Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
Reflecting on his pastoral visit to the US during his weekly public audience, Pope Benedict XVI said that America offers the world "a valid example of healthy laicism." He praised the US for its commitment to religious freedom, saying that in American society religious faith "is not only tolerated but turned to advantage as the 'soul' of the nation and the fundamental guarantee of the rights and duties of human beings."
(And: Full text of address)
Germany's population is shrinking, with serious consequences for the country's economy and pension system. Can Family Minister Ursula von der Leyen persuade Germans to breed?
Chancellor Merkel received the annual Charlemagne Prize Thursday, selected for the honor because of her efforts to unite Europe.
(And: Merkel receives award)
The European Commission has embarked on a social policy drive ahead of the European elections next year. Commission President Barroso - a centre-right politician - gathered his colleagues for a day's discussion on Tuesday focussing on "solidarity, access and opportunities and development of the social agenda."
The party once led by the current European Union ambassador to Washington is claiming that the US is actively opposing European integration. "US foreign policy has traditionally been opposed to EU integration. The US supports the EU as an economic bloc but nothing more. The idea of a politically strong EU, acting as a check or counterbalance on the US does not sit well with our trans-Atlantic friends."
By most yardsticks, Europe's common currency has been a success. Yet fissures are forming in the European monetary union that threaten to widen in coming months. When leaders and laggards use the same money but have opposite problems, tensions are bound to surface.
His proposed Union for the Mediterranean will create prosperity and peace for everyone involved in it, President Sarkozy told Tunisian students on Wednesday. "If it becomes reality, the Union for the Mediterranean will change the world."
The union, which is intended to bring together the 27 member nations of the European Union with the countries situated along the Mediterranean rim, will be formally established at a summit meeting in Paris on July 13.
Extra Russian troops deployed today in the Georgian separatist zone of Abkhazia, despite Georgia's objections and concern in NATO, news agencies quoted the Russian Defence Ministry as saying.
Dmitry Medvedev moves into the Kremlin next week and his mentor Vladimir Putin takes charge as prime minister as Russia plunges into 3 days of pomp climaxing with a Soviet-style Red Square military parade.
The neocons believe US attacks on Arab states and/or Iran would prove decisive in winning the presidency for John McCain this November. A US attack on Syria could also be the first step of the long-planned US air war against Lebanon and Iran.
"Every lie contains a truth and every truth contains a lie" is a safe rule of thumb when Shakespeare's powers of observation are applied to the Middle East. With each shake of the kaleidoscope, the configuration of the key players becomes a wilderness of mirrors.
Add to the mix a whispering campaign in which rumors and innuendo are spread to conceal ulterior motives, and sorting fact from fancy is frequently mission impossible. Good disinformation contains a kernel of truth spun with a tissue of lies.
Even if you understand the game, there is still no Rosetta Stone that can decipher the Middle East's geopolitical hieroglyphics.
Pakistan's month-old coalition government is on the brink of collapse because of a standoff between the Pakistan People's Party and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz over reinstating the judges who were summarily dismissed last fall by President Musharraf.
In a bid to avert the collapse of the country's 1st popularly elected government in nearly a decade, leaders of the 2 parties spent 7 hours in emergency meetings yesterday in Dubai, but were unable to reach agreement.
The acting secretary of Russian Security Council on Wednesday expressed Russia's commitment to complete the Bushehr nuclear power plant in due time.
Iran has taken command of its nuclear technology and could have an atomic bomb in a year, Israel's Transportation Minister was quoted as saying Wednesday, citing Israeli intelligence. He said that Iran must be prevented from attaining nuclear weapons and that all the options were on the table in order to stop that from happening.
There has been a growing chorus of US accusations and threats against Iran over everything from "meddling" in Iraq and its supposed nuclear weapons program to Tehran's ties with groups such as the Lebanese Shiite organisation Hezbollah and the Palestinian group Hamas, which are branded by Washington as "terrorists". Everyone in the Bush administration and at the Pentagon appears to be singing from the same song sheet.
There is no doubt that the current propaganda campaign against Iran points in the one direction: the danger that the Bush administration will launch another criminal war of aggression in the Middle East in a desperate bid to shore up American economic and strategic interests in the energy-rich region.
Ray McGovern, a prominent former CIA analyst, says President Bush is planning to wage a military attack on Iran this year. McGovern who has been a CIA officer under 7 US presidents --presenting the morning intelligence briefings at the White House for many of them -- believes Bush and his administration have no intention of leaving Iraq and are preparing to attack Iran in the next few months.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been told by aides he will face "political meltdown" if he fails to push through an extension to 42 days for holding terror suspects, up from the present detention period of 28 days.
The clash between Barack Obama and his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, marks another turning point in the protracted contest for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Following the media uproar over Wright's statements at a series of public appearances over the previous 4 days, Obama clearly calculated that he had to publicly repudiate the minister or face the collapse of his presidential campaign.
The overall reaction reveals a candidate who is being put through his paces by the ruling elite, and feels, under the pressure of the media firestorm, that he must do everything possible to reassure the political establishment and distance himself from any hint of political radicalism.
A US campaign watchdog has accused John McCain of violating election laws by accepting campaign contributions from 2 prominent Londoners. At issue is a fundraising luncheon held in March at London's Spencer House, during McCain's swing through the United Kingdom.
An invitation to the event lists Lord Rothschild and Nathaniel Rothschild as hosts, and indicates the event was made possible with their "kind permission".
(Cartoon: 3-legged race)
A top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell has launched a stinging attack on Vice-President Cheney over abuse of prisoners by US troops. Col Lawrence Wilkerson accused Cheney of ignoring a decision by President Bush on the treatment of prisoners in the war on terror.
Asked by the BBC's Today if Cheney could be accused of war crimes, he said: "It's an interesting question. Certainly it is a domestic crime to advocate terror. And I would suspect, for whatever it's worth, it's an international crime as well."
(And: Arrest Bush)
A variety of current and former high-level officials have recently warned that the Bush administration is attempting to instill a dictatorship in America, and will itself carry out a fake terrorist attack in order to obtain one. History proves that the officials' warnings of a terror attack by our own government are well-founded.
Much has been written about whether a worldwide plan exists to control events and steer them in the direction profitable to an elite of the rich and powerful. Is this a "conspiracy theory"?
While it is difficult to be specific about who exactly may be behind such a conspiracy, if it exists, it is at least clear that the privately-managed system of global financial capitalism gives ample opportunity for the world's richest people to combine for their mutual benefit.
Further, global financial capitalism itself is based on the monopolization of money-creation by a world banking system that is largely privately owned, even while working through the central banks of the largest and most prosperous nations.
This article postulates the existence of a coordinated and longstanding matrix set up by the controllers of money to dominate the movements of history. The article focuses particularly on what seems to have been an attack that has been going on for over a century against the independence of the nations of Russia and the US.
The Federal Reserve Board on Wednesday cut its key federal funds interest rate by a quarter point, bringing the overnight rate for inter-bank loans to 2%. The Fed also announced a quarter-point cut in its discount rate, the interest it charges on direct loans to commercial banks, to 2.25%.
The muted reaction by big investors to the Fed's narrow rate cut and hint of a pause in further monetary easing reflected a sharp shift in market sentiment since the Fed intervened in March to rescue the investment bank Bear Stearns.
The Federal Reserve may cut interest rates to 1% as US housing foreclosures worsen, said Mark Mobius, who oversees $47 billion in emerging-market equities at Templeton Asset Management Ltd. He added that the dollar's slide, down more than 7% against the euro and yen this year, is likely to slow because its "completely bombed out."
US manufacturing contracted for the 3rd month in a row in April, a further sign that the world's largest economy has slowed down.
(And: Starbucks earnings sink 21%)
A Washington think tank is warning that housing prices are falling at an accelerating level, destroying wealth at a pace that will cost the average homeowner $85,000 in lost wealth this year alone.
"At this rate of price decline, the excesses of the housing bubble will have largely disappeared by the end of the year. At the same time, the price decline implies an incredibly rapid loss of wealth. In real terms, the rate of price decline in the 20-city index would imply a loss of almost $6 trillion in real housing wealth over the course of the year."
When a Gallup Poll showed that 59% of Americans believe a full-fledged economic depression is "somewhat likely" within the next two years, WCCO News in Minneapolis sought out economics professor Raymond Robertson to ask, "Is this the recession that will become a depression?"
"It's hard to say," he answered. "Any of the potential shocks that we face could easily slip us into a very, very serious depression."
As the financial crisis enters what the governor of the Bank of England has called a "new and dangerous phase" Iain Macwhirter has been looking at the big questions.
The Forces of Order Just Create More Chaos
A review of strategies, issues with the gold standard, the importance of cheap credit to game the world economic system, oil lubricates world economic system, and the overall impact on the rest of us ...
Three Chinese institutions were among the world's top 4 banks at the end of 2007 at a time when the market capitalisation of Western banks was suffering from a global financial crisis, a study showed Wednesday.
The #1 spot in the rankings was occupied by the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, with market capitalisation of nearly $340 billion. In 2nd place was China Construction Bank, followed by HSBC (UK), Bank of China, Bank of America and Citigroup.
Although the documents of modern Catholic social teaching normally begin with Rerum Novarum (1891), students should instead start with Pope Leo XIII's Quod Apostolici Muneris (1878), an encyclical entirely devoted to socialism, in order to understand that socialism and the free market are not being described as equally objectionable. For while socialism is per se condemned, the market is criticized only for alleged abuses.
Gulf states are considering dropping their pegs to the dollar after the US currency's decline stoked inflation across the region, Kuwait's Finance Minister said.
Yesterday...
Oil fell sharply Wednesday after the Federal Reserve said it would lower interest rates.
Today...
Oil prices rose in Asian trading today as the dollar weakened after the US central bank cut its key interest rate.
Exxon Mobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil company, said today that its 1st-quarter net income rose 17%, helped by record high oil prices. But the results fell just short of analyst expectations.
(Cartoon: Big Oil: Nothing personal)
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Nicholson Baker's new book Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization, is one of the most unique nonfiction books you'll ever read.
Based on voluminous research of newspaper and magazine articles, radio speeches, memoirs, diaries, and biographies, Baker's 566-page book gives the reader an extraordinary look into the mindsets of all the major actors in the lead-up to the war.
The US Air Force had considered a plan to drop nuclear bombs on China during a confrontation over Taiwan in 1958 but it was overruled, declassified documents showed Wednesday.
"On the 24th day of the 1st month I was on the bank of the great river, the Tigris. ... 'As for you, go your way till the end. You will rest, and then at the end of the days you will rise to receive your allotted inheritance.'" (Daniel 10:4 - 12:13)
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