Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
German press
The success of the pope's US visit depended on how he addressed the child sex abuse scandal that had shaken the American Catholic Church. German media commentators heap praise on Benedict for the open and personal way he spoke about the scandal -- which was seen as key to the success of his visit.
The pope, who came to prominence as a theologian, connected with Americans of many faiths through his simple preaching and pastoral work. Whether addressing diplomats at the UN or praying with victims of clergy sexual abuse in a Washington chapel, he took exquisite care to uphold the dignity of every person. It's not every visitor who stays less than a week and leaves his hosts thinking about a kingdom of justice and peace.
Freedom, truth, peace, human rights -- with an underlying foundation of hope -- those were the key themes of Benedict XVI's apostolic trip to the US, said a Vatican spokesman. He said he thinks the objective of the trip was achieved: The Pope transmitted hope to Americans, particularly Catholics, and to the United Nations.
"The Pope has said this in a very explicit way and the Americans have felt understood, recognized for their historical value and in their best element. Even the highest authorities of the United States, President Bush and Vice President Cheney, in the final discourse, have attributed to the Pope this capacity to evoke the positive aspects of the population and to direct a great message to them.
"When Cheney delivered his concluding address Sunday night, I heard Americans around me saying: A few years ago, we wouldn't have been able to imagine that one of the highest authorities of our country would say such positive words about the head of the Catholic Church.
"That means that this people, in all of its aspects, also through its leaders, recognizes that the Catholic Church and the Pope are worthy and efficacious interlocutors that help to find the best in the people of the United States."
Novak on B16's US visit (part 1)
The US gave a warm welcome to Benedict XVI when he arrived to the nation, and it must have been a little bit of a surprise for the Pope, says Michael Novak. A theologian, former ambassador to the UN Commission on Human Rights, and author of nearly 30 books, including the forthcoming "No One Sees God," he discusses the Pope's reception in the US, his comments on the sexual abuse crisis, and his address to Catholic educators.
Pope Benedict XVI arrived in the US last week against a macabre backdrop featuring reports of torture, execution and war. He chose not to notice.
Here is the text of several telegrams Benedict XVI wrote to officials from the countries he flew over during his flight from New York to Rome. The telegrams are addressed to the heads of state of the US, Canada, Ireland, France and Italy.
Pope Benedict XVI is to decide whether to defrock Fernando Lugo, a Roman Catholic Bishop, following his election as President of Paraguay, Vatican sources said. Lugo, a former Divine Word missionary and Bishop, was elected President of Paraguay with 41% of the vote with a platform of land reform and help for the poor.
(German press: "Clean elections and a fair change")
Archbishop Migliore, Holy See permanent observer to the UN, delivered an address before the 41st session of the Economic and Social Council's Commission on Population and Development.
Speaking English, he said that "migration and the urbanisation of societies should not be purely measured in terms of their economic impact. In finding ways to address the serious challenges posed by massive internal and trans-national migrations, let us not forget that at the heart of this phenomenon is the human person".
Big Bundes-Bro?...
Germany fears its government is trying to turn the country into a Big Brother state for the sake of more efficient anti-terror operations. Erwin Huber, one of the heads of the conservatives in Bavaria, wants the bill to include the possibility for federal investigators to secretly enter a suspect's home and install spy software on his or her computer.
[Europress] [Russopress]
The old man with the face lift is back in power again. But what does Silvio Berlusconi have planned for his 3rd stint as prime minister? One thing is certain: the anti-immigrant Northern League will be keen to wield its newfound power.
Berlin is unhappy with a French arms deal with Libya. President Sarkozy wants to sell 12 Franco-German Tiger combat helicopters to Moammar Gadhafi despite objections from Chancellor Merkel.
England has been wiped off a map of Europe drawn up by Brussels bureaucrats as part of a scheme that the Tories claim threatens to undermine the country's national identity. The new European plan splits England into 3 zones that are joined with areas in other countries.
The "Manche" region covers part of southern England and northern France while the Atlantic region includes western parts of England, Portugal, Spain and Wales. The North Sea region includes eastern England, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and parts of Germany.
A copy of the map, which makes no reference to England or Britain, has even renamed the English Channel the "Channel Sea". German ministers claimed that the plan was about "underlying the goal of a united Europe" to "permanently overcome old borders" at a time when the "Constitution for Europe needs to regain momentum".
UK prime minister Gordon Brown has agreed to a secret deal with Germany and France which effectively rules out Tony Blair as a new EU president but the British ex-leader is also interested in the new role of Europe's foreign chief, a UK daily is reporting.
"We have agreed with France and Germany not to back a candidate one of the others doesn't want," a British diplomat is quoted saying.
Members of the European Parliament are prepared to use their hold over the bloc's purse-strings to try and make sure that the proposed new EU president does not wield too much power.
Dutch MPs are seeking to raise awareness of the extra powers that national parliamentarians will have under the bloc's new treaty to influence EU legislation and are proposing a practical system to ensure that MPs take advantage of it.
The treaty introduces a system whereby MPs can object to proposed legislation by the European Commission. "This closes the democratic deficit that's been around in Europe for 50 years without introducing something like a European Senate or a veto for national parliaments."
A "partnership" accord will not make it past EU countries like Lithuania or Poland without a tough energy charter that provides rules that would make Russia more hesitant to intimidate its neighbors with cutoffs in gas or oil supply.
The EU has declared war on Turkey, following the closure case filed by the state prosecutor against the Justice and Development Party. Besides the EU`s central staff and spokesmen, its supporters in Turkey have ramped up their threats. They reiterate at every occasion that if the AKP is closed, membership talks with the EU would be suspended.
Who will be swayed by the EU`s threats and blackmail? Probably not our experienced judges.
Turkey is playing hardball in the geopolitical struggle over an $8 billion pipeline at the center of Europe's efforts to cut dependence on Russian natural gas. Turkey is trying to profit from its strategic location bridging Europe and Central Asia and to become a key part of Europe's energy plan.
This might bolster its push to join the European Union - if its negotiating tactics don't exhaust Europe's patience.
The European Union, gazing hungrily at Central Asia's vast oil and natural gas deposits, has long sought to weaken Russia's grip over Caspian exports. Now the EU has succeeded in getting its nose under the Turkmen tent, and in Moscow Gazprom's CEO must be drowning his sorrows, as Russia provides about 40% of the EU's natural gas imports.
NATO's proposed expansion into the Balkans and eastwards into Ukraine and Georgia is causing tensions between the alliance and Russia and within NATO itself. What exactly is planned and is everything as it seems?
Russian Minister of Foreign affairs Sergey Lavrov, however, warned the UN Security Council that giving Kosovo independence will lead to other nationalists struggling to separate and in the end will harm Europe. He even didn't shut out the probability of UN breakdown.
The Security Council scheduled a closed-door meeting today to discuss Georgia's call for the UN's most powerful body to address Russia's alleged "military aggression" against the breakaway region of Abkhazia.
Completely unnoticed in the Western media, a Russian transport initiative holds promise to revolutionize the maritime carriage of products throughout Eurasia, including the oil and natural gas so hungrily sought by European consumers.
Denounced by the White House, demonized by the Republicans and disowned by fellow Democrats, former US president and Nobel peace laureate left his cushy Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia for the "Promised Land" only to be avoided like the plague by ungrateful Israelis.
Back home inside the halls of Congress, the Zionist Inquisition is well underway. But, the pariah president is not new to this game nor is this his first inquisition. The 84-year old enfant terrible is now crossing all red lines and trashing all the hard-gained accomplishments of the "international community" under the auspices of US leadership.
The fact is that Bush invaded Iraq with the intent of turning Iraq into an American colony. The so-called government of Maliki is not a government. Maliki is the well paid front man for US colonial rule. Maliki's government does not exist outside the protected Green Zone, the headquarters of the American occupation.
The US invasion of Iraq is the neoconservative Bush regime's commitment to the defense of Israeli territorial expansion. Americans are dying and bleeding to death financially for Israel. Bush's "war on terror" is a hoax that serves to cover U.S. intervention in the Middle East on behalf of "greater Israel."
(And: Arab media gang up on Rice)
Al Qaeda still has plans to target Western countries involved in the Iraq war, Osama bin Laden's chief deputy warns in an audiotape released Tuesday to answer questions posed by followers.
When NATO meets in Paris in June for a summit on Afghanistan, there could be a secret deal on the table that will offer a way out of a war in which the US and its allies have become increasingly bogged down.
Much to the dismay of Washington war planners, there has been a growing weariness in Europe with the Afghan conflict and reluctance by NATO members to expand troop commitments.
Talk of a secret deal emerged during the recent NATO summit in the Romanian capital, Bucharest, when member nations were given a classified dossier outlining a German-inspired strategy for a reduction in troop levels leading to a phased withdrawal.
For some observers, the shifting German position on Afghanistan was predictable because the German public has consistently made it clear it is opposed to a long-term military commitment.
Germany's military union has said it would be irresponsible of the government not to send at least 500 more troops and better equipment to northern Afghanistan. But politicians say they won't deploy additional soldiers.
Christian Schmidt, Germany's deputy defense minister and member of the Christian Social Union, said that the current mandate was sufficient to ensure security. "The tasks can be fulfilled with the current number" of soldiers, he said.
Russian Channel 1 presents a documentary 'Plan Caucasus' about the plan of western intelligence service to make Caucasus the battlefield between the Western world and Russia.
The conflict in Darfur is deteriorating, with full deployment of a new peacekeeping force delayed until 2009 and no prospect of a political settlement, UN officials said.
Three US aircraft carrier battle groups are patrolling waters off southeast Taiwan. The task forces with the Kitty Hawk, Nimitz and Lincoln in the lead are believed to continue the patrol until May 20. Of course, it's rather unusual. But what for?
Al-CIAda sock puppet Ayman al-Zawahiri was quoted in an audiotape released today accusing Iran of behind behind 9/11 conspiracy theories, in another crude public relations stunt designed to generate hostile opinion towards the 9/11 Truth Movement.
The UN nuclear monitoring agency today announced what it called a "milestone" agreement with Iran that aims to provide answers about allegations that Tehran tried to develop nuclear weapons.
International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said IAEA's Deputy Director General and his team had agreed with Iran to start a process aiming to clarify the issue in May.
Apart from terrorism, hard information on weapons of mass destruction has for many years undoubtedly been at the very top of the "want lists" of the intelligence agencies of the leading Western powers.
Yet repeatedly, the major players in the field, the US CIA and Britain's MI6 among them, have failed to deliver the required intelligence when most needed. To add to the problems, in many cases the information that has been acquired has either been wrongly analyzed, of doubtful quality or has been simply ignored by their host government as an inconvenient irrelevance.
Italy is expected to join a EU consensus on Iran's nuclear program, after dropping earlier objections last week, possibly paving the way for new sanctions, a government official in Jerusalem said.
Secret Ministry of Defence documents released to the Times newspaper reveal that the British government lied about the circumstances surrounding the capture of 15 sailors and marines from HMS Cornwall in the Persian Gulf by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards in March 2007.
The US-led coalition in Iraq had unilaterally decided to draw a dividing line between disputed Iraqi and Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf before the incident, without telling the Iranian government where it was.
Investigators have identified a number of British arms dealers trading with Tehran, triggering alarm among government officials who fear Iran's nuclear programme may be receiving significant support from UK sources.
The probe by customs officers suggests that at least seven Britons have been defying sanctions by supplying the Iranian air force, its elite Revolutionary Guard Corps, and even the country's controversial nuclear ambitions.
Reliable sources in Baghdad and Washington trace the provocation against al-Sadr back to Vice President Cheney's recent visit to Baghdad, during his 10-day tour of the region.
In his meetings with Prime Minister al-Maliki, according to the sources, Cheney pressed for a military assault on the Madhi Army, even though a ceasefire between rival Shi'ite factions had been recently extended.
The sources add that, within the Pentagon, both Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and a majority of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, oppose the acceleration of US counterinsurgency operations against al-Sadr.
Gates and the Joint Chiefs' opposition to the recent military provocation is part of their ongoing battle with Vice President Cheney, who is committed to bombing Iran before the administration leaves office. The clock is running out, and Cheney is escalating the drive to get President Bush to okay military strikes against targets inside Iran, according to US intelligence sources.
Cheney has 8 months more to convince President Bush to order Stratcom to launch "Global Strike" against Iran. Were Cheney to succeed, all of Southwest Asia would be thrown into the kind of permanent chaos that Cheney's string-pullers in London so desperately want.
Hillary Clinton is positioning herself to the right of some Republicans, vowing that if Iran attacks Israel with nuclear weapons, she would respond in kind against Tehran, with the ability to "totally obliterate them."
(Op-ed: Hillary, the hawk)
The rise of English national consciousness in recent years poses a serious threat to these unjust and undemocratic arrangements. For years, the English were slow to appreciate how disadvantaged they were by devolution.
Several people reported seeing 4 lights forming various formations above the Valley Monday night. Witnesses reported that the lights formed a vertical line, then formed a diamond-shape, followed by a u-shape. The lights reportedly moved from side to side and upward before disappearing one by one.
[WAR: Interesting that this happened on the Night to be Much Observed/Remembered.]
US authorities arrested an American engineer on Tuesday on suspicion of giving secrets on nuclear weapons, fighter jets and air defence missiles to Israel during the 1980s, the Justice Department said.
Ben-Ami Kadish acknowledged his spying in FBI interviews and said he acted out of a belief that he was helping Israel, court papers said. He was accused of reporting to the same Israeli government handler as Jonathan Jay Pollard, who is serving a life term on a 1985 charge of spying for Israel. Kadish's arrest is a sign the Pollard scandal may have spread wider than was previously acknowledged.
Bush caved. The Lobby kept up the pressure on Bush, relentlessly pushing Congress and mobilizing its supporters in the streets. What had happened was that the Israelis had outflanked the White House and established effective veto power over US policy in the Middle East. The president's capitulation was complete.
A stock market crash, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Cuba crisis, Hurricane Katrina. And Osama bin Laden. In a new campaign ad, Hillary Clinton unleashes the most potent weapon in her arsenal: With images of horror, she warns voters against electing a weak president. Her opponents are crying foul.
For John McCain, who has pledged to avoid even the appearance of dispensing official favors for donors, Donald R. Diamond is the kind of friend who can pose a test.
WorldNetDaily is already being denounced as a hate site by radical Muslims in anticipation of its release next Tuesday of "Why We Left Islam," the first US book ever to feature an image of Muhammad on the cover.
Los Angeles is becoming a "Third World city" with immigrants making up half its workforce, says a new study. A third of immigrants have not graduated from high school and 60% do not speak English fluently.
"The question is are we going to be a 21st century city with shared prosperity, or a Third World city with an elite group on top and most on near poverty wages?"
In late trading on Tuesday, crude oil for May delivery was up $2.21, at $119.69 a barrel.
(And: Whither the price of oil?)
The euro rose to a record high against the dollar - briefly topping $1.60 - after a European Central Bank governing council member said policy makers would act to restrain consumer prices if inflation does not slow.
"The ECB is certainly not easing in the near term," said a senior foreign-exchange strategist in New York at Deutsche Bank. "The euro-dollar will reach $1.65 in the next 3-6 months."
FT Deutschland has a very interesting interview with Luxembourg's representative on the ECB's governing council, who has a produced an extremely hawkish assessment of ECB policy. He makes the point that a rate increase is currently under discussion.
Goldman Sachs has advised clients to take out "short" positions on British 30-year Gilts before a rash of new issues by the Government floods the bond market. The closely watched US investment bank said it was concerned about the "heavy supply of longer-dated paper" likely to weigh on the price of British sovereign debt.
The bank has closed its "short" positions on the pound after raking in bumper profits on the precipitous slide in sterling since the Northern Rock debacle. Goldmans' quiet move adds to worries that foreign investors may begin to shun British bonds as Prime Minister Brown pushes through a liquidity deal to kick-start the lending system.
Royal Bank of Scotland on Tuesday became the latest lender to seek new financing to cover billions of pounds worth of soured investments, a move that could open the way for other British lenders with bad loans on their books to follow suit.
RBS said it would sell $24 billion of new shares to its current shareholders as it sought to restore its capital base, which it said had been depleted by the write-down of $12 billion of assets.
The modern equivalent to "let them eat cake" is: "Core inflation is well contained." Core inflation is a measure that excludes goods whose prices are currently rising the most – food and oil. It is a popular concept among some central bankers and academics, and an insult to consumers: let them eat refrigerators.
We can waste a lot of time talking about the mechanics of the oil market or about speculators. Persistent inflation is not caused by oil sheikhs, ethanol producers or retailers, but by monetary authorities. A point Milton Friedman once made, and accepted even by many of his detractors, is that "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon".
The number of California homes lost to foreclosure in the 1st quarter surged 327% from year-ago levels -- reaching an average of more than 500 foreclosures per day -- DataQuick said in a report, warning that the widening foreclosure problem could "spread beyond the current categories of dicey mortgages, and into mainstream home loans."
Last week, the US stock market registered major gains, despite dire first-quarter reports from major banks and investment houses and a raft of data indicating a rapid slide into recession.
The upward spurt may well prove to be temporary, but the evident disconnect between the mood of big investors and the ongoing financial turmoil and economic distress is nevertheless a significant phenomenon that calls for an explanation.
The political and social implications of this government rescue operation are far-reaching. The measures taken by the Fed will, in the end, only compound the crisis that is gripping the American and world economy.
Book review
At a time when the Cassandras of finance are looking like realists, there is no gloomier prophet than Kevin Phillips. The author of 13 previous books including at least one classic, "The Emerging Republican Majority," Phillips sees a perfect economic storm coming.
The final pages of his bleak new book, "Bad Money," tell of an "unprecedented" number of Americans planning to leave the country or thinking about it. Readers of "Bad Money" may come away with a similar impulse to flee.
Can North Americans afford to fill their gas tanks at $4 or $5 per gallon? If not, what will they do for transportation when oil prices rise? With very few exceptions (such as Canada), the governments of most oil-producing nations now hate the United States!
One rogue nation with the means, and intent on destroying the U.S., could start a stampede away from the greenback by quickly selling off its dollar holdings, bringing the US down in an economic crash, almost overnight.
However, doing so would plunge the world into the depths of another Great Depression, which would bring worldwide political, economic and social instability—and even lead to WW3! The US and the other English-speaking nations are losing God's blessings and protection, as described in Deuteronomy 28.
In Australia, the international credit crunch triggered by the US sub-prime crisis since last August has already produced a trail of high-profile collapses by heavily-leveraged companies.
Deep problems lie ahead also because of the reliance on Chinese and other Asian export markets, which are in turn heavily dependent on the US, Japan and Europe for their sales. With high levels of foreign and domestic debt, the Australian economy is seriously exposed to the US crisis.
Bolivian President Morales proposed scrapping capitalism and developing clean energies as part of radical measures "to save the planet and mankind." "If we really want to save the planet, we must eliminate the capitalist system," Bolivia's first indigenous president told hundreds of indigenous delegates from around the world.
He argued that the capitalist system was mainly responsible for climate change and for the "accumulation of waste." He also railed against the development of biofuels which he said only serve to fuel "poverty and hunger" and he instead expressed strong support for clean energies. "Biofuels are very harmful, in particular for the poor people of the world."
It was a bit of a wild week, beginning with the weekend meetings of the G-7 finance ministers and central bankers, and the associated Spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank, and ending with the announcements of billions more in losses by major US financial institutions.
The G-7 issued its usual bland communiqué saying nothing of relevance, while the IMF and World Bank hinted at deeper problems but did nothing. That is to be expected, since these public meetings are essentially dog-and-pony shows, designed to calm the markets and the public.
The real action, as always, was behind the scenes. The bigger problem, as we have often emphasized, is that the financial crisis is but one aspect of a much larger crisis: the breakdown of civilization itself, as reflected in the assault by the oligarchic forces which control the British Empire on the nation-states, and what little remains of national sovereignty in the world.
Behind the Keystone Cops-like layer of incompetent bumbling by the bankers and their "regulators," lies a very nasty plan. Take the soaring price of food and oil, the food riots, the global warming hoax, the wars breaking out across the planet, the battle over natural resources, the vapidity of the Presidential campaigns, and put it all together; what you get is an assault on civilization itself by something very old and ugly, the imperial model trying to reassert its supremacy.
What very few understand, even among the bankers, is that there is a deeper level to this game, in which the bailout itself is a trap. The bailout, as a financial strategy, cannot possibly work, because the financial system has already failed, and like Humpty Dumpty, cannot be put back together again.
There are quadrillions of dollars of derivatives bets and other financial claims that can never be paid, because the capacity to pay them does not exist. Should the governments attempt to "print" money in sufficient quantities to save the banks, the result will be a hyperinflationary blowout of the dollar, of the US economy, and of the nation itself.
The British poodles may not understand this, but the controllers of the Bank of England certainly do. The Redcoats burned Washington once, and now they wish to burn the whole nation to the ground.
Already feeling the pinch from soaring wheat and flour prices, US bakers are now beginning to experience some supply shortages. Rye flour stocks have been depleted in the US, and by June or July there will be no more US rye flour to purchase. "Those that are purchasing it now are having to purchase it from Germany and the Netherlands, and that's very concerning."
Dire reports coming from the 2 most powerful Western Nations of the US and Japan
To those people who have foreseen, and prepared for, this Global food crisis an even greater danger lurks in that they are now being labeled as 'hoarders' and will be powerless as their military and police forces confiscate their stocks of food and grains and imprison them for their crimes against their fellow citizens.
As Egypt, India, Indonesia and Vietnam have all taken steps to block rice exports and Argentina, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine have cut grain exports, and as the US
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It turns out the root of brain farts may be a special kind of abnormal brain activity that begins up to 30 seconds before a mistake even happens.
Today in Scripture
* "For 8 more days they consecrated the temple of YAHWEH itself, finishing on the 16th day of the 1st month." (2Chr 29:17-19)
* "When the [1st day of Unleavened Bread] was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Yahshua's body." (Mark 16:1)
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