraged mortgage investors have to sell assets to meet margin calls. Forced selling pushes prices lower, sparking more margin calls, which in turn produces more selling and even lower prices.
(And: Let the bankruptcies roll)
The recession in the US economy is worsening and the corporate onslaught against the jobs and living standards of working people will intensify. The total losses on all stocks traded are approaching $3 trillion dollars in less than 5 months.
To be blunt, what Wall Street fears now is not a recession—it is already widely accepted that the US economy slipped into recession last fall—but the collapse of major financial institutions and market dislocations which could set the stage for a full-scale worldwide depression, of a kind not seen since the 1930s.
The hurricane that began with subprime mortgages, has swept through the credit markets wreaking havoc on municipal bonds, hedge funds, complex structured investments, and agency debt (Fannie Mae). Now the first gusts from the Force-5 gale are touching down in the real economy where the damage is expected to be widespread.
Unemployment is up, productivity is down, inflation is increasing, the dollar is underwater, commercial real estate is in the tank and the country is sliding inexorably into recession. Expect to see the Dow hugging 7,000 by year end.
The FDIC has begun to increase staff at many of its regional offices to deal with the anticipated rash of bank failures in states hardest hit by the housing bust. The banks simply do not have the capital cushion to withstand the tsunami of defaults and foreclosures that are coming.
Also, the G-7 nations announced last week that if "irrational" price movements persist, they would "collectively take suitable measures to calm the financial markets". The group added that they would conduct their activities secretively for maximum effect.
Consider how desperate the situation must really be for G-7 finance ministers to issue a public warning that they are planning to intervene in the market to prevent a calamity. This is stunning. Their comments add to the growing perception that things are out of control and deteriorating quickly.
The soaring price of rice has triggered a supply and demand crunch that is hurting some of Asia's neediest nations. From Bangladesh to the Philippines, from India to Indonesia, the squeeze is bad news as they seek to balance cost with the imperatives of feeding hungry populations and averting social chaos.
"Every Asian government is well aware of the close relationship between political stability and the stability of the rice price. So every government in the region will be doing all it can to maintain price stability, particularly for basic food grains."
Rising international prices this year have forced the government to spend an additional $850m on wheat for subsidised bread. In a country where about 20% of the population lives under the poverty line and another 13% cent hover just above it, millions of people depend on subsidised food, especially bread, which sells for less than 1 US cent a loaf.
The presidents of Ecuador, Venezuela and Colombia have shaken hands at a regional summit, marking the end of a diplomatic crisis in the Andean region. The handshakes were broadcast live on television across Latin America in response to a special request from the summit's host. "With the commitment of never attacking a brother country again and by asking forgiveness, we can consider this very serious incident resolved."
Acclaimed author and journalist Michael Pollan argues that what most Americans are consuming today is not food but "edible foodlike substances."
Tonight's sky...
Springtime is the best time of year to see a young moon. That is a thin waxing crescent moon visible in the west in evening twilight. The thinnest moons of the year are typically seen in spring.
You might have seen a very thin crescent last night. Or look outside around twilight tonight, and you'll see tonight's thin moon in the west, in front of the faint constellation Pisces the Fish.
[WAR: Yes, tonight is the "new moon", which will make tomorrow the 1st day of the 12th month. The next new moon will be in Aries, and 2 weeks later at Passover, the Sun will also be in Aries -- just as Josephus said happened when Israel left Egypt.]
What is it about the way women dress that excites so much fury? Evolutionary psychologists even argue that young men ought to be made aware of the evolutionary reasons why men are aroused by the sign of female flesh and that girls ought to be taught "the costs associated with attractiveness".
Women have not simply sat back and let themselves be dictated to about how they adorn themselves. Clothes are the new politics.
For women even more than men, clothes have always been about identity. They signify belonging - whether to another man, a nation, a faith, or a cultural community. In fearful times, when society is threatened by war, corruption and crumbling values, it becomes even more important to encourage or coerce women into taking up a symbolic role as upholders of morality and stability.
The problem is that men's sex drive is aggressively needy: women need to police their outer garments because men can't police their inner beast.
[WAR: Yes, it's the woman's choice -- just like anyone can choose to do anything they want, good or bad. But they need to show love toward neighbor by "dressing modestly, with decency and propriety" (1Tim 2:9).]
Speaking of which...
Sarah is part of a budding movement of about 100 Jewish women in this city who have begun covering their bodies. Some cover just their hair and neck; others wrap their entire face, save their eyes, with the loose cloth. Orthodox Jewish women have long concealed their hair with a scarf or wig upon marriage. Part of Jewish religious teaching states that a woman should not draw unnecessary attention to herself.
"The full body, or full face covering that people think is only part of the Arab world actually started with Jewish women."
"Muslim women are imitating Jews to try to gain God's favour with modesty. The truth is that the women of Israel are lessening in God's eyes because the Arabs are more modest in dress. If the Jews want to conquer the Arabs in this land they must enhance their modesty."
"In my heart I know this is what God wants me to wear. God willing, more women will see the truth."
[WAR: This is a subject that a couple of articles sparked a number of months back ("Skanks in the skies" and "Wearing a veil should be respected"), and I've tossed around occasionally. So these 2 articles have prompted me to comment.
In a nutshell, women reflect certain qualities/aspects of YAHWEH/Yahshua. "God has a beauty to unveil. There's a reason that a man is captivated by a woman. Eve is the crown of creation. Creation comes to its high point, its climax with her. She is God's finishing touch. And all Adam can say is, 'Wow!' Eve embodies the beauty and the mystery and the tender vulnerability of God." (Wild at Heart, p.36,37)
And just as He doesn't reveal himself to just anyone, but only to those he has specifically chosen (individually, or to ancient Israel), so a woman should not reveal herself to all who passes by, but only to whom she's chosen to reveal herself to.
And just as a woman can slowly reveal what she wants, a little at a time to entice/encourage the chosen one, so YAHshua slowly reveals Himself to us, as we obey, in order to entice/encourage us toward even more obedience -- so that we'll want Him to reveal even more, and to "gaze upon the beauty of YAHWEH" (Psa 27:4).
Sure, billions of people claim to know, and have a relationship with, Him. But in reality, He's still just a Big Black Burka to them. Just do a Bible study on "veil(ed)"; "reveal(ed)"; has/have seen"; "will see".]
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