Sunday

The Daily WAR (12-14)

Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
 
 
 
    St Peter's journey to Rome led to the spread of Christianity in the West and the foundation of Roman Catholicism, so the Church has always taught. But a new documentary will challenge the link as nothing more than a "conspiracy of faith".
    In it, prominent academics accuse the Vatican of misleading the world over the fate of the man regarded as Jesus Christ's closest disciple. In allegations likely to spark controversy, they accuse the Church of fabricating a connection with the apostle to validate giving ultimate power to the papacy.
    The documentary will accuse the Church of ignoring the discovery of a tomb in Jerusalem that archaeologists believe contains the bones of Peter.
    "We found that there is no scientific evidence to support the idea that Peter was buried in Rome, but yet the rival theory has not got out because it challenges the Church. If you undermine its basis for power you undermine the Church. It's tragic that the faith gets reduced to manipulating the facts and to one Church trying to make itself superior to others."
 
    Remarkably, Easter is upon us. (Except in Eastern Christian churches. More on that later.) Many are complaining it feels way too early. Easter changes dates from year to year, as everyone knows, but few grasp the intricacies of its calculation.
    The church long ago devised the computation for Easter, and it's not really mysterious. It's certainly not random. The explanation, however, can get complex. Put imprecisely, Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first full moon that occurs on or after the vernal equinox.
    In setting Easter, Western Christian churches don't use the full moon as defined by astronomical data but instead use an "ecclesiastical" full moon based on church charts. The ecclesiastical full moon and the astronomical full moon don't necessarily coincide.
    Also, the church calculation sets the vernal equinox on March 21. Actually, the equinox is a moment, not a day. Often it falls on March 20.
 
    The earliest Easter since 1913 is playing havoc with the holiday plans of thousands of families this year.
    Why so soon? Easter always falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the Spring equinox. If the first full moon lands on a Sunday, then Easter Day is the first Sunday afterwards.
    The formula was decided after much controversy among early Christians at the Council of Nicea in 325. The festival cannot fall earlier than March 22 or later than April 25. The next time it will be as early as this year will be 2228. The last time was 95 years ago.
 
    Here is a transcription and translation of the reflection Benedict XVI offered Friday at the end of the Way of the Cross in the Roman Colosseum. "For us, for our salvation he became man, so as to be able to suffer and die. ... It is permanent proof of a self-emptying and infinite love that brought God to become man, vulnerable like us, unto dying crucified."
    [WAR: Wow! B16 said something true and didn't screw it up by adding the usual pagan and antichrist phrases of "God in the flesh" or "fully God and fully man." YAHWEH could NOT be tempted, suffer or crucified. So that's why He had to empty himself completely and became a mortal man in order to fulfill the role of The Messiah.]
 
    Jewish groups around the world have condemned Pope Benedict XVI's new version of a Catholic Good Friday prayer. Spiegel Online talks to prominent German rabbi Walter Homolka about why the prayer is insulting to Jews and discusses alleged anti-Semitic tendencies within the Catholic Church.
 
    Italy's most prominent Muslim, an iconoclastic writer who condemned Islamic extremism and defended Israel, converted to Catholicism Saturday in a baptism by the pope at a Vatican Easter service.
 
    Thousands of pilgrims packed into a rain-soaked St Peter's Square in Rome to hear Pope Benedict XVI give his Easter address. He called for an end to problems in Tibet, Iraq and the Holy Land in his "urbi et orbi" blessing to the world.
    "How can we fail to remember certain African regions, such as Darfur and Somalia, the tormented Middle East, especially the Holy Land, Iraq, Lebanon and finally Tibet, all of which I encourage to seek solutions that will safeguard peace and the common good."
 
    Here is this year's message traditionally sent for Easter, signed by 13 heads of Churches in Jerusalem.
 
    As plain Joseph Ratzinger he was the Pope's ruthless doctrinal enforcer, described in hushed tones in the Vatican's corridors of power as "God's rottweiler" and "the Panzerkardinal".
    As Pope Benedict XVI he has earned the affection of millions of Catholics with a crowd-pleasing style. It is an extraordinary transformation for a German cardinal who was considered a dogmatic and inflexible hardliner but who can now expect the warmest of welcomes when he makes his first visit to the US.
    Mary Ann Glendon, the new US Ambassador to the Holy See, said that America would find in the Pope a man who had made "a smooth transition from scholar to universal pastor". "He does not dumb down, and I think that's his particular gift, that he is able to communicate very profound and complex ideas in accessible language."
    The Pope's basic hardline message, nevertheless, remains the need to defend and project the "core values" of Catholicism.
    According to the Archbishop of New York, the Pope that both America and the world will see is the pontiff who has produced 2 thoughtful and compassionate encyclicals, on love and on hope, and is about to issue a 3rd, on social problems in an age of globalisation.
 
    Journalist-author John Allen spoke about mega-trends facing the Church and tied them to Pope Benedict XVI's upcoming US visit. Allen spoke about the Catholic Church becoming a world church, evangelical Catholicism, the biotech revolution and globalization. A book he is writing on mega-trends facing the Church will be published this year.
    The 1st mega-trend facing the Catholic Church, according to Allen, is the transition to a "world church" due to growing Catholic populations in Africa, Asia and South America. Allen calls this "Southern Catholicism."
    In the past, the Church has been dominated by Europe and North America. This population shift, he said, will move Church leadership to a more global focus. Allen noted several common characteristics of "Southern Catholicism," including that most priests are morally conservative, but politically liberal.
 
 
 
    [WAR: I find it interesting that Easter is a 4-day event, and all the newspapers take a break. Even though the holiday is a bunch of pagan-poop, at least they know how to take time-out to observe them!]
 
    The German government is under pressure to pump more money into the stricken industrial lender IKB. The first European bank to be hit by the sub-prime crisis, IKB wrote off a further €590m on Thursday because of rapidly deteriorating market conditions that prevented it from selling off structured securities worth billions of euros.
 
    Within a few years, Germany has undergone a development that took decades in the US and Britain, where the incomes of the middle layers have also declined. This has far-reaching political implications, and has set alarm bells ringing in political circles.
    The daily experience of millions is that one of the core ideological tenets of postwar Germany no longer applies—that a growing economy also provides for increasing wages and salaries. Today, the opposite is the case.
 
    Chancellor Merkel's successful visit to Israel came in conjunction with worrisome developments back in her own country. Few in Israel realize that a majority of Germans probably disagree with several key statements she made here about her country's past - including the mention of shame and guilt - in the Knesset.
 
    David Kay was charged by the Bush administration with finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the invasion. Instead of finding weapons, though, he found what he told Spiegel was 'the biggest intelligence fiasco of my lifetime.'
    Spiegel: Were you briefed by the BND, the German foreign intelligence agency, before you went to Iraq?
    Kay: No way. This is part of how toxic and how horrible the relationship was between the BND and the CIA. The Germans never gave us 'Curveball's' real name which once lead to minor disaster in Germany.
    Spiegel: It sounds as though you were the first one who really had the chance to cross-check what 'Curveball' said…
    Kay: … which is simply unbelievable. He was a defector for God's sake and the BND was convinced that his information was so valuable that they distributed over 100 reports on 'Curveball' to their allies. I stand by my criticism of the BND to this day: To not have checked up on the exile Iraqis in Germany who knew him, not to have made all the appropriate efforts to validate the source, is a level of irresponsibility that is awfully hard to imagine in a service like the BND. And then, the fact that they failed to provide direct access to him remains one of the most striking things. It was a blockade that made it impossible for any other service to validate his information. The German service did not live up to their responsibilities or to the level of integrity you would expect from such a service.
    Spiegel: Do you have an explanation as to why this happened?
    Kay: I first thought it was because the two governments had anything but a congenial relationship with each other. I thought maybe the BND was under political pressure and couldn't cooperate for political reasons. If the Germans had just said to the CIA, 'We can't do this because of Schröder,' I would have said, 'OK, I understand.' But to tell us this stuff which was demonstrably untrue, like he hates America and doesn't speak English -- that was dishonest, unprofessional and irresponsible.
    Spiegel: Are you saying that German intelligence knowingly deceived the United States about 'Curveball'?
    Kay: It was mysterious to me...
    Spiegel: Would it really have made a difference if 'Curveball' had been exposed as a fraud before the war? The Bush administration wanted to go to war no matter what.
    Kay: Sure, the administration had that position. But don't underestimate the importance that the link to al-Qaida, the weapons of mass destruction and, specifically, the biological weapons labs played in Congress. You can be pretty certain it would have changed the congressional vote, the authorization.
    [WAR: Knowing about the BND's primary role in the OKC bombing, this is very intriguing, to say the least. So, was this just innocent bureaucratic bumbling or something more sinister?
    Was the BND co-operating with certain elements in the US for mutual benefit -- to bring about the desired results, and eventual war? Or did the BND deceive the US for Germany's exclusive benefit -- knowing what a war with Iraq would eventually do to the US?
    But whichever is the truth, it was divinely directed (via the Assyrians) to bring about our current situation -- setting up the US for the ultimate end-time smack-down: Jacob's Trouble.]
 
 
 
    Serbia has proposed a plan for the "functional division of Serbs and Kosovo Albanians" in Kosovo. Diplomats said it amounted to a plan for partition which the West rejects.
 
    Abkhazia has a president, a flag, a national anthem and even a visa system for foreign visitors but the country doesn't appear on any maps. Officially, this small piece of sub-tropical Black Sea coastline with a population today of about 170,000, is a province of Georgia.
    But since a vicious war in the early 1990s, it has been functioning as an independent state and, in the aftermath of Kosovo's independence, the Abkhazians hope their statehood will be recognised by the international community.
    "After the recognition of Kosovo by many Western states, the geopolitical situation has significantly changed. Any legal decision has a universal character... All people have the same rights to freedom and independence."
 
 
 
    Vice-President Dick Cheney has given strong backing to Israel ahead of talks with Palestinian leaders. He said the US would never put any pressure on Israel over issues he said would threaten its security.
    Speaking in a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Olmert, he described America's commitment to Israel's security as "unshakeable." "America's commitment to Israel's security is enduring and unshakable, as is our commitment to Israel's right to defend itself - always - against terrorism, rocket attacks and other threats from forces dedicated to Israel's destruction."
 
    In the months leading up to the US-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration threatened trade reprisals against friendly countries who withheld their support, spied on its allies, and pressed for the recall of UN envoys that resisted US pressure to endorse the war, according to an upcoming book by a top Chilean diplomat.
    The rough-and-tumble diplomatic strategy has generated lasting "bitterness" and "deep mistrust" in Washington's relations with allies in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere. "In the aftermath of the invasion, allies loyal to the United States were rejected, mocked and even punished" for their refusal to back a U.N. resolution authorizing military action.
 
    Iranian artillery continued to shell villages in northern Iraq where Iranian Kurdish rebels are believed to be operating, while inhabitants fled from 8 villages in order to escape the attacks, media reports said Saturday.
 
    Classified documents are being destroyed by spy agencies in Pakistan to avoid their publication after the change of government.
 
    A boycott of this summer's Beijing Olympic Games should be considered if China does not re-evaluate its actions in Tibet, the president of the European Parliament said in an interview to be published in a German Sunday newspaper.
    "Beijing must decide. It must negotiate with the Dalai Lama immediately," Hans-Gert Poettering told the mass circulation Bild newspaper. Poettering, a member of the conservative Christian bloc in the parliament, said the European Parliament would discuss the situation in Tibet on Wednesday.
 
 
 
    Benjamin Netanyahu claims Israel's withdrawal from al-Quds will allow Iran to create a base there, he told Vice President Dick Cheney to justify his blocking of a plan to cede parts of al-Quds to Palestinians.
    "The Iranian threat (must be neutralized) before it arms itself with a nuclear bomb. In addition, Iran must be prevented from building its main bases in the region, from Gaza to Lebanon, and particularly in Jerusalem [al-Quds]. Hamas, Iran and other forces affiliated with them will take control of it. They will threaten Jerusalem [al-Quds]'s wellbeing, Israel's security and the freedom of worship for millions of pilgrims and members of the different religions who visit the city today."
 
    Iran Saturday said remarks by President Sarkozy on Iranian missiles being a threat to France and Europe were "baseless." "The baseless claims were made to secure the interests of hard- liners in the United States, support the Zionist (Israeli) media propaganda (against Iran) and increase arms sales to the regional (Gulf) states."
 
    A senior Iranian military official has warned the US of waging any war against Iran, saying the result will not be determined by Washington. "don't think the US will commit the folly of attacking, but if it does, it will definitely not be able to determine the result of any conflict with Iran."
 
    John McCain's confusion in recent allegations of Iranian training of al-Qaeda fighters in Iraq is the result of a drumbeat of official propaganda about close Iran-al-Qaeda ties that the Bush administration and neoconservatives have promoted ever since early 2002.
 
    This holiday weekend, elite political circles will be charged with talk of a Republican "Double Whammy," the internal nomenclature for a top secret plan to deliver the White House to the hand-picked candidate of the Bush-Cheney junta.
    While the media is filled with stories analyzing and dissecting the White House plans for war with Iran in the wake of the sacking of Admiral William Fallon, only a select few politicians and their minions will be privy to a plan that it is arresting in its boldness and predicated on the establishment of an ironclad pretext for the forthcoming US hard-power attack on the regime in Tehran.
    Sagacious Republicans now see Obama as the most dangerous threat their party has faced since the Great Depression. Now that Clinton's viability has been eroded by the Democratic base itself, the Republicans are moving swiftly to Plan B – an insidious plot to shock and awe the body politic with a double blow to the psyche of America.
    Iran is now in the grip of an enormous and extremely uncomfortable American vise. The US occupies both Afghanistan to Iran's east and Iraq to her west. The rich oilfields of Iran are arrayed in a belt near her south-western coast just over the border from Basra on the west. And, there is an enormous US flotilla now stationed just off the coast of Iran in the Persian Gulf.
    While the story of Bush and Cheney's designs on Iran are well known to international audiences, most of America remains oblivious to the impending expansion of the unpopular war. Fewer still are aware of the political motivations now calculating the moves in the global game of chess.
    A sagacious retired US military professional, Captain Eric May, has warned that a false-flag attack could trigger public panic and mobilize massive political backing for the next phase of neocon belligerence. Thanks to Seymour Hersh and others, we know that the next phase of neocon expansion of conflict is their well-planned launch of the Iran War.
    That is the "Double Whammy" now enthralling top-level Republican strategists – a counterfeit attack on US soil followed swiftly by a shock and awe bombing campaign against Iran. 
    The geopolitical ramifications of a US attack on Iran will be grave. It will signal the end of America's global domination as the sole superpower.
 
An Iranian perspective
    The American dogmatic global doctrine is fundamentally based on the use of POWER, both political and military, in the promotion of its capitalistic ideological enterprise and the expansion of its authority worldwide. The Iranian world view and the American global perspective are two diametrically opposed concepts.
    In the conduct of global politics, the Americans conveniently disregard the notion of morality when self-interest is at stake. The Bush administration's unilateralism in international relations has closed all doors to the possibilities of conflict-resolution by dialogue and mutual understanding amongst nations or through resolutions at the forum of an international organization.
    The US and its allies insist that Iran must be penalized – not because it actually intends to develop nuclear weapons, but because in the view of the American metaphysical approach, Iran is guilty of a crime that it has not committed, that it has not the power or instruments or modalities to commit – but it must be held "guilty" and "punished" because the US believes that an intended global crime of the future has been conceived.
    Iran is faced with a dangerous adversary whose global political behavior has become a matter of concern for all Muslim nations as well as the entire South and Latin American developing countries.
 
 
 
    John McCain is likely to be the most instinctively bellicose and militaristic president since Teddy Roosevelt. The book, McCain: The Myth of a Maverick, would be salutary reading for those curious about what this country would be letting itself in for with John McCain as president.
    It is significant that John McCain's personal hero among presidents is Teddy Roosevelt, and that his favorite book is said to be Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. Fighting, even or perhaps even especially for lost causes seem to be central to his being.
    As president, he would likely be more than a little dangerous to the country and to its citizens' freedoms.
 
    While Obama raises the bar for racial understanding, the Democratic Leadership Council leverages white voter fear to counter America's new landscape.
 
    Major floods striking America's heartland in March offer a preview of the spring seasonal outlook, according to NOAA's National Weather Service. "We expect rains and melting snow to bring more flooding this spring. Americans should be on high alert to flood conditions."
    The science supporting NOAA's short-term forecasts allows for a high level of certainty.
 
 
 
    The US Congress has begun an inquiry into last weekend's bailout of Bear Stearns by the Federal Reserve and JPMorgan Chase as Washington grows increasingly concerned that American taxpayers are paying the price for Wall Street's mistakes. Congress is also seeking to ascertain whether the rescue deal is in breach of federal law.
 
    Central banks on both sides of the Atlantic are actively engaged in discussions about the feasibility of mass purchases of mortgage-backed securities as a possible solution to the credit crisis.
    Such a move would involve the use of public funds to shore up the market in a key financial instrument and restore confidence by ending the current vicious circle of forced sales, falling prices and weakening balance sheets.
 
    Fears of a deepening recession and continuing uncertainties over the solvency of major finance houses fueled a week of wild gyrations on American stock exchanges. The extreme market volatility was driven in large measure by growing indications that the US has slid into a recession and that the slumping American economy is leading to a global slowdown.
    In an attempt to fend off a financial meltdown, the Fed has taken unprecedented measures. This can only weaken global confidence in the Fed's own solvency and further undermine the position of the US dollar.
 
    The Federal Reserve and Treasury are playing a dominant day-to-day role in overseeing Wall Street following last week's rescue of Bear Stearns, raising the prospect that the central bank might be given more permanent authority over securities firms.
    People close to the situation said the Fed and Treasury feared further problems among securities firms could destabilise the financial system and expose US taxpayers to sizeable losses on the new Fed loans.
    "There is a new sheriff in town," said a senior banker. "The Bear situation changed everything: people saw death before their eyes. The Fed and Treasury are in charge now and are not going to let go."
 
To head off a catastrophe, Bernanke has reinvented the central bank while injecting a huge dose of money into the system
    The current financial crisis—perhaps the biggest since the Great Depression—has turned Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke into a reluctant revolutionary. The quiet academic who wanted to make the post of Fed chairman less heroic is leading a dramatic expansion of the central bank's role.
    In the process, he is setting the stage for the next big boom—or bubble. In the short run, Bernanke is waging a war to keep the financial markets from collapsing.
    At the same time, by stepping in so aggressively, Bernanke is pouring an enormous slug of money into the financial system. To be sure, its full impact won't be felt right away, because banks are reluctant to lend and consumers are afraid to borrow.
    It also could boost inflation, further eroding the value of the dollar and raising the risk of a run on the world's most important currency. The possibility that a primarily domestic crisis could quickly become global highlights the need for international cooperation.
    Not everyone is pleased with Bernanke's approach. "They have basically polluted the world with dollars," says a US chief economist for a unit of Allianz Group. "It lays the foundation for inflation and another asset bubble later on."
    The biggest wild card right now is the dollar. If the dollar slips too far and too fast, global investors will see the value of their investments in the US plummet. That will push them to pull their money out, making the greenback drop even more.
    Under these circumstances, the Fed cannot protect the dollar. Its weapon for fighting financial collapse is printing money. But the more dollars it prints, the faster the dollar will fall. In the end, the US may require an unprecedented amount of cooperation from global central banks to keep things afloat.
 
    Over the past week, the Federal Reserve under Ben Bernanke has taken a much more aggressive approach to the ongoing credit crisis. This falls just short of throwing the proverbial kitchen sink at the problem.
    The question is, will it work? The symbolism of using a facility developed during the Great Depression, during which the original JP Morgan made his name by buying up great swaths of the New York stock market, will have been lost on no one.
 
When the Federal Reserve stepped in to save Bear Stearns, most people had no idea what was at stake
    We may never know for sure whether the Federal Reserve's rescue of Bear Stearns averted a seizure of the $516 trillion derivatives system, the ultimate Chernobyl for global finance.
    "If the Fed had not stepped in, we would have had pandemonium. There was the risk of a total meltdown at the beginning of last week. I don't think most people have any idea how bad this chain could have been, and I am still not sure the Fed can maintain the solvency of the US banking system."
    The emergency vote by five governors allows the Fed to shoulder $30bn of direct credit risk from the Bear Stearns carcass. By taking this course, the Fed has crossed the Rubicon of central banking. On the other side of these contracts are banks, brokers, and hedge funds, linked in destiny by a nexus of interlocking claims.
 
    When Americans get worried about the economy, their thoughts turn to the Great Depression of the 1930s. And when an eminent US economist, Martin Feldstein, says America is possibly facing its most serious recession since WW2, those worries are heightened. Could there be a rerun of the Great Depression?
 
    The oil-rich Middle East and China are bailing out Western banks, but at what cost?
 
    There is no political system without flaws: however, some have more flaws than others. It has always struck me that capitalism is by far the best of the lot. It is the only way to allow personal freedom its most complete expression, and to build prosperity.
    The difficulty with capitalism is that some capitalists do dirty things with other people's money. If confidence in capitalism is destroyed by thieves and other brands of criminal, then we are finished.
 
How the falling greenback is killing jobs and crimping profits on the Continent
    To date, the weak greenback has been a selective killer of European jobs and profits. First hit have been companies that pay salaries in euros but sell products priced in dollars.
    The impact of the falling dollar has been mitigated by a decade-long European effort to limit the tyranny of currency markets. And the strong euro is a plus for European companies that consume lots of oil and other commodities, which are usually priced in dollars.
 
    Even as the dea has made it more bothersome to bring coke into the US, the sliding dollar has made importing it less profitable. Both the UN and dea note that a kilo of coke brings in 2 times as much in Europe as it does in America. "The euro has become the preferred currency for drug traffickers. We're seeing a glut of euro notes throughout South America.
 
    Taking shelter with parents isn't uncommon for young people in their 20s, especially when the job market is poor. But now the slumping economy and the credit crunch are forcing some children to do so later in life — even in middle age.
 
    A US-based company that has controversially laid claim to nearly all of the Arctic Ocean's undersea oil said Thursday that new geological data suggests a "potentially vast" petroleum resource of 400 billion barrels.
    Las Vegas-based Arctic Oil & Gas has raised eyebrows around the world with its roll-of-the-dice bid to lock up exclusive rights to extract oil and gas from rapidly melting areas of the central Arctic Ocean, currently beyond the territorial control of Canada, Russia and other polar nations.
 
 
 
 
    More often than not, guys interpret even friendly cues, such as a subtle smile from a gal, as a sexual come-on, and a new study discovers why: Guys are clueless. More precisely, they are somewhat oblivious to the emotional subtleties of non-verbal cues.
 
    A recent study suggests that merely glancing from left to right (the traditional "shifty look" of spies and sneaks) can boost memory power and help people differentiate between real and imagined memories. The trick may work because the specific left/right eye movement engages both the left and right hemispheres of the brain at the same time.
 
Tonight's sky
    All the stars and constellations shift westward as the seasons pass; and they also move westward in the course of a single night. The westward shift of the sky throughout the night is due to Earth's spin under the stars. But the westward shift of the stars throughout the seasons is due to Earth's motion in orbit around the sun.
    [WAR: And the eastward shift of the equinoxes throughout the years is due to the precession of the equinoxes -- which is caused by the Sun being in a binary orbit with another star.]
 
 
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