Wednesday

The Daily WAR (12-10)

Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
 
 
 
    Archbishop Michel Sabbah, who steps down this week after 20 years as the Latin-rite Patriarch of Jerusalem, has issued a final appeal for peace. Patriarch Sabbah, a native of Nazareth, was appointed in 1988 to be the first Palestinian to head the Jerusalem patriarchate since the era of the Crusades.
    The new Patriarch of Jerusalem will be Archbishop Fouad Twal, a seasoned Vatican diplomat who was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI in September 2005 to be coadjutor archbishop. The Patriarch of Jerusalem is also, by virtue of his office, the grand prior of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre.
 
    The pontiff "comes to strengthen the faith, the hope and love of the Catholic Church in the United States," the archbishop said, adding that he hopes the pope's visit will "bring a new wind of Pentecost ... a new springtime" to the US church. "To America he will bring the voice and the love of Jesus Christ."
 
 
 
    It is one of the enduring mysteries of WW2. More than 800 Jews based in this hospital in the middle of Nazi Berlin survived the war, seemingly — and bizarrely — protected by Adolf Eichmann. And yet over the years it has been a story that few have been able or willing to tell.
    [WAR: This is an enduring mystery, and a story few have been willing to tell, because it goes against the dogmatic religion of Holocaustism. Once you realize the truth of what really happened during WW2, then there's no more mystery! The "Final Solution" was not the extermination, but the expulsion of millions of Jews! Hitler was even contemplating setting-up a Jewish homeland in Madagascar!]
 
Speaking of expulsions...
    Chancellor Merkel's government gave the go-ahead on Wednesday for a controversial documentation center in Berlin recalling the expulsions of millions of Germans from central Europe after WW2.
 
    Not so many years ago, many hoped Europe might step up as a counterweight to US imperial policies. Such hopes were focused in particular on Germany - not only as the leading European power, but as a known moderating, non-military force in international politics.
    Well, Germany and the EU did step up - but rather differently than expected. Merkel became the chancellor-to-go-to, the most trusted European interlocutor for the US political class to work jointly and determinedly to harden US global hegemony against the consequences of America's Iraq-inflicted weakness.
    Overcoming the domestic constraints on its ability to use the German army more extensively for "humanitarian interventions", for the defense of "Western civilization" against Islamist terrorism, is an important, though not the most important, part of the Merkel government's "the West united behind the US" policy. ... welding the EU to the US, making European integration serve the US-dominated, Western international order - whatever the cost.
    This has far-reaching consequences: it has, in a significant way, rebooted German elite attitudes and expectations toward the EU, and toward Germany's relationship with France. But there are also quite a number of senior officials and politicians, still serving or retired, who are looking with dismay or worry at the evolution of German policies in response to the crisis of US-German relations.
 
 
 
    Lawmakers in Belgium announced Tuesday that they had arrived at a deal to form a new national government, ending a 9-month political dispute that threatened to break the country apart.
 
    Former Prime Minister Kaczynski has threatened to block ratification of the EU Treaty. And even if a referendum passes, his identical twin the President says he's not sure he will sign the treaty he helped negogiate last June.
 
    The attempt by European governments to get the Lisbon Treaty ratified in a rush by their parliaments, without the population noticing that each nation's statehood and the remains of their sovereignty will disappear into a supranational dictatorship, is only one aspect of this unbelievable scandal.
    At the same time, the European Union would be changed into a military alliance and closely integrated with NATO, which for its part, would be transformed and used as for interventions all over the world, under all possible circumstances.
    The first hearing in the plenum of the German Bundestag, on March 13, with less than 10% of the parliamentarians present, resembled the theater of the absurd more than a serious debate on the EU Treaty, which threatens to totally change the legal order of Europe.
    It is obvious that the financial oligarchy, dominated by the thinking of the British empire, has no lesser goal than to throw the entire world into chaos. To that purpose belongs the encirclement policy against Russia, along with the current obvious provocations against China, with the intention of ruining the Olympic games there, as well as the massive interference into the internal affairs of India and Africa.
    It must be clear to every thinking human being, that continuing on this course, which may include immediate new wars, such as one against Iran, would lead sooner rather than later to a world war.
 
    Monday's Serb-led attacks in northern Kosovo left one dead and a hundred injured. The NATO-led KFOR troops have taken over command, but there is no end in sight for the escalation. The Serbs seem prepared to provoke at any costs.
 
    Serbia has offered to govern ethnic Serb areas in Kosovo, a plan that would effectively partition the newly independent state. Serbia will not formally propose the carve-up of Kosovo because that would mean abandoning its title to the whole territory, which it insists on under international law.
    The West formally opposes partition on the grounds that it would promote the notion of "ethnic states" in the Balkans that could provoke copy-cat moves.
 
    The day-long meeting between the US and Russian secretaries of defence and foreign policy ended Tuesday without compromise on vehemently disputed US plans to deploy a missile defence shield in Europe that Russia views as a threat to its security.
 
    The West may face new diplomatic problems with resurgent Russia because of European and US efforts to stifle Moscow's influence, Russia's Foreign Ministry said. "The events of 2007 show that one cannot exclude problems in global politics in the period to come. This primarily refers to Europe where the inertia of bloc approaches...is most visible."
    The review criticized US policy as "destructive ... aimed at breaking strategic stability, imposing its military superiority in the world".
    It also criticized the EU for what is viewed in Moscow as an attempt to restrict Russia's influence. "It is clear that the main problem hampering our relations is that some EU members are sticking to a principle of 'Eurosolidarity' as an instrument of pressurizing Russia in bilateral ties."
 
    The Kremlin gave Britain warning that there would be no improvement in relations until it abandoned Cold War-hostility towards Russia. The Foreign Ministry said that Britain had become increasingly critical of Russia, urged on by Boris Berezovsky, the billionaire anti-Kremlin campaigner, and other political refugees.
    "There has been no decisive moving away from the stereotypes of the Cold War era in the political policies of the British elite. If this problem is not resolved it will be hard to count on the normalisation of Russian-British relations."
 
 
 
    A new spate of West Bank settlement construction not only complicates efforts to resume Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, but points to a palpable rightward shift in Shas, a party that used to be considered moderate and amenable to the land-for-peace formula on which any solution to the conflict is based.
 
    Angela Merkel on Tuesday became the first German chancellor to address the Israeli Parliament, crowning a 3-day visit intended to upgrade ties between the countries. Paying tribute to the "special relationship" between Israel and Germany, Merkel said that the Nazi genocide filled Germans "with shame."
    High on the agenda was what Israel sees as Germany's crucial role in the international campaign against the development of an Iranian nuclear bomb. Germany, an important trading partner for Iran, has significantly reduced its commercial ties with the Islamic Republic in the last year. But the feeling in Israel is that more could be done.
    Eight ministers of the German government accompanied Merkel on her visit and held a joint session with the Israeli cabinet Monday, agreeing to future cooperation in a variety of spheres. The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, called the meeting "a unique event, perhaps even unprecedented, in the political history" of Israel.
 
    Five years after Washington inaugurated its "shock and awe" campaign, it has become abundantly clear that the war of aggression against Iraq has produced the greatest geo-political disaster in American history.
    A  "war of choice" that was launched as a demonstration of the overwhelming and irresistible force of American militarism has turned into an operational debacle that has strained the US armed forces to the breaking point and eroded the strategic position of the United States in every corner of the world.
    The International Tribunal at Nuremburg that convicted the leaders of the Third Reich summed up its verdict with the following observation: "War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
 
    Pakistan's parliament has elected its first female speaker, weeks after polls delivered victory to the party of assassinated Benazir Bhutto.
 
 
 
    Iran's president warns that the fate of US and Israeli officials might be as humiliating as that of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. "Certainly, the US and Zionist officials are destined to face the same humiliating destiny of Saddam."
 
    Chancellor Merkel has used rhetoric against Iran's nuclear program to curry favor with the Zionist Regime of Israel. She said that the burden of proof over whether Iran was building a nuclear bomb or not lay with Tehran. "The world must not prove to Iran that Iran is building an atom bomb. Iran must convince the world that it does not want an atom bomb."
 
    Russia says Iran and 5+1 nations should show 'restraint and common sense' to solve the current standoff over Tehran's nuclear program. "We do not approve of Iran's constant demonstration of its intention to develop its missile sector, and to continue uranium enrichment.
    "Although these activities are not forbidden under international law, we should take into account the fact that the previous years revealed a series of problems in Iran's nuclear program. Until they are lifted it will be reasonable to avoid any steps and statements, which heat up the atmosphere and create an impression that Iran intended to ignore the international community, the UN Security Council and the IAEA."
 
    Vice President Dick Cheney's visit to the Mideast threatens to detonate a new phase of conflagration, at a time when the Middle East stands on the razor edge between another devastating war between Israel and its neighbors, and a peace process anchored on a negotiated agreement between Israel and Syria.
    Cheney is expected to put impossible demands upon all the players in the region. Most importantly, he will prevent Israel from negotiating an agreement with Syria, which would be the keystone to peace in the region. This alone will keep the region on a vector towards war.
    Cheney is also expected to up the ante against Iran. Particularly since the sudden, forced early retirement of Adm. William "Fox" Fallon, the prospect of a US military attack on Iran before the Bush Administration leaves office, is again looming very large.
 
    Vice President Cheney arrived in Oman late Tuesday for talks set to focus on containing Iran's influence and curbing its suspect nuclear program.
 
    During another photo-op flying visit to Iraq, John McCain told reporters that it is well known that Iran is training Al Qaeda terrorists, a patently ludicrous claim that had to be immediately corrected by his traveling circus.
    McCain said it was "common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that's well known. And it's unfortunate."
    A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in McCain's ear. McCain then said: "I'm sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda."
 
 
 
    Fear of the American legal system has created an atmosphere in which lawyers working for European businesses would prefer to face a major dispute in Russia or China than the US, a study has revealed. It said the US system, although less corrupt than most, is "filled with traps in which the inexperienced or uninformed may easily become caught".
 
 
 
    In 2005, I warned that real estate would fall. Such a decline had not taken place since the Great Depression. This was considered an off-the-wall prediction then. Not now.
    We are in the early stages of a great unraveling. The visible breakdown today is residential real estate. The other breakdown is in the financial sector, which used short-term money to fund subprime mortgages.
 
    A system of "debt peonage" is inextricably linked to a banking system in which money is issued privately by bankers and lent to the government rather than being issued as "greenbacks" by the government itself.
    The result is "debt peonage," and it has systematically reduced the people to working for the company store, bound to their corporate masters for the food, shelter and health care formerly provided by slave owners under the old physical-slave system.
 
    The head of Germany's largest bank said that natural market behavior wouldn't be enough to correct the unfolding global credit crisis. He called for direct help from governments and the creation of a global financial watchdog.
    "I no longer believe in the market's self-healing power. Making liquidity available isn't the cure-all. We need concerted action by governments, central banks and market participants to help stop this wave."
    Deutsche Bank's chief economist echoed the remarks. He said the financial crisis would not be over soon. "The turbulence won't be over before the end of 2009. We need a new order and a new way of thinking in regulating the finance markets."
 
    As worldwide markets reel on the news of JPMorgan's buyout, the big question is: How many other banking institutions are on the verge of collapse?
 
German press
    As the US financial crisis deepened, the Federal Reserve stepped in to prevent a panic. How did things get so bad so fast, and is Bernanke's unprecedented intervention in the stock market a bad idea?
 
    The EU has overtaken the US as the world's #1 economy due to the continued dramatic fall of the dollar, according to a Reuters report.
 
    After the near-collapse of Bear Stearns, some of America's biggest banks are reeling badly. The markets are falling into a state of panic -- and elbow room is shrinking when the banks need it most. German commentators are following the action in New York on Tuesday, mindful of the American market's impact on the global economy.
 
    Financial firms face a "new world order" after a weekend fire sale of Bear Stearns and the Federal Reserve's first emergency weekend meeting since 1979, research firm CreditSights said in a report. "The reality check is that there are many challenged major banks, brokers, thrifts, finance/mortgage companies, and only a handful of bona fide strong US banks."
 
    Morgan Stanley, the 2nd biggest US investment bank, announced that profits fell by 42%, as losses continued on mortgages and loans. On Tuesday Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs saw their profits halved.
 
    Washington has been doing a lot of "containing" in both the foreign policy and economic arenas this year. And there are no signs that the banks and the other financial institutions are ready to provide new credit to business and consumers. If anything, they seem to be in panic.
    And there is a point – the Arab oil fields – in which America's strategic woes in the Middle East are intersecting with its growing economic problems. Hence the humiliating images of Bush and Cheney pleading with the Arab oil sheiks to please try to keep those energy prices down.
    But the oil producers in the Middle East – whose economies are suffering from inflation because of the weak US dollar to which their currencies are tied while their sovereign wealth funds have been keeping alive several distressed US financial institutions – are reminding their American guests that the current economic problems are the outcome of the mismanagement of US monetary and fiscal policies.
 
    The US Treasury is struggling with how to handle any political or Islamic ramifications as Persian Gulf sovereign wealth funds look to make substantial investments in capital-poor American banks and securities firms.
    WND previously reported sovereign wealth funds in 6 Persian Gulf countries, including Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, have now amassed $1.7 trillion, positioning them for attempts to control major banks and securities firms in the US.
    Since the beginning of the year, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, 2 of the largest United Arab Emirate states, have been in discussions with the US Treasury, offering reassurances that their investments in US banks and security firms would not impose restrictions usually dictated by Islamic law, commonly know as sharia.
 
    The Federal Reserve is stumbling around in the dark and regularly bumping into the next bailout because it stopped being an independent monetary force and started taking its marching orders from Wall Street quite some time ago.
    Equally troubling is the growing awareness among Wall Street veterans that neither the Federal Reserve nor the US Treasury comprehend was has happened here, much less how to contain it.
 
    This is the Federal Reserve's 6th rate cut since September. Two of the 10 members—Richard W. Fisher of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and Charles I. Plosser of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia—voted against the action, specifying they would have preferred a smaller rate cut.
    The new interest rate cuts can only exacerbate the decline in the dollar, which has already fallen to record or near-record lows against the euro, the yen and other currencies. There are already signs that the dollar's plunge is having serious effects on the financing of US trade.
    More than the Fed's interest rate cuts, these extraordinary moves to bail out Wall Street accounted for the euphoria, however short-lived, that prevailed on the stock exchanges Tuesday.
    That deep anxieties and uncertainty remain was indicated by a front-page article in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, which began: "The past 6 days have shaken American capitalism."
 
    Put a clothes peg on your nose. The moral stench of bail-outs for the über-rich will be sickening. None of us wants to pay a farthing to rescue the bankers and assorted debt pimps who got us into this financial mess, and in doing so exposed our societies to such harm.
    Yet we must forbear. It was such sentiments that turned the 1930 recession into a slump. "Liquidationists" prevailed: they insisted with Puritan zeal - or malice - that speculators should be driven to the wall amid a cathartic purge of the Roaring Twenties. Among them were top bureaucrats at the US Federal Reserve and some of Europe's central banks.
    The "liquidationists" accuse Bernanke of taking a dangerous gamble with inflation by slashing rates. They accuse him of "moral hazard" for invoking a Depression-era clause permitting the Fed to take on $30 billion of direct credit risk left by the wreckage of the US broker Bear Stearns.
    They are right, in a sense. This is probably the start of a massive taxpayers' rescue of the banking system. It stinks. But imagine if Bernanke had listened to such advice as Bear Stearns faced collapse.
    It is America's 5th biggest investment bank. It has $13,400 billion of derivative positions, and has underwritten $491 billion in options contracts.
    Topple this domino at your peril. It risks a chain of cross-defaults through the entire "shadow banking system."
    Bear Stearns had a liquidity cushion of $17 billion early last week. It vanished in 2 days. This was a run on a bank by New York insiders. It would not have stopped there. If the Fed had not taken emergency action on Sunday night, wolf packs would have fallen on Lehman Brothers (even bigger) with equal ferocity this week. The crisis threatened to snowball out of control.
    America is not facing "recession-as-usual". It is in the grip of a property crash. The crisis has since spread to prime mortgages. Even bodies standing at the top of the credit system are no longer deemed safe.
    As Barclays Capital put it, this was a "tsunami event". Or in the words of a City veteran at Cantor Fitzgerald: "No one in living memory has ever seen a banking crisis like this. I am older than God, and the outlook has never looked as bleak."
    Property booms will soon be deflating across the Anglo-Saxon world and the eurozone's Club Med belt. Japan is already on the brink of recession. Debt levels are higher now in most rich countries than they were in 1929. The levels of financial leverage are greater.
    Like some other free-market bears, I now find myself in an odd position. No doubt we will have to defend yet more egregious intervention by the state before this is over. We will become temporary socialists. Too bad. The world is in deep trouble. Purist ideology has become a danger.
 
    Within the space of a week, the Federal Reserve announced the emission of $400 billion in cash to bail out the bankrupt U.S. banking system, and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson released a report by the President's Working Group on Financial Markets which maintained that the system was fundamentally sound, except for a few excesses which need to be curbed.
    These actions, taken together, reflect a case of axiomatic blindness so profound it boggles the mind. The bankers and their regulators are acting on impulse, not intellect, and their impulse is to try to save themselves and their power at all costs. It is stupidity on a world-historic, civilization-killing scale.
    "Paulson is f**king incompetent!" exclaimed LaRouche in response to the PWG report. "They all are. It must be said directly: They are f**king incompetent." Strong words indeed, and entirely warranted, because what Paulson and Fed chairman "Helicopter" Ben Bernanke are doing, is attempting to have the Federal government bail out the US banking system by transferring the losses to the government and, ultimately to the American people.
    "We now have obligations in the world, in the order of magnitude of hundreds of quadrillions of dollars of nominal claims. These claims will never be repaid. They could never be repaid."
    What must be understood, is that this is a political, not a financial, solution. The financial system has already died, and the current rigor mortis-like problems, are the effects of that death.
    The new system the bankers are trying to put into place is based upon pushing the costs of the failed system onto the public, through a combination of austerity and Enron/Halliburton-style privateering, imposed by fascism. The financial measures are aimed at keeping the public in the dark while the fascist apparatus is put into place.
    The soaring price of oil, and the consequent price of gasoline, are effects of this bailout operation. The price of oil is set, not by OPEC, but by the financial markets, and so every time you fill up your car with $3-plus/gallon gasoline, you are paying a hidden tax to bail out the banking system.
    The same thing happens when you buy a loaf of bread, because of the speculation on wheat which has sent prices soaring. The hyperventilating you do when you fill up your car or buy groceries, is actually caused by the hyperinflationary collapse of the financial system, and these foolish attempts to save it.
 
    Some small retailers that include transatlantic tourists and other jet-setters among customers are accepting euros as the dollar's value dwindles worldwide.
 
    The US dollar's value is dropping so fast against the euro that small currency outlets in Amsterdam are turning away tourists seeking to sell their dollars for local money while on vacation in the Netherlands.
    That's because the smaller currency exchanges -- despite buy/sell spreads that make it easier for them to make money by exchanging small amounts of currency -- don't want to be caught holding dollars that could be worth less by the time they can sell them.
 
    Venezuela's state-run oil firm is starting to demand payment in euros — a measure aimed at protecting revenues from a weakening U.S. dollar, Venezuela's oil minister said Tuesday. "The issue of euros in new contracts is going to be progressive. Only the first steps have been taken. A specific policy has not been established."
 
    A London judge has suspended a court order that froze $12bn of Venezuelan assets awarded to US oil giant ExxonMobil in a dispute over oil interests. The judge said ExxonMobil had "no good arguable case" that Petroleos de Venezuela, Venezuela's state oil company, had acted unjustifiably in taking control of 2 of its operations.
 
    A 5-minute spot being beamed out night after night on prime time TV is part of a campaign by President Calderon to sell foreigners a piece of Mexico's most sacred cow: the state-owned oil monopoly.
    Tuesday marks 70 years since the country nationalized its oil fields that were drilled by US and British companies, but Calderon wants to bring back foreign oil companies by allowing some private investment in the industry.
    And his proposal has sparked a debate whose pitch nears hysteria on all sides of the political spectrum: Conservatives scream that Mexico's economy will collapse unless it takes action; while rabble-rousing leftists warn that a corrupt government wants to sell the nation's patrimony to the gringos.
    Clearly, the stakes are high. Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, provides Mexico with 40% of its federal budget. It also provides the US with its 4th-biggest source of oil imports, after Canada, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, shipping it 1.2 million barrels per day.
 
    As liquidity is drained from credit and money markets and pours into oil and gold, another asset class that could offer long-term returns to the discerning investor is water.
    Water shortages are on the rise -- stemming from soaring demand, growing populations, rising living standards and changing diets. A lack of supply is compounded by pollution and climate change.
    Investors are mobilising funds to buy the assets that control water and improve supplies, especially in developing countries such as China where urban populations are booming, further tightening supply.
    Water shortage is already a serious problem in many regions of the world.
 
    India, the world's 2nd-biggest buyer of vegetable oils, banned exports of all edible oils to boost local supplies amid concern a smaller winter oilseed crop may worsen a shortage.
 
 
 
    Iranians celebrate the ancient Persian tradition of Last-Wednesday-of-the-Year Fireworks (Chaharshanbeh Souri) as a prelude to Nowruz. Chaharshanbeh Souri is an ancient Iranian fire festival dating back to at least 1700 BCE of the early Zoroastrian era.
    The festival marks the arrival of spring and revival of nature.  Chahrshanbeh Souri, is celebrated on the last Tuesday evening of the year in the Iranian calendar. People lit fires at the sunset and the idea is to not let the sun set. They are supposed to keep the sun alive till the early hours of the morning.
 
Speaking of pagan sun-worship...
    The March equinox – when the sun crosses celestial equator, moving from south to north – happens during the night tonight according to US clocks. It happens at 5:49 Universal Time, or 12:49 a.m. Central Daylight Time.
    The equinox is a hallmark in Earth's orbit, but it's also an event that happens on the imaginary dome of Earth's sky. The celestial equator is an imaginary line on our sky. It wraps the sky directly above Earth's equator.
    At the equinox, the sun crosses the celestial equator. All these imaginary components . . . and yet what happens at every equinox is very real, as real as the sun's passage across the sky each day and as real as the change of the seasons.
(Wiki: Equinox)
    [WAR: Yes, the never-before-seen/observed, in the history of mankind, vernal equinox is happening tonight/tomorrow. As this article states so well, it is an IMAGINARY event. But yet it is very "real" to most of the pagan religions of the world -- Christianity being the chief among them.
    And the cross (descended from the ankh) is an ancient symbol of this annual imaginary event. And those "cute" little Xian fishes with the cross in them is nothing more than a representation of the spring equinox happening in Pisces.
    And the steeple (descended from the obelisk) is also an ancient symbol of this event. The obelisk (and the Asherah pole!) was used to determine when the equinox occurred, so that the annual holidays could be established.
    If you're able, watch the Vatican's obelisk in action marking this event at sunrise/sunset on the Whorecam. Notice the shadow fall directly in the middle of the white lines on the ground and right into the doorway of St Peter's Basilica at sunrise.
    So when you see your neighborhood steeple with the cross on top, you're seeing the ancient remnants of pagan sun-worship. (The steeple also represents a phallic having sex with the "prince of the power of the air." But that's another subject...)
    Now, why should those that claim to observe the annual holy days use an imaginary event as the foundational starting point to start the count?! Why should they share this in common with the Whore of Babylon?!
    "He then brought me into the inner court of the house of YAHWEH, and there at the entrance to the temple, between the portico and the altar, were about 25 men. With their backs toward the temple of YAHWEH and their faces toward the east, they were bowing down to the sun in the east." (Eze 8:16)]
 
 
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