Tuesday

The Daily WAR (12-23)

Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
 
 
 
 
 
Press review
    President Bush rarely speaks to the foreign press. So when Germany's Die Welt scored a one-on-one interview with him, it was a big deal -- made even bigger by Bush's apparent change of heart on Germany's role in NATO. German papers were divided on the importance of Bush's statements -- and what Germany might have to give up in exchange for keeping its cushy spot in northern Afghanistan.
 
 
 
    Germany has signalled it will not accept similar increases to the EU budget during the current financial 7-year period, which runs to 2013. As the biggest contributor to the bloc's coffers, Berlin argues that farm funds in particular should be strongly cut back in future, a message likely to ruffle feathers in France - the key beneficiary of agricultural support.
 
Better not hold their breath....
    At their summit in Bucharest this week NATO member states are expected to squabble over Afghanistan, missile defense and eastern expansion. Chancellor Merkel, in particular, is playing for time -- and pinning her hopes on a new US administration.
    Beginning this Wednesday, leaders of NATO states will meet in the Romanian capital Bucharest, where they will air differences that, in the assessment of the Berlin-based German Institute for International and Security Affairs, have long torn at the very "foundation of the alliance."
    In response to pressure from the conservative Christian Social Union, government experts' deliberations on whether to significantly expand Germany's Afghanistan mandate have been placed on ice for the time being.
    The Bavaria-based sister party to Merkel's Christian Democrats is anxious not to enter into such a politically risky proposition before its state parliamentary elections in September.
 
    President Bush has voiced his support for Ukraine's membership of NATO, during a visit to Kiev. Bush said he would press NATO allies in Romania this week to support Membership Action Plans for both Ukraine and Georgia.
 
    The leaders of Russia and the US will sign a document outlining the framework for strategic relations between their countries at a meeting this weekend, a Kremlin source told Reuters today. "Experts are working on a joint document, which will become a road map of our cooperation during a transitional period and for the medium term."
 
    Serbia will organize elections in the Serb-dominated parts of Kosovo in defiance of Kosovo's declared independence, a government official said Monday. "Kosovo is part of Serbia, and parliamentary and local elections will be held in this territory."
 
 
 
    As it became clear last week that the Operation Knights Assault in Basra was in serious trouble, the Bush administration began to claim in off-the-record statements to journalists that Prime Minister al-Maliki had launched the operation without consulting Washington.
    Behind this furious backpedaling is a major Bush administration miscalculation about Moqtada al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army, which the administration believed was no longer capable of a coordinated military operation.
    It is now apparent that Sadr and the Mahdi Army were holding back because they were still in the process of retraining and reorganization, not because Sadr had given up the military option or had lost control of the Mahdi Army.
 
    Pakistani President Musharraf swore in 24 members of Prime Minister Gilani's cabinet on Monday. There is strong speculation the new government will force US ally Musharraf to quit within weeks or months.
 
    BW: We are in the studio tonight with Sheikh Anwar Mckeen, king of Nubia, and an exiled activist from the land of Sudan. So, you are of royal blood, you are a descendant of the kings of Nubia? And the last time Nubia was an independent kingdom was several centuries ago?
    SAM: Yes, that's right.
    PLW: What is the actual geographical relationship between Nubia and Sudan?
    SAM: Well, it is one. You see, it used to be called the land of Kush. ...
    SAM: And this Hassan al-Turabi, who claims himself to be the imam of the Muslms all over the world—he said just recently that Sudan has been chosen by God to save the world from atheism, and they will fight anywhere.
    [WAR:  "He (Edmund Stoiber?) will gain control of the treasures of gold and silver and all the riches of Egypt, with the Libyans and Nubians in submission." (Dan 11:43)]
 
 
 
    Russia's UN ambassador urged Iran on Monday to drop its opposition to talks with six key nations trying to ensure that its nuclear program is peaceful, saying the only way to resolve the dispute is through negotiations.
 
    Events of the last week offer a metaphorical glimpse at the delusion pervading President Bush's White House and other enclaves of Iraq supporters in Washington.
    The point is that if Cheney and Olmert both whisper "attack Iran," the president may give the order with the full expectation that – with Adm. William Fallon out of the way – a malleable secretary of defense and martinet generals and admirals left over from former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld's reign will salute smartly and launch a much wider and more dangerous war in the Persian Gulf area.
    Why attack Iran? Israeli officials have not been reluctant to insist publicly that they want our impressionable president to take care of their Iran problem before he leaves office.
    Why attack Iran? Well, also, just because! Because, as Bush is fond of saying, he is commander in chief. And he considers the U.S. armed forces his plaything. And because he can. Never mind the consequences.
 
    Last Friday, Dick Cheney was in Saudi Arabia for high-level meetings with the Saudi king and his ministers. On Saturday, it was revealed that the Saudi Shura Council -- the elite group that implements the decisions of the autocratic inner circle -- is preparing "national plans to deal with any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards that may affect the kingdom."
    Simple prudence -- or ominous timing? We noted here last week that an American attack on Iran was far more likely -- and more imminent -- than most people suspect. We pointed to the mountain of evidence for this case and to other indicators of impending war.
    The story of Saudi preparation is yet another, very weighty piece of evidence laid in the scales toward a new, horrendous conflict. The release of this story now, just after Cheney's departure, would seem to be a clear indication that the Saudis have good reason to fear a looming attack on Iran's nuclear sites and are actively preparing for it.
    And they certainly should be bracing themselves. A US attack on Iran will come suddenly, and if it is indeed aimed at destroying Iran's nuclear capabilities -- a "threat" being talked up again with new urgency by both Cheney and Bush lately -- it has the potential for unimaginable consequences.
 
 
 
    Britain has become the epicenter for anti-Semitic trends in Europe as traditional, age-old anti-Semitism in a country whose literature and cultural tradition were "drenched" in anti-Semitism has developed into a contemporary mix of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, an Israeli historian said Monday.
    In a wide-ranging two-hour address, the Cambridge University-educated historian, who has just completed a book on global anti-Semitism, traced the roots of British anti-Semitism to its history, culture and literature going back to medieval times. "Anti-Semitism in Great Britain is at least a millennial phenomenon and has been around for 1000 years of recorded history."
 
    Social commentator Star Parker has written an open letter to John McCain asking him to promote traditional values to combat crime and family breakdown. She also criticized his opposition to school choice and the partial-birth abortion ban.
 
    Would the eloquent and charismatic Obama unite, inspire and renew a troubled nation, as tens of millions of voters passionately believe? Or is it possible he's a Manchurian candidate – harboring an ominous secret agenda few understand, a man destined to wreak havoc on America should he become president?
 
    Should she stay or should she go? With each passing day, the pressure intensifies on Hillary Clinton to end her campaign to secure the Democratic nomination.
 
    How did we get from a "profitable" war against Iraq to a $6 trillion swirling black hole that threatens to flush the US and the world down the drain? Follow the dollars. Follow the lies.
    One month before the invasion of Iraq, Spain's Prime Minister met with President Bush to beg him, on behalf of European leaders, not to start a war. The Egyptians made a deal with Saddam Hussein to go into exile to avoid a devastating war against Iraq. Saddam wanted a payment of $1 billion and, for insurance, to keep all the information about how the neocons had supplied him with his weapons of mass destruction.
 
 
 
    We knew things were bad on Wall Street, but on Main Street it may be worse. Startling official statistics show that as a new economic recession stalks the US, a record number of Americans will shortly be depending on food stamps just to feed themselves and their families.
    Dismal projections by the Congressional Budget Office suggest that in the fiscal year starting in October, 28 million people in the US will be using government food stamps to buy essential groceries, the highest level since the food assistance programme was introduced in the 1960s.
    Getting food on the table is a challenge many Americans are finding harder to meet. Forty states are reporting increases in applications for the stamps.
 
    Now there is open talk that some of the regional banks could fail. It sounds very much like a severe recession at best or another depression at worst. Of course, there is nothing we can do about it.
    If certain mistakes that were made by the financiers, the Federal Reserve and the US government are going to produce this effect, then the debt bomb has already exploded. The overpressure and heat blast just haven't reached us yet.
 
    The world economy is at the end of a "super-boom" in asset prices and debt which has lasted since the end of WW2, billionaire investor George Soros has warned. He said that at the heart of the financial crisis was the culmination of a 60-year-old boom in leverage, the result of which will be a far deeper downturn than many expect. "I think that there will be a big backlash and there is even a danger that the global financial markets will be disrupted by protectionism."
 
    Every slump is punctuated by exuberant bursts of optimism, known to traders as "bear market rallies". Such bounces can be intoxicating. There have been 9 bear rallies since 1970. The average length is 4 months. The surge misleads investors into believing that sunlit uplands lie ahead. Then the sucker punch hits.
    "Bear markets are terrible for the human psyche. You get one profit warning after another. People see their hopes dashed so many times that they stop believing." The authorities will wait too long to act, believing their own decoupling myth. Unemployment will ratchet up. Civil unrest may rock Latin Europe.
    The capitalist system is now so deformed by debt that it requires ever lower interest rates to keep going. It survives on perma-bubbles. Monetary rigour at this late stage would endanger democracy. How did we ever let matters reach this pass?
 
    Henry M. Paulson was evidently named by Bush to ensure that Treasury was and would remain hapless, helpless, and hopeless in dealing with the predatory Wall Street financial magnates who were bringing on the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
    On Saturday, the New York Times printed the executive summary of a Treasury report that has been in the works for a couple of years. Already Congress is balking at the report, as well they should.
    In fact implementation of this report would ensure that the federal government's executive branch will continue to do nothing to stand in the way of the conspiracy of the international financiers to complete their takeover of the world economy.
    For this conspiracy to succeed, passivity on the part of the US government's financial watchdogs is essential. The Treasury plan would assure that these watchdogs remain fast asleep.
    Economic stability in the US is ancient history, at least for people who need to work for a living—income security hasn't been this bad since the 1930s.
 
    US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Monday presented a broad plan to revamp the American financial regulatory system. The proposal, while giving the Federal Reserve Board expanded trouble-shooting powers over financial markets and institutions, would actually weaken federal oversight of Wall Street investment banks and leave virtually untouched the vast, unregulated secondary, or "derivatives," markets.
    Paulson's plan underscores the determination of the most powerful sections of the financial establishment to block any measures that would limit their ability to generate profits and multi-million-dollar compensation packages from various forms of financial speculation.
    The current crisis represents the beginnings of a global readjustment and the formation of a new balance of economic power, to the detriment of American capitalism. The current crisis is the culmination of a protracted decline in the global economic position of American capitalism, partially masked in the past by a vast growth of financial speculation and parasitism.
 
     Swiss bank UBS AG today reported more serious damage from exposure to the US subprime crisis, saying it would post 1st-quarter losses of $12.1 billion and that it would seek $15.1 billion in new capital. UBS write-downs have reached a staggering $40 billion in the past 9 months, the largest reported by any bank to date.
    With word today that Germany's largest bank would write down about $4 billion on subprime exposure, it was the latest indication of how far the severe plunge in US housing prices and a credit crisis triggered by rising mortgage defaults has reached.
 
    Given that Tibetan rioters were on the same day burning down Chinese-owned shops in Lhasa, the nugget that slipped out on a specialist business news website was never going to get worldwide attention.
    The significance of its contents to China's image was wholly at odds, too, with the old-fashioned pictures of paramilitaries fanning out to put down uprising by monks and suppress dissent. But its implications will reverberate in capitals around the world.
    The March 14 nugget stated that China Development Bank had won formal approval for a revolution in its structure intended to see it list on the stock market and turn itself into Beijing's rival to the West's biggest investing names.
    It will then - so it hopes - explode on the world, earning patriotic fervour at home and profits abroad by funding China's new "go-out" strategy to assert its presence in the world's resources and financial markets.
 
    The US retail price for gasoline set a new high of $3.29 a gallon after rising 3.1 cents over the last week, the federal Energy Information Administration said on Monday. The national price for regular, self-service gasoline is up 58 cents from a year ago as expensive crude oil continued to be passed on to consumers at the pump.
    The price of oil now accounts for about 70% of the cost for making gasoline, with federal and state excise taxes making up another large chunk of the price for a gallon of gasoline.
    US lawmakers today are expected to press the executives from 5 major oil companies, including ExxonMobil, BP and Shell, at a congressional hearing on soaring gasoline prices and the industry's billions of dollars in record profits.
 
    Thieves smashed the window to break in and then gutted the property for its copper pipes -- a crime that has spread across the United States as the economy slows and foreclosed homes stand empty and vulnerable.
    Similar stories are unfolding nationwide as a glut of home foreclosures coincides with record highs in the price of copper and other metals. Real estate brokers and local authorities say once-proud homes coast-to-coast are being stripped for copper, aluminum, and brass by thieves.
 
    Sharply rising prices have triggered food riots in recent weeks in Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Guinea, Mauritania and Yemen, and aid agencies around the world worry they may be unable to feed the poorest of the poor.
    In the Philippines, officials are raiding warehouses in Manila looking for unscrupulous traders hoarding rice, while in South Korea, panicked housewives recently stripped grocery-store shelves of food when the cost of ramen, an instant noodle made from wheat, suddenly rose.
    The shadow of "a new hunger" that has made food too expensive for millions is the result of a sudden and dramatic surge in food prices around the world. Rising prices for all the world's crucial cereal crops and growing fears of scarcity are careening through international markets, creating turmoil.
 
Freeganomics...
    If you're disgusted with our culture of waste, wasting resources, wasting money, then swallow your pride and start sifting through supermarket trash.
 
 
 
    It seems ludicrous, but recently a British intelligence officer from M16 has asserted that this secret international organization does exist in his book, "The Conspirators Hierarchy: The Committee of Three Hundred."
    "During my career as an officer in British intelligence. I received access to strictly confidential documents on numerous occasions. Their contents were unexpectedly straightforward. I learned that there are powers that control the governments of many nations. I was taken aback and decided to inform a world living in ignorance.
    "Imagine a powerful group that doesn't recognize any national borders that is involved in the financial, insurance, coal-mining, pharmaceutical and oil industries -- whose members only answer to the group. This is the 'Committee of 300,' an elite group that has ruled the world from 1897. Its backbone today is the world's 300 most influential people."
    [WAR: Even though there may be plans and agendas, they will NOT come about. Most of them are Israel and Judah's attempt at world control, but they are both about to fall.
    "YAHWEH foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples. (Psa 33:10) "Hide me from the conspiracy of the wicked, from that noisy crowd of evildoers. ... They encourage each other in evil plans, they talk about hiding their snares; they say, 'Who will see them?' They plot injustice and say, 'We have devised a perfect plan!' ... But God will shoot them with arrows; suddenly they will be struck down." (Psa 64:2-7)
    "Devise your strategy, but it will be thwarted; propose your plan, but it will not stand, for ELOHIM is with us. YAHWEH spoke to me with his strong hand upon me, warning me not to follow the way of this people. He said: 'Do not call conspiracy everything that these people call conspiracy; do not fear what they fear, and do not dread it." (Isa 8:10-12)
    "There is a conspiracy of her princes within her like a roaring lion tearing its prey; they devour people, take treasures and precious things and make many widows within her." (Eze 22:25)
    "Swords will flash in their cities, will destroy the bars of their gates and put an end to their plans." (Hosea 11:6)]
 
    The origins of this custom are complex and a matter of much debate. It is likely a relic of the once common festivities held on the vernal equinox, which began on the 25th of March, old New Year's Day, and ended on the 2nd of April.
 
    Iranians are today celebrating the ancient Persian festival of nature Sizdah-Bedar, bringing to a finale the Nowruz festivities. Sizdah-Bedar is an ancient Iranian festival dating back at least 4,000 years and is celebrated outside homes in the beauty of nature. Literary meaning Getting Rid of Thirteen, the festival marks the last day of Iranian New Year festivities.
(Wiki: Sizdah Bedar)
 
    British scientists have deciphered a mysterious ancient clay tablet and believe they have solved a riddle over a giant asteroid impact more than 5,000 years ago. Geologists have long puzzled over the shape of the land close to the town of Köfels in the Austrian Alps, but were unable to prove it had been caused by an asteroid.
    Now researchers say their translation of symbols on a star map from an ancient civilisation includes notes on a mile-wide asteroid that later hit Earth - which could have caused tens of thousands of deaths.
    The circular clay tablet was discovered 150 years ago by Sir Austen Henry Layard, a leading Victorian archaeologist, in the remains of the royal palace at Nineveh, capital of ancient Assyria, in what is now Iraq.
    They believe their calculations prove the tablet - a copy made by an Assyrian scribe around 700 BC - is a Sumerian astronomer's notebook recording events in the sky on June 29, 3123 BC. They say its symbols include a note of the trajectory of a large object travelling across the constellation of Pisces which, to within one degree, is consistent with an impact at Köfels.
 
    [WAR: Here's the premier (and only?) issue of my new newsblog about religious affairs.]
 
 
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