Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
Yesterday was known as Spy Wednesday, which, according to the tradition of the Church, commemorates Judas' betrayal of Jesus on the eve of the last supper.
Greeting thousands of young pilgrims in Rome for Holy Week, Pope Benedict XVI gave a catechesis on the Easter Triduum, 3 days that are celebrated as a single event that form the heart to the Church and of the liturgical year.
"The real Easter, which the Blood of Christ covered with glory, Easter when the Church celebrates the true origin of all feasts."
The personal witness of Benedict XVI, and before him, John Paul II, plays a key role in the advance of relations between the Church and the Jews, says a Vatican aide. Dialogue with the Jews is close to Pope Benedict's heart.
Dialogue is happening on the level of religion, social justice, discussions about theological issues, on Judaism's influence on Christianity and vice versa during the Middle Ages, on the Jewish roots. There is an ongoing dialogue to continue to find our own Christian identity.
A new centre dedicated to expulsions in Europe is another example of how Germany is dealing more openly with the suffering of its citizens during and after WW2. Long a taboo, the idea of Germans being portrayed as victims was broached by Nobel literature laureate Guenter Grass in 2002.
The German Army today has no awards for courage, only for attendance. Not only does the Bundeswehr lack medals for valor, it does not have an award comparable to the Purple Heart for wounded US soldiers.
The painful debate over reviving the famed Iron Cross to fill that gap underscores how distant Germany remains from normality when it comes to the military.
Oddly, while it is considered a political impossibility as a medal, the Iron Cross remains the symbol of the German Army, emblazoned on everything from military vehicles to the defense ministry Web site.
Press review
Chancellor Merkel won praise for her diplomacy and caution during her visit to Israel. But some German commentators warn that by ignoring the Palestinians in her speech and providing support exclusively to the Israelis, Merkel made Berlin's approach in the Middle East appear dangerously one-sided.
"Anyone so clearly declaring themselves a friend and ally of Israel must know that this will be taken literally when the time comes, and that Germany cannot duck the situation if things get tougher in the Middle East or if Iran really does get serious about the nuclear bomb. Merkel should speak openly about this. She must explain how far Germany would be prepared to go (and why) to secure Israel's existence."
Five years ago, US troops marched into Iraq, convinced they would find weapons of mass destruction. One threat seemed particularly palpable -- biological weapons produced in mobile facilities. US officials now say the assumption originated in part from bad intelligence out of Germany.
"I can't exclude the Germans completely here from their share of guilt."
Spiegel lhas now managed to find "Curveball" in southern Germany, where he lives with his family and is soon to become a naturalized German citizen. Last September, German officials agreed in principal to granting him a passport. "Curveball" told Spiegel: "I am not to blame. I never said that Iraq had weapons for mass destruction. Not at all, not in my entire life."
[Europress] [Russopress]
Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden threatened the European Union with grave punishment on Wednesday for publication of cartoons mocking Islam's Prophet Mohammad.
In an audio recording posted on the Internet coinciding with the birthday of Islam's founder, bin Laden said the drawings, considered offensive by Muslims, were part of a "new crusade" in which Pope Benedict was involved.
"Your publications of these drawings -- part of a new crusade in which the Pope of the Vatican had a significant role -- is a confirmation from you that the war continues."
You are "testing Muslims ... the answer will be what you shall see and not what you hear."
A former CIA bin Laden tracker, said: "It's not a coincidence that it was released on the day that is observed in the Muslim world as the Prophet's birthday. It's only ominous when he says 'don't listen to our words, watch for our actions' ... that means they clearly are intending to attack in Europe."
The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, hopes to cement an Anglo-French axis to generate a new "critical mass" driving EU foreign and security policy when he makes a state visit to Britain next week, officials said yesterday.
Sarkozy, who has frosty relations with Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, believes France now has more in common with Britain and the US. He is keen to use the 2-day visit to hasten an EU realignment before Paris begins its 6-month presidency in July.
"He sees the US, the UK and France as the 3 centres of freedom in the world," one French official said. "There is not the same kind of feeling about Germany ... in Europe now it is France and Britain that can provide the critical mass."
(Op-ed: When Brown meets Sarkozy)
US commitment to NATO risks being undermined because some European nations are unwilling to deploy more troops in Afghanistan, British MPs have warned. The Commons Defence Committee said there was a lack of political will among European governments. In a report on the alliance's future, it said failure in Afghanistan would deal a severe blow to allied unity.
Problems were made worse by relations between NATO and the EU which were "plagued by mistrust and unhealthy competition".
President Bush on Wednesday approved military aid to Kosovo, which declared its independence from Serbia last month. A presidential declaration to the US State Department said "the furnishing of defense articles and defense services to Kosovo will strengthen the security of the United States and promote world peace." [Puh-leaze!]
Israel is facing its worst drought in a decade. The Water Authority announced this week that due to low precipitation, high irrigation consumption and pollution, the amount of usable water supplies in the country were at a 10-year low.
By year's end, the authority said, the Sea of Galilee's level looks likely to drop below the so-called "black line," when pumping will have to stop as the machinery will no longer be submerged. Officials said Israel may soon ration water.
As Jews around the world celebrate the holiday of Purim, Israel today raised its statewide terror alert to the 2nd highest level, fearing a massive revenge attack after the assassination last month of Hezbollah's arch-terrorist Imad Mughniyah.
Israel traditionally goes on high alert for Purim, but this year, Israeli security officials say they have specific information indicating Hezbollah might be planning a large-scale attack either within Israel, abroad or both.
(Wiki: Purim)
(Wiki: Book of Esther is a myth)
The internal and regional crises affecting Lebanon has reached critical point. A paralysed country is split between the US-backed Sinoira government, and the opposition parties led by Hezbollah and Christian General Michel Aoun, which are allied with Syria and Iran.
"We are now on the border of war and peace, and more likely verging on conflict. No one knows how far America intends to go with Iran. There is the big unsettled strategic question that dominates the region, which is the question of Iranian pre-eminence. The question is, is Israel ready to come to terms with a pre-eminent Iran? And all the signs are it isn't. So how is that going to be resolved?"
Chinese authorities reported March 18 that an incident earlier in the month aboard a domestic flight was an attempted militant attack orchestrated by separatists living abroad. The reaction to this incident has been mixed in the West. This plot, however, was potentially more devastating than some would believe.
Spiegel talks to Chinese military strategist Chen Zhou about Beijing's wish to catch up with the US in military terms, the Taiwan dispute and hacker attacks on German government computers.
The Iranian military has shelled seven Iraqi border villages, causing no injuries or damage but terrifying residents, an Iraqi official said.
Israel summoned the Swiss Ambassador to its Foreign Ministry offices in Jerusalem Wednesday, protesting an energy deal Switzerland signed with Iran. A senior Israeli official told him that Israel "regrets" the Swiss Foreign Minister's trip to Tehran this week and views it as an "unfriendly act" toward Israel.
Israel believes that this is "not the appropriate time" to advance economic deals with Iran.
Regarding John McCain's patently false statement that Shiite Iran is training Sunni Al Qaeda members in Iraq...
There are only 2 plausible possibilities which could account for McCain's false statements:
(1) he was engaged in the standard tactic of war advocates -- perpetrated ever since 9/11 -- of just asserting that disparate (and even warring) Muslim factions are allies with one another in the Endless War without there being any evidence that this is so, or
(2) McCain is just completely ignorant of the most elementary facts about the region and the war in which the media has decreed him to be a Great Expert.
Juan Cole notes that McCain's attempt to link Al Qaeda and Iran is consistent with a long-standing Pentagon myth which even they were forced slowly and quietly to abandon. McCain wasn't "misspeaking," but rather, deliberately repeating -- whether from ignorance or an intent to mislead -- a long-standing, now-discredited claim that neocons have been making for years.
The only real question is whether he meant to say it due to profound ignorance or the will to deceive.
After Saddam Hussein, perhaps the biggest political casualties of the war in Iraq, at least in the view of armchair pundits, were a once-obscure but a now globally notorious bunch of American thinkers and activists called the neoconservatives. Few loosely aggregated groups of intellectuals and their sympathisers in government have been as universally reviled in the popular mind as the neocons.
John McCain is a fervent supporter of neoconservative objectives in foreign policy. He was a prime mover behind the Iraq surge. He plans significant increases in US military resources and he takes a radical, quasi-ideologically assertive line on other aspects of US foreign policy such as dealing with the challenges from the undemocratic powers in Russia and China.
The widely publicized speech Tuesday by Barack Obama on race relations in the US was another exercise in walking the political tightrope in his closely contested struggle with Hillary Clinton.
He offers himself to the American ruling elite as a president who could, because of his political rhetoric and his multi-racial background, revive at least temporarily the credibility of American imperialism at home and abroad.
In his domestic policies, there is absolutely nothing Obama proposes that would threaten the interests of the corporate elite. A few heads might roll, among the mortgage-securities sharks or Iraq war profiteers, but that will only be to provide the illusion of change.
In his foreign policy, as the candidate reiterated in another speech the following day, an Obama administration would represent a change in the tactics to be employed in the Middle East and Central Asia, but not the strategic goals. It would be unshakably committed to the defense of the interests of American imperialism in that oil-rich region and throughout the world.
The initially positive market reaction to the Fed's interest rate cut was effectively wiped out yesterday. Concerns over a global recession led to massive sales of gold and oil.
Naked Capitalism has a great entry about European banks, and how all attention has focused so far on US banks. But it has dug up a contact who tells that European banks are in at least as much trouble.
Investors scrambled to liquidate risky positions across the board last night in a renewed flight to safety, setting off a biggest one-day fall in gold for a quarter of a century and a slide in currencies and stock markets.
On Wall Street the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 293 points on fears that the Federal Reserve's dramatic rescue moves over recent days may not be enough to stabilise the financial crisis.
The severity of the moves in a range of markets suggested that funds were closing their most profitable trades in a scramble to raise liquidity.
Pensions to go off the rails at end of year
According to LEAP/E2020, by the end of 2008, a formidable debacle will affect pension funds all over the world, endangering the entire system of capital-based pensions.
This financial calamity will bear a particularly dramatic human dimension because it will come at the precise moment when the first wave of baby-boomers phase out of the labour force in the US, EU and Japan: pension fund revenues are collapsing at the very moment when they should be making their first large series of payments to pensioners.
The whole world is now aware that we are faced to a crisis of unprecedented scope and nature. The US financial system, and that of a large part of the world, is lethally hurt. US banks have no more money; it is as simple and dramatic as that.
Contagion will now enter a 2nd phase of development, generating a new series of bank failures by this summer, entailing a dislocation of the global financial system in the 2nd semester of 2008.
There are more than a dozen reasons to throw in the towel. The financial system has descended into complete chaos. Fifty years of American materialism has come back to bite us on the proverbial rear-end.
I mean let's face it. The Great Depression was a walk in the park. Compared to what's coming down the pike... some "thinkers" are declaring the end to everything we've ever known or ever seen.
(Cartoon: Avoiding a recession via a depression)
The pattern is always the same. When the Fed cuts interest rates, investors pile into the markets, pushing up share prices for a few hours. It takes then only a few hours until some other scare story comes up, and the whole process goes into reverse.
A monetary policy geared towards stabilising equity markets, which appears to be what the Fed is doing, is ultimately futile. If you cut interest rate too much, stock prices may actually fall. In other words: Interest rate cuts could cut both ways.
The wrong policy response is trying to avoid a recession at all costs. This is not only because it delays the day of reckoning, as it is so often put. The real problem is that such a policy might unleash a catastrophic dynamism.
Despite the varied theories espoused by many establishment economists, it was none other than the Federal Reserve that caused the Great Depression and the horrific suffering, deprivation and dislocation America and the world experienced in its wake. At least, that's the clearly stated view of current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.
Today, the entire Western financial world holds its breath every time the Fed chairman speaks, so influential are the central bank's decisions on markets, interest rates and the economy in general. Yet the Fed, supposedly created to smooth out business cycles and prevent disruptive economic downswings like the Great Depression, has actually done the opposite.
The US auto industry is bracing for what may be its worst year in a decade. Several industry forecasters have sharply cut their projections for new- vehicle sales to less than 15.5 million this year and have abandoned rosy predictions for a rebound in the second half.
The gloomy outlook, reflecting credit turmoil, the housing crisis and the softening economy, will probably lead to more production cuts by car companies.
The Russian financial system will experience problems if the foreign capital continues to flow out of Russia as it was seen in January and February of the current year. In addition, the Russian economy may burst like a soap bubble.
Why have the prices of commodities like oil and gold risen so dramatically in the last year? Why has the dollar fallen so much? Normal business cycle? Bad management from the world's financial institutions?
And why hasn't the world's largest and strongest economy, backed by the most powerful government, been able to change the course of the situation? Perhaps the larger picture is that the US is waging an economic war against China.
The US could strengthen the value of the dollar. It has not. China is hurt because now Chinese products are very expensive in the US, and this will reduce the US trade deficit with China. China must import huge amounts of oil and strategic metals which are very much more expensive now. China holds hundreds of millions of physical dollars, the value of which is now much less.
China has refused to revalue its currency to a realistic level to improve its trade position with the United States. China has used its huge dollar reserves as a sword against the US by threatening to sell those dollars, and thereby causing the dollar to drop in value.
In effect, the US is using China's strength against China. From Sun Tzu: "All warfare is based on deception."
Japan woke up today without a central banker for the first time in more than 8 decades, amid domestic political bickering and at a time of global financial turmoil.
Prime Minister Fukuda lamented the situation in a weekly emailed column, criticizing the opposition for repeated rejections of two candidates, both of whom were former top finance ministry bureaucrats. "For the first time in our post-war history, today became the day when we do not have a governor for the Bank of Japan."
The island nation's decline goes beyond the credit crunch and bear markets: It's emblematic of the perils of competing in the global economy.
Our own shortages are occurring in the midst of a developing global scarcity. Some analysts even fear that in this age of plenty, some of the planet's more vulnerable countries could see hunger and malnutrition rising. What we may be dealing with is a development epochal in scale.
As the price of rice hovers near record levels, many poor countries face the spectre of riots by hungry people, according to one of the world's leading rice experts. Key producers India and Vietnam have both curtailed exports, sending some of the world's largest rice importers including the Philippines scrambling to procure supplies for their people.
"The world took abundant food for granted and ignored this whole set of factors that were coming into play."
Tens of millions of people are celebrating Nowruz, a spring festival believed to have originated thousands of years ago in ancient Persia. Nowruz, which means new day in Farsi, marks the solar New Year and the beginning of the calendar year in Iran.
It is the country's biggest holiday of the year. But it is celebrated across a vast region, from largely Kurdish areas of northern Iraq and Turkey, to Central Asian countries and Western China.
What's with all this apocalyptic entertainment, I wondered, and what does it say about those of us who are filling the theater seats?
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