Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
In today's general audience, which was held in St. Peter's Square, the Pope dedicated his remarks to his recent apostolic trip to the US and the headquarters of the UN. He affirmed that his aim had been "to announce to everyone the message that 'Christ is our Hope', the phrase which was the theme of my visit".
Prior to the audience, the Pope blessed a statue of St. John Leonardi (1541- 1609), founder of the Clerks Regular of the Mother of God, which has been placed in a niche on the exterior wall of the Vatican Basilica. In 2006, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, by virtue of the powers granted by Benedict XVI, proclaimed him patron saint of pharmacists.
[WAR: Patron saint of pharmacists? Hmmm ... as in pharmakeus (#5332): from pharmakon (a drug, i.e. spell-giving potion); a druggist ("pharmacist") or poisoner, i.e. (by extension) a magician; sorcerer that dipsenses pharmakeia (#5331) medication ("pharmacy"), i.e. (by extension) magic (literally or figuratively); sorcery, witchcraft??!! Take a look at Gal 5:19,20; Rev 9:21 / 18:23 / 21:8 / 22:15.]
John Hagee, the controversial pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, has lauded Pope Benedict XVI in a Washington Times essay and thanked him for the speeches he made during his US visit. Hagee praised what he called Pope Benedict's "moral vision for America," especially the Pope's affirmation of Christian participation in the public square. Also in the essay, he also repeated his denial of accusations he has made anti-Catholic statements.
"As an evangelical Protestant I happen to disagree with Pope Benedict on many issues of Christian doctrine and ritual. But when it comes to his moral vision for America and the world I have one thing to say in response to the Pope's visit: Amen."
(And: Full text of editorial)
(Blast from the past: Massa contended that the concept of the papacy has changed as well: "Only among a few Evangelicals and fundamentalist Christians in the US is the Pope viewed any longer as the 'anti-Christ.' Many see him as a defender of conscience, as well as a guardian of historic Christianity, in a morally relativistic age.")
Leaders of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria are pushing to include a direct reference to faith in God in the Lisbon Treaty for the European Union, the KNA news agency reports. The Bavarian political party is taking up the cause that was promoted by Pope John Paul II and later taken up by Pope Benedict XVI), insisting that the common cultural heritage of the European community is built upon the Christian faith.
[WAR: The EU will NOT do this, which will just solidify in the minds of the CSU and B16's Vatican that the EU is not the right entity to further God's Kingdom in Europe. So they'll be forced to go "back to the future" and resurrect the Holy Roman Empire of the Assyrian Nation from the "mortal" wound that Napoleon (the Israelite) gave it.]
April 24, 2008 will be noted in the annals as the day in which 517 German Members of Parliament, for a variety of reasons, agreed to ratify a major treaty in total disregard for the Constitution, an action which, in practical terms, means annihilating the Constitution, and which is supposed to realize an oligarchical dictatorship in Europe.
The biggest scandal in all of this is that with very few exceptions, the majority of the MPs have not even troubled to read the Lisbon Treaty. All this boils down to is a cold coup from above, whereby the pitiful remains of any legislative competences that the domestic parliaments still enjoy, are to be handed over, lock, stock, and barrel, to the EU dictatorship in Brussels.
But the die is not yet cast. There are organizations on the move in 30 European cities, demonstrating against the EU Treaty. There is still time in Germany to force a debate onto the table, as the Senate will vote only in late May.
The number of people choosing to emigrate from Germany remains particularly high despite the country's rebounding economy. Immigrants to Germany greatly outnumber the number of Germans who leave their country each year, though.
The losses at Deutsche Bank, which had warned about the write-downs earlier this month, symbolize less a bank that blundered into risky and poorly understood markets than one that is feeling the effects of a credit crisis that has been longer and deeper than anyone expected.
(And: SAP 1Q profit fell 22%)
Bald werden wir den ersten Geburtstag unserer globalen Wirtschaftskrise feiern, ohne ein wirkliches tiefes Verständnis für ihre Ursachen gewonnen zu haben. Aber es gibt schon eine Reihe von Schuldzuweisungen.
Attacks imminent?
Two short films have appeared on the Internet featuring the German Islamist Eric B. in which he calls his "brothers" to join the jihad. The authorities have been hunting him for weeks, fearful that he could be preparing a terrorist attack in Kabul. The video messages are fanning those fears.
(And: Islamist declares "holy war")
Doubts are growing over a European Union goal to take over policing in Kosovo from the United Nations in June, with no handover agreed as yet. The EU's 2,200-strong law and justice mission aims to smooth over turbulence from Kosovo's secession from Serbia.
The EU insists the mission will go ahead but acknowledges its plans are being reviewed as Russia, an ally of Serbia, uses its weight on the UN Security Council to prevent a transition of powers to the EU mission.
Lithuania has pledged to continue blocking negotiations for a strategic deal between the EU and Russia because of unresolved disputes with Moscow. Other European countries, however, are stepping up the pressure.
(Analysis: Future of EU-Russia relations)
Russia has warned it will retaliate if Georgia uses force against its breakaway regions. Moscow has accused Georgia of preparing to invade Abkhazia, and says it is boosting Russian forces there and in the South Ossetia region. Georgia has reacted angrily to the Russian move, which its prime minister called "irresponsible".
(Breaking: NATO warns Russia)
Russian Military Analysts are reporting today that President Putin has ordered a 'full scale invasion' of the Georgian breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia to begin upon the believed to be imminent attack upon Iran by the US
These reports state that Putin has determined that only Russia can thwart the West's plan for the reconfiguration of the entire Middle East. Putin has also dispatched Secretary Sobolev of Russia 's National Security Council, to Iran to coordinate Russia 's military response to the coming attacks by the US
The Israeli defense establishment is fuming over the government's decision here to remove what security officials describe as an important anti-terror checkpoint directly responsible for stopping suicide bombings inside the Jewish state.
Yesterday, visiting Middle East envoy to the Quartet Tony Blair presented Defense Minister Barak with a list of checkpoints Blair said should be removed by Israel to ease Palestinian travel in the northern West Bank. Barak agreed to remove one key checkpoint outside the West Bank city of Nablus but rejected the dismantling of other checkpoints.
L'Osservatore Romano has cited the words of President Ahmadinejad, praising the Holy See for its diplomatic efforts. During an April 6 meeting with the new papal nuncio in Iran, Ahmadinejad said that the Vatican has been a positive force for justice, peace, and the protection of human rights around the world.
Iran has been maneuvering to secure the support of the Holy See to counteract hostile pressure from the US and European nations.
Iran will soon sign a deal with Venezuela to invest $2 billion in the Latin American country's oil sector, says a top Iranian official.
Russia was quoted as saying it was ready to examine Iranian proposals to end a deadlock over Tehran's disputed nuclear programme.
Iran, OPEC's 2nd-largest producer, has completely stopped conducting oil transactions in US dollars, a top Oil Ministry official said today. "The dollar has totally been removed from Iran's oil transactions. We have agreed with all of our crude oil customers to do our transactions in non-dollar currencies."
Former UN weapons inspector in Iraq Scott Ritter claims the US is undoubtedly planning a military strike against Iran. "There's no doubt in my mind that the United States is planning right now, as we speak, a military strike against Iran. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and almost every senior US military official has pretty much acknowledged the same. We take a look at the military buildup, we take a look at the rhetoric, we take a look at the diplomatic posturing, and I would say that it's a virtual guarantee that there will be a limited aerial strike against Iran."
In what appears yet another effort to strengthen his position in the executive branch, the attorney for Vice President Cheney said in a letter released by Congress that the Congress "lacks the constitutional power" to conduct oversight over his job.
The issue of race has emerged as the key Democratic divide in this year's primary season. Despite his waning support amongst white voters, though, the superdelegates appear to have no other choice but to vote for Barack Obama. A vote against him could have serious consequences.
(And: The pastor casts a shadow)
In a Spiegel interview, Robert Reich, who served as labor secretary under Bill Clinton, discusses the Democratic Party's self-destructive streak, mudslinging from the Hillary camp and his endorsement of Barack Obama.
John McCain says that if he's elected president, he wants to create a worldwide "League of Democracies" to "revive democratic solidarity" and bypass gridlock at the United Nations. "The new League of Democracies would form the core of an international order of peace based on freedom. It could act where the UN fails to act."
The Constitution Party candidate for president says the biggest danger America faces is from Washington, DC, not Tehran or Baghdad, and that he would jump at the opportunity to cut it down to size.
"I really believe that our nation is fast becoming a nation that does not respect the freedoms and liberties that this country was founded upon," Chuck Baldwin told WND in an exclusive interview.
Baldwin was picked the party's candidate recently at its national convention in Kansas City over the higher-profile Ambassador Alan Keyes.
When it comes to the power of the state over the family, there is no such thing as a judicious use. The state has every reason to invent reasons to destroy families – and all other independent centers of authority – and the families themselves have no choice but to crawl and beg.
State campaigns for the welfare of children have always been a major justification for the expansion of leviathan. Indeed, it is possible to erect a totalitarian state in the name of helping the children. So it was in Texas, when the state swept in to remove 437 children from their mothers.
The Department of Defense statistics are alarming — 1 in 3 women who join the US military will be sexually assaulted or raped by men in the military. But now, even more alarming, are deaths of women soldiers in Iraq, and in the US, following rape. The military has characterized each of the deaths of women who were first sexually assaulted as deaths from "non-combat related injuries," and then added "suicide."
An Arizona state Senator who went public with questions over the official government version of events on 9/11 has provided further details of her position and why she chose to make her views known.
In an short interview, the Republican Senator explained that in the many in the Arizona legislature have privately told her they agree with her position but are too afraid or are unable to start asking the same questions themselves. Johnson echoed her previous statements when she told Capitol reporters: "There are many of us that believe there's been a cover-up."
(And: The BND in OKC?!)
From the middle of the 19th century but especially after WW2, 2 models of empire building competed on a world scale: One predominantly based on military conquests, involving direct invasions, proxy invading armies and subsidized separatist military forces; and the other predominantly based on large-scale, long-term economic penetration via a combination of investments, loans, credits and trade in which "market" power and the superiority (greater productivity) in the means of production led to the construction of a virtual empire.
US military-driven empire building has made costly military alliances with peripheral countries at a catastrophic economic cost. The persistence of militarist empire builders has systematically undercut market-driven empire building and has pushed the domestic US economy to near bankruptcy.
The twin motors of the contemporary empire and domestic economy, speculative finance and militarism, have driven the US economy backwards at the same time that established and emerging imperial competitors are advancing.
The long period of incremental decline of US economic empire building and the trillions of dollars wasted by military-driven empire building has come to a climax.
In the new millennium with the profound devaluation of the imperial currency (the dollar), the huge indebtedness and loss of markets, Washington is totally dependent on the good will of its commercial partners to keep accepting constantly devalued dollars in exchange for essential commodities.
The immediate outcome is likely to be a major domestic crisis, which could be accompanied by one more desperate and futile military attack on Iran and/or Venezuela or a forced confrontation with China and/or Russia.
Desperate acts of declining military empires have historically accelerated the demise of imperial rulers. Out of the debris of failed empires 2 possible outcomes could emerge: a new rabidly nationalist authoritarian regime or the re-birth of a republic.
The United States is in a war against the British Empire, a war over the future of our nation and the future of the planet. Under the onslaught of Anglo-Dutch Liberal geopolitics, war, pestilence, famine, and death are spreading across the globe. Nations are being destabilized, populations are being destroyed, civilization itself is dying.
It is deliberate, it is genocidal, and it is the policy of the British Empire.This is a war of ideas, a war over the ideas which will determine the nature of the political system which will dominate the planet in the wake of the worst financial collapse in history.
Struggling with mounting debt and rising prices, faced with the toughest economic times since the early 1990s, Americans are selling prized possessions online and at flea markets at alarming rates.
To meet higher gas, food and prescription drug bills, they are selling off grandmother's dishes and their own belongings. Some of the household purging has been extremely painful—families forced to part with heirlooms.
At Craigslist, which has become a kind of online flea market for the world, the number of for-sale listings has soared 70% since last July.
Why is it that the federal government says the US has virtually no inflation – less that 2% – but everything keeps getting more expensive, especially food and gasoline?
Solving this riddle – that is, why everything costs so much when the government tells us inflation rates are low – is simple: The Bureau of Labor Statistics lies. Inflation numbers are intentionally manipulated to keep cost-of-living numbers low.
The US housing market is quite clearly the single most relevant issue that will decide the shape, depth, and length of the US economic downturn, and its spillover to the rest of the world.
The best information source on the US housing market is not a newspaper, or a newswire, but a blog called Calculated Risk. This morning it contained a whole number of items telling us that the US housing market is not correcting, but crashing.
Conditions at the epicentre of the credit crunch are getting worse as Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve Board appear poised to slow their aggressive drive to cut interest rates. Home prices are falling faster in virtually every major US city and foreclosures are on a pace to double over last year, according to 2 reports released yesterday.
The General Motors Corporation said today that it lost $3.3 billion, or $5.74 a share in the 1st quarter, as losses from vehicle sales in North America grew and the US housing slump hurt its financing arm.
The good news is that the Federal government is sending a little tax-free money back to us. Never look a gift horse in the mouth, especially when it's coming from the horse thief who stole it from you. The bad news is that this money will be borrowed. Every penny will be added to the on-budget debt of the US government.
President Bush used a White House press conference Tuesday to trot out his familiar litany of right-wing proposals, ostensibly intended to address rising gas prices and the growing economic crisis facing millions of Americans. The proposals are all designed in one way or another to increase the power of the oil companies.
As usual, the oil companies and wealthy investors are reaping fortunes off of the economic hardship inflicted upon the vast majority of the population.
Short sellers, who sell assets like stocks in the hope that the price will fall, have been reviled ever since. England banned them for much of the 18th and 19th centuries. Napoleon deemed them enemies of the state. And Germany's last kaiser enlisted them to attack American markets (or so some Americans feared).
Now short sellers are drawing fire once again, this time from some unexpected quarters. Across the world, these market bears are being accused of spreading rumors, persecuting companies and unsettling entire economies. Even on Wall Street, where money is seen as the ultimate measure of success, some wonder whether the shorts have gone too far.
The Bush administration, moving to cope with soaring budget deficits, says it is bringing back the 1-year Treasury bill that it stopped issuing 7 years ago when the budget was in surplus. The administration said today it would begin selling the 1-year bill, also referred to as a 52-week bill, at an initial auction in June.
The Federal Reserve could use proposed new regulatory powers to try to stop credit and asset market excesses from reaching the point where they threaten economic stability, the US Treasury said on Tuesday.
The assistant secretary for financial institutions said the Fed could even use its proposed "macro-prudential" authority to order banks, hedge funds and other entities to curtail strategies that put financial stability at risk.
Some see enhanced regulatory powers as a better tool for this than interest rates. The proposed new powers – outlined in a Treasury blueprint published last month – require legislation and may never be authorised. But policymakers see the plan as offering a template for future regulation.
Never before have the central banks of the US and Europe pursued such divergent strategies when it comes to dealing with a financial crisis. The increased value of the euro against the dollar reveals which strategy is working.
Across Europe, people in the middle layer of the labor force - from office workers, civil servants and skilled laborers to low-level managers - are coping with a growing sense that they are being pushed to the margins like never before, as a combination of rising costs and stagnant wages erodes their purchasing power.
Facing the double-barreled threat of a falling dollar and weakening American demand, some Chinese exporters are starting to ask European customers to pay in euros.
Drastic times call for drastic measures. And the dollar's accelerating fall against China's currency — down 4% so far this year, after dropping 7% last year — has left businesses across China nursing losses and trying to figure out how to raise prices for overseas buyers.
A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World
This is one of the most fascinating, and the most disturbing, historical works I have read. It seems to suggest that the gross inequality of our world has less to do with the inherent unfairness of global capitalism and more with scarcely ineradicable cultural difference.
His canvas is exhilaratingly broad, and it presents us with some extraordinary facts. Until about 1800, the economies of the world, whether of the most primitive prehistoric societies, or of Europe, were remarkably similar.
The Peaceful Civil Resistance Movement in Mexico has entered a new stage in their struggle against the US-led offensive to privatize Pemex, Mexico's national oil corporation.
This will tell Calderón-Bush that they have no choice but to withdraw from the Mexican Congress their "reform" plan, understanding that if they were to refuse to withdraw their plan, they would have to confront a mobilized and energized revolutionary movement of millions of Mexicans demanding their oil and their sovereignty.
(Op-ed: Mexico's oil industry woes)
(Op-ed: Mexico's oil industry woes)
The EU trade commissioner has conceded that certain biofuel policies contribute to food price rises and increase greenhouse gas emissions, but that Europe's policies are sound. Instead, He has suggested that it is Washington's biofuels policies that are having these unwanted consequences.
"The race to grow maize for ethanol subsidies in the US reduces the supply of food crops on world markets and drives up the cost of this important staple."
But he warned that any consideration of social questions amongst the criteria for allowing imports of biofuels would have much wider consequences for Europe's trade agenda.
A trade official told the EUobserver that social questions cannot be included because they "can't be defended that at the WTO," and "in any case, taken to it's logical extreme, we would have to ensure that everything we import, not just biofuels, meet social criteria," he said. "Do we want that?"
[WAR: "Social questions/criteria" are obviously at the heart of the Catholic Church's social doctrines, and this EU trade official would be in complete disagreement with them -- to the Vatican's dismay and anger.]
Decades of Great Plains' wheat as king and low prices everywhere are over
"I've never seen anything like this in 20 years. It's a nightmare." Across America, turmoil in the world wheat markets has sent prices of bread, pasta, noodles, pizza, pastry and bagels skittering upward, bringing protests from consumers.
But underlying this food inflation are changes that are transforming US agriculture and making a return to the long era of cheap wheat products doubtful at best. In North Dakota many farmers are cutting back on growing wheat in favor of more profitable, less disease-prone corn and soybeans for ethanol refineries and Asian consumers.
If you think peak oil is a big deal, then just wait until the peak water crisis is in full swing. Experts say that in many areas aquifers and rivers are starting to run dry as human consumption and other factors are straining one of our most essential resources: fresh water.
[CFR Opinion Roundup][Newseum][Global Incident Map][Earthweek][Day-Night Map][Tonight's Sky][Moon phase]
The silver lining...
Faced with growing delivery costs driven by higher fuel prices, many US restaurants have done the previously unthinkable and introduced smaller food portions served on smaller plates.
[WAR: I had already thought about this -- that people will be losing weight because of prices and availability. Therefore, people will be healthier, thinner and better looking. But unfortunately, reduced portions does not bring on repentance and humility -- only famine will accomplish this.]
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