Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
The Vatican has rejected as "baseless" an accusation by Osama bin Laden that the publication of cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammad forms part of a "new crusade" under Pope Benedict XVI.
"These accusations are totally unfounded. It is natural to think that he (bin Laden) would lump the Vatican and the Pope together with all his perceived enemies. But this is not correct." He recalled that the Pope himself had condemned not only the Danish cartoons but also any depictions of religious figures which "offend members of different faiths".
The Catholic Church is pushing for the construction of a Christian meeting center at the birthplace of the Apostle Paul in Turkey. German bishops are demanding tolerance for Christians in Turkey in exchange for their support for mosques in Germany.
A Chinese government spokesman has flatly rejected the call by Pope Benedict XVI for a peaceful resolution of the crisis in Tibet, saying that there can be "no tolerance for criminals." He told reporters that "so-called tolerance" was not an option, and the Tibetan activists who have challenged Beijing's autonomy "must be punished according to the law."
Press review
German banks continue to suffer from the subprime market crash in the US. Even worse, concern is growing that the crisis will hurt the country's economy. Commentators on Thursday remain skeptical about the Fed's intervention as well as the calls for greater state involvement in the economy, and look to the lessons Berlin politicians should be learning.
[Europress] [Russopress]
Bulgaria today became the 6th European Union member to ratify the Lisbon reform treaty. An overwhelming majority of 195 members of parliament voted in favour of the treaty designed to streamline EU decision-making and just 15 voted against.
Russian NATO envoy:
Russia's firebrand envoy to NATO said Thursday that US military aid to Kosovo amounted to arming "former terrorists," and warned that such a move could lead to "new terrorist clashes in the Balkans."
"To give former terrorists weapons for the war against terrorism appears at least amusing if not worse. It is well known that those in power in Kosovo came in as the organizers and leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which many states recognized as a terrorist organization."
(Analysis: Bush's failed Kosovo policy)
Believe or bomb?...
Syrian peace overtures have been met with distrust on the part of Israeli officials, President Peres told Russia's Foreign Minister during their meeting Thursday evening.
Osama bin Laden said that "Palestine cannot be retaken by negotiations and dialogue, but with fire and iron." He also called on Palestinians who are unable to fight in the "land of Al-Quds" — a Muslim reference to Jerusalem — to join the Al Qaeda fight and the holy war, or jihad, in Iraq.
Benazir Bhutto's teenage son and political heir will announce the identity of Pakistan's next prime minister by the end of this weekend, his party said yesterday, ending weeks of backroom wrangling and setting the stage for a confrontation between the new government and the embattled President Musharraf.
Observers from 60 countries watched Wednesday's war games, code-named "Brazen Chariots," in Pokharan, the site in the western desert of Rajasthan where India conducted a series of underground nuclear tests in 1998. The area is 60 miles from Pakistan, but officials said the war games were not directed at their neighbor.
An official has announced the Islamic Republic is preparing to host the International Conference on the Proximity of Muslims in May. The conference is scheduled to endorse a 'charter of unity' that can be agreed to by all Muslims. It is anticipated that a document will be ratified by the participants.
Iran's huge energy resources are a thing that European states, not to mention Asian countries, are not able to ignore.
Aside from the political hue and cry launched by Washington and its Zionist ally, it seems that Switzerland has noticed a plain truth. Iran has immense oil and gas wealth and can help Europe reduce its dependency on Russian gas.
Some European countries refuse to understand. Perhaps they comprehend, and refuse to acknowledge it. If Western nations pursue Washington dictated policies, who will be the real loser?
George Galloway is a British M.P., representing the Bethnal Green and Bow constituency in Greater London. On his radio show he responds to an uninformed caller who supports "strategic strikes" against the Iranian nuclear energy program.
President Sarkozy said today that the country's nuclear arsenal was "strictly defensive," and warned that Iran's nuclear pursuits were a threat to European security. "All those who threaten our vital interests expose themselves to a harsh response," and warned that the aggressor country's "military, political and economic centres" would be targeted.
Significantly, Sarkozy singled out Iran as a threat, noting that Teheran "is increasing the range of its missiles while there are serious suspicions over its nuclear programme. European security is at stake."
President Bush contended that Iran has "declared they want a nuclear weapon to destroy people" and that the Islamic Republic could be hiding a secret program.
Bush made his assertion Wednesday in an interview marking the Iranian New Year with Radio Farda, a US government-run radio service that broadcasts into Iran in the Farsi language.
"The problem is the (Iranian) government cannot be trusted to enrich uranium because one, they've hidden programs in the past and they may be hiding one now. Who knows? Secondly, they've declared they want to have a nuclear weapon to destroy people, some in the Middle East. And that is unacceptable to the United States and it's unacceptable to the world."
Iran has repeatedly denied seeking nuclear warheads, and its supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, issued a religious edict in 2005 forbidding the production, stockpiling and use of such weapons.
Vice President Dick Cheney, during a trip to the Middle East aimed at consolidating Washington's position in its ongoing wars of aggression and preparing new ones, gave vent Wednesday to his utter contempt for the will of the American people.
Cheney's remarks reveal the outlook of an antidemocratic and out of control regime. The Bush administration feels free to flout public opinion, and boast about it, counting on the complicity of the Democrats in Congress, who will do nothing to stop the war.
The vice president's current visit to the Middle East, according to a Washington Post columnist, involves "bending people to his will" on a number of critical questions, including an Iraqi oil law that would benefit the petroleum giants and, most importantly, drumming up support for a US attack on Iran.
There are sharp divisions over policy toward the Middle East, but all elements of the American establishment begin from the premise that the US must have unrestricted dominance over oil and energy supplies.
Under conditions of the threatened "unwinding" of the US and global financial system (Cheney, like Bush, calls it "a rough patch," and the operation of "the normal cycle in a private sector economy"), the American elite will be driven more than ever to take the most extreme measures.
Propa-Petraeus-ganda...
The top US commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, has accused Iran and Syria of supporting insurgents and foreign fighters in Iraq. Iran strongly denies any meddling in Iraq's internal affairs and has voiced its support for establishing peace and security in its neighboring country.
Backed by family members and supporters all across the nation, US military veterans will serve citizen arrest warrants for George Bush and Dick Cheney today in Washington, D.C. The warrants are "for multiple violations of the Constitution and international war crimes," according to a statement issued by Veterans for Peace.
The warrants will be delivered to the National Archives, and the patriots will also retake their military oath.
You would not know it for the news blackout, but New Yorkers of Rep. Jerrold Nadler's district held a Town Hall/Impeachment Forum last Sunday to encourage Nadler, chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, to begin impeachment proceedings against Vice President Dick Cheney.
After the overthrow of dictator Saddam Hussein, the Americans are claiming the right to reorder the world according to their beliefs. In their vision for the future, dictators will be challenged and rivals prevented from ever coming to power.
When Henry Kissinger opines in an op-ed in the Washington Post, it behooves us all to pay attention. There is a message there.
Kissinger has always presented himself as the supreme "realist" proponent on US imperial policy. But he has also always taken care not to distance himself too far from the conservative political Establishment.
Hence, when he opines, he is both telling us where policy is moving and pushing it slightly in a "realist" path, in conjunction with allies inside the administration. He is thus preparing us for a shift in policy. He has now written about Pakistan. What is he telling us?
The election in November should come down to foreign policy. John McCain lacks the temperament, knowledge, and philosophy necessary to be a wise military commander-in-chief. He is the last person who should be answering any 3am phone calls at the White House.
As Ohio election officials investigate illegal crossover voting in the 2008 primary, questions arise on Limbaugh's role.
There was a lot in Jeremiah Wright's speeches that is true or closer to true than many people are willing to countenance. Unfortunately, had Obama tried to defend Wright's true or partly true remarks, he would have been hammered by the media.
I should preface this by pointing out an interesting definition that journalist Michael Kinsley gave years ago of a gaffe. A gaffe, he wrote, "is when a politician tells the truth." The idea is that the truth is something few people want to hear because it upsets them.
(And: A brief for whitey)
(And: Rhetoric or revolution?)
(And: Obama's racial ramrodding)
(And: How key is Wright to Obama?)
The International Monetary Fund warned Thursday on possible turbulence in world markets because of the US real estate crisis.
It's appropriate that on this week of the fifth anniversary of the criminal US invasion of Iraq, we are also seeing several other things: the death toll of American troops in that doomed adventure is rising past 4000, the economy is sliding into a recession which could be deep and long, and the financial markets are teetering on the edge of a possibly historic collapse.
The conjunction of all of these dire things is no coincidence. In order to keep things going in the face of all this, the administration and the Federal Reserve for years have kept mortgage rates low and encouraged homeowners to borrow on their home equity in order to keep spending, and thus the whole system, afloat. That gambit has now run its course, with the housing bubble finally bursting.
It would seem that there is little left to keep the economy going. The housing crisis has left the nation's banks and investment banks holding trillions of dollars in assets that are actually worth only a fraction of their face value.
So rickety is the system that over the weekend, as the Federal Reserve worked frantically to prevent the collapse of Bear Stearns, there was real fear of a total collapse of the finance system, ala 1929. Such a thing could still happen, when the next bank or investment bank comes a cropper.
The Federal Reserve bypassed its own emergency-lending policies to let securities firms borrow at the same interest rate as commercial banks as the central bank sought last weekend to stave off a financial-market meltdown.
Big Wall Street investment companies are taking advantage of the Federal Reserve's unprecedented offer to secure emergency loans, the central bank reported Thursday. The lending is part of a major effort by the Fed to help a financial system in danger of freezing.
Those large firms averaged $13.4 billion in daily borrowing over the past week from the new lending facility. The report does not identify the borrowers. Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley said Wednesday they had begun to test the new lending mechanism.
The crisis in the credit markets is threatening to engulf one of the largest commercial finance companies in the US. The CIT Group, a century-old company that lends money to small businesses and midsize corporations, drew on $7.3 billion of emergency bank credit lines on Thursday, causing its shares and bonds to plummet.
The developments at CIT suggest that the credit troubles that felled Bear Stearns this week continue to spread, despite efforts by the Federal Reserve to encourage banks to lend to other financial companies.
Top investor Jim Rogers has publicly called for Federal Reserve chaiman Ben Barnanke to resign, blaming him for destroying the dollar and bailing out his friends on Wall Street at the cost of the American taxpayer. "I think the Fed should be abolished, we'd all be better off without the Fed....in my view their day is done."
Asked if Bernanke should resign, Rogers responded, "He should be fired, we can't fire him unfortunately under the terms of his contract he's there for another 12 years....I think eventually things are gonna get so bad we're gonna get rid of him one way or the other he'll resign."
European central banks injected piles of fresh cash into the financial system Thursday in an attempt to get nervous banks through the Easter holiday weekend. The European Central Bank surprised markets with a €15 billion infusion of extra loans that banks can use to firm up balance sheets over the holiday weekend.
The ECB also went through with a $15 billion cash auction, part of a previously scheduled currency swap agreement with the Federal Reserve.
The Bush administration said Thursday it had reached agreement Abu Dhabi and Singapore that they will not use their huge government investment funds to further their political goals.
These funds, in many cases bulging with revenues earned through the sale of oil, have raised concerns among members of Congress and officials in Europe regarding their intentions in making investments in the US and Europe.
Russia's parliament today is set to review draft legislation that limits foreign investment in strategic sectors. Under the proposed bill, foreigners are forbidden from buying a significant stake in companies without government approval in industries defined as crucial to national security.
The shocking and reckless practices of banks behind the recent plunge in global markets illustrates just how far they have veered from reality. Stricter, more effective supervision is necessary, and the banks' perverse bonus systems must be radically revamped.
After 3 years of clandestine development, a Georgia company is now going public with a simple, natural way to convert anything that grows out of the Earth into oil.
J.C. Bell, an agricultural researcher and CEO of Bell Bio-Energy, says he's isolated and modified specific bacteria that will, on a very large scale, naturally change plant material – including the leftovers from food – into hydrocarbons to fuel cars and trucks.
"What we're doing is taking the trash like corn stalks, corn husks, corn cobs – even grass from the yard that goes to the dump – that's what we can turn into oil. Through genetic manipulation, we've changed the naturally occurring bacteria, so they eat and consume biomass a little more efficiently. It works. There's not even any debate that it works. It really is an all-natural, simple process that cows use on a daily basis."
Protestant poop...
Throughout Western culture, today is known as "Good Friday."
The religious leaders of Israel condemned Him as a false prophet and a blasphemer on the grounds that He claimed to be the Son of God, thus making himself equal with God. So Jesus was condemned for claiming to be exactly what the Hebrew prophets predicted the true Messiah would be.
[Non-poop]: It is an undeniable fact that the calendar by which the civilized world marks the passage of time dates to the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Even though Jews and Muslims use a different calendar, they still have to deal daily with the BC/AD calendar.
[WAR: Yes, Yahshua claimed to be the Son -- but that did NOT make him equal. This was the wrong assumption made by the leaders then, and now. The Hebrew prophets predicted a HUMAN Messiah (not a pagan god-man), but no one was expecting that YAHWEH would empty Himself and come in the flesh (100% human) to be that Messiah.
And yes, the civilized world uses the Roman Catholic/Pagan calendar to mark the passage of time on a daily basis -- giving us the ability to function in society, to have a job, and to obtain the money to be able to buy and sell.]
Speakin' of pagan...
The reason for all this nonsense is the convention that spring "officially" begins at the vernal equinox, when the sun crosses the Equator, which this year occurred in the early hours of Thursday morning.
But the very essence of spring prevents it from having an "official" start. Spring is the gradual rebirth of nature after the death of winter. We are talking about a natural continuum, not bus timetables. The 4 seasons merge, at first almost imperceptibly, into each other.
Another common fallacy is that weather defines spring, when its only valid measure is the sprouting of life in trees, plants, flowers and grasses and the return of migratory birds and their songs.
What is the origin of these conventions? Numerous adherents of ancient, pagan religions celebrated the vernal equinox, some of them considering it the start of spring. But these were people who thought the sun revolved around the Earth, hardly qualifying them as experts on natural events.
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