Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
Cardinal Cipriani of Lima, Peru, has warned against a proliferation of supposed human rights that are "invented" by international organizations. He observed that genuine human rights are "based on natural law, a law that is etched on men's hearts." These rights, he added, are not created by a mandate from the UN or any other human organization.
The cardinal went on to put his listeners on guard against political organizations that push for recognition of new forms of "human rights," including alleged rights to abortion or to define one's own gender preference.
The Holy See joined its voice to international treaties aiming to protect the ozone layer. In an April 9 note accompanying the document of accession, the Holy See said it "desires to encourage the entire international community to be resolute in promoting authentic cooperation between politics, science and economics."
(And: Full text of note)
Supporters of Chancellor Merkel mapped out plans Tuesday to fundamentally change the way Germany protects its interests on the world stage, with policy to be overseen by a department of the chancellor's office.
The proposed national security council, which the CDU proposes to coordinate defence, the foreign ministry, intelligence and other government agencies, will not be established any time soon. Merkel's Social Democratic coalition partners have already voiced adamant opposition.
Since WW2, Germany has bound itself by renunciations, checks and balances. Though an economic giant, it has no nuclear arms. Only parliament can send the army abroad. Police are controlled from the provinces.
Germany's BND foreign intelligence agency today broke ground on the future site of its new headquarters in Berlin in a move intended to improve coordination with the country's political leadership. Chancellor Merkel's chief of staff welcomed the move of Germany's spooks from their current base in Bavaria to Berlin.
German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble shut down 2 far-right organizations on grounds that they deny the Holocaust took place.
(And: What is "Holocaust denial"?)
A credit-rating cut for the #3 US wireless carrier leads to renewed speculation that it will be a takeover target for its German rival.
Germany's lawmakers raised their pay for a 2nd time in 6 months, snubbing the European Central Bank's calls for wage moderation as they awarded themselves increases that outstrip inflation and the pay gains of millions of workers.
[Europress] [Russopress]
Brussels officials have turned to religious VIPs to help spread the gospel of an environmentally friendly society and increase awareness of climate change in their parishes, as well as promoting tolerance between different confessions in Europe.
Twenty high-level representatives – 19 men and 1 woman - from European Christian, Jewish and Muslim congregations met in Brussels on Monday to discuss the sensitive issues of climate change and reconciliation between peoples.
Germany does not run the EU!...
Members of the European Parliament's industry committee have backed the European Commission's idea of separating electricity companies' production and supply wings by forcing the parent company to sell its transmission networks.
In a vote on Tuesday, a majority of MEPs were in favour of so-called full ownership unbundling, making it clear that companies' asset break-up is the "preferred option" when it comes to liberalisation of the EU's energy sector.
At the same time, the committee rejected an alternative plan tabled by a group of 8 EU states - Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, France, Latvia, Luxembourg and Slovakia - known as the transmission system operator (TSO) or the 3rd option.
Each group in the parliament is split along national lines, suggesting that the final vote by the entire assembly in June could see a different outcome. According to German centre-right MEP Angelika Niebler, who chairs the industry committee, "there will be a compromise, including the 3rd way, or there will be nothing."
The European Union is responding to the present and projected catastrophic effects of climate change on the most vulnerable populations of the world, and their inevitable migration in order to survive, with an intensification of already draconian anti-immigration controls.
None of the major powers are capable or willing to make common efforts to resolve problems of climate change and the environment and their social consequences. This is an impossibility under capitalism.
Neither can or will they give up the brutal competition for markets and raw materials. Thus, the flood of human beings seeking minimal economic security will continue, and the EU's solution to the crisis is more repression and additional police powers.
President Putin and his successor, Dmitry Medvedev, have promised a harmonious dual leadership. But as Medvedev prepares to be inaugurated as Russia's new president, the 2 leaders' supporters are already gearing up for a power struggle.
(And: The enthronement of Medvedev)
(Pics: Medvedev takes office)
A Long Island mogul is at the center of a sensational bribery scandal that could bring down embattled Israeli Prime Minister Olmert, The Post has learned. Millionaire financier Morris Talansky allegedly passed money to Olmert while the politician was mayor of Jerusalem in the '90s, sources said.
The present-day turbulence in Turkish domestic politics constructs the zeitgeist in the country, and it is one that is well worthy of external actors' attention, particularly that of the US. Thus, the relationship between the US and Turkey is about to take another historic turn that may see a radical shift in the public attitude to it.
The Caspian energy story for 2008 is the development of Turkmenistan's vast natural gas reserves. Among the moribund initiatives is the Trans-Afghan Pipeline, at once the most potentially lucrative and ephemeral of the grandiose visions being promoted.
The Niger Delta rebels said they would stop attacks on the oil industry if the Nigerian Government would allow Jimmy Carter to act as a mediator in the conflict.
The rebels, whose campaign of violence has cut output in the largest African oil producer by about a fifth, asked Carter to act as a negotiator earlier this year. "We are ready to call off all hostilities and hold a temporary ceasefire in honour of President Carter should the Nigerian Government accept."
European investors especially Italians are now considering to invest in Iran, head of Axis Faits Seryices Company said, IRNA reported. He noted the Islamic Republic enjoys lots of resources which have attracted the group of European investors.
"Iran has established main infrastructures in field of water resources which can attract more foreign investors." He also voiced his company's willingness to cooperate with Iran in marketing and exporting mineral water.
Michael Gordon, the military writer for The New York Times who contributed several false stories about Iraqi WMD in the runup to the U.S. attack on Iraq in 2002, has written several articles in the past year about Iran's alleged training of Iraqi insurgents -- or supplying them with weapons to kill Americans.
He produced another major report on this subject for the Times – based solely on unnamed sources -- which is at odds with an account from McClatchy's Baghdad bureau.
Beating the war drums...
With Iran racing forward with its nuclear program, Israel now believes the Islamic Republic will master centrifuge technology and be able to begin enriching uranium on a military scale this year, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
Iran, a senior defense official said on Tuesday, had encountered numerous technical obstacles on its way to enriching uranium but was now on track to master the technology needed to enrich uranium within 6 months.
Israel is also concerned that Teheran is developing a cruise missile that can evade interception by the Arrow, the IDF's anti-ballistic missile defense system.
Trilateral Commission members want suffering US taxpayers to shell out even more money
The Trilateral Commission—one of the three most powerful globalist groups in the world—held closed-door meetings right here in Washington, DC (April 25-28). True to form, those members of the media who knew about the meeting—or were themselves participants in the proceedings—refused to discuss what went on inside or report on the attendees.
Luckily, AFP's own editor, Jim Tucker, was on the scene to bust this clandestine confabulation wide open. While they are confident they can deal with any "potential president," the Trilateralists paid huge tribute to Ron Paul in an equally large twist of irony, by expressing alarm that he is causing "significant future damage."
Mikhail Gorbachev has accused the US of mounting an imperialist conspiracy against Russia that could push the world into a new Cold War. Delivering one of his most scathing attacks on the US, he told The Daily Telegraph that a US military build-up was under way to contain a resurgent Russia.
Recent days have brought 2 major justice-related stories. Could they be connected? Let's take a look.
Furious at what they call no respect from state leaders when it comes to collecting and spending their own money, the North Lauderdale City Commission passed a resolution requesting that Florida be divided into 2 states: North Florida and South Florida with the boundary line from Palm Beach County down through Monroe County.
The North Lauderdale Commission has sent out 306 resolutions asking other municipalities and counties to join in the effort.
America is a country at war with itself
The notion that the military and citizens of conscience should be at odds is a critical problem for our nation.
Washington announced at the end of last month that it is resurrecting the long-ago moth-balled 4th Fleet to reassert US power in the Caribbean and Latin America.
The fleet, which will operate as part of the Pentagon's Southern Command, will be comprised of various ships, including aircraft carriers and submarines, and will operate from the Caribbean to the southern tip of South America.
The Pentagon's a statement on the revival of the fleet gave a far vaguer indication of its new duties, saying it would "conduct varying missions including a range of contingency operations, counter narco-terrorism, and theater security cooperation activities."
Behind the resurrection of the 4th Fleet lie the same fundamental tendencies underlying the explosion of American militarism on a world scale. It is the attempt by US imperialism to offset its relative decline as an economic power by reliance on its continuing military supremacy. Europe and increasingly China are playing a growing role in Latin American trade and investment at the expense of US interests.
Barack Obama increased his delegate lead over Hillary Clinton in the contest for the Democratic Party presidential nomination with a split in the 2 primaries held Tuesday, winning easily in North Carolina and losing more narrowly in Indiana.
Obama won more than 90% of black voters, a decisive margin in North Carolina, where blacks made up one-third of the Democratic electorate. Clinton led among white voters, particularly women, the elderly, and residents of rural areas and small towns and cities. She also won upper-income white suburbs.
Both Clinton and Obama employ populist rhetoric in order to prevent working people from developing what they need more than anything else: a clear understanding of the unbridgeable chasm in American society between the working class and the super-rich minority at the top, which controls not only the giant corporations and banks, but also the government and the two major political parties.
Because she's the War Party's favorite
The numbers should be telling us Hillary Clinton is finished – at least as far as the elected delegates are concerned. The mathematics and the clock would normally doom her campaign, but being the candidate of the Establishment, she's not being counted out. Far from it.
The one chance she has, and it's not all that unlikely, is if she manages to convince the "super-delegates" that Obama is unelectable.
If you thought the campaign was dirty at this point, then just wait until you get a gander at what's to come. The smear campaign – a technique the Clintons were always masters of – is going to be something to see.
(And: Is it all over for Hillary?)
Little wonder that Ariel Sharon was able to brag: "We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it."
The Bush administration lost no time in seeking to exploit the devastating tragedy in Burma (Myanmar). It has seized upon the cyclone that struck the country over the weekend, killed at least 20,000 and likely many more, to aggressively push its foreign policy agenda in Asia.
The meltdown suffered by the Brown government in last week's local elections, coupled with Ken Livingstone's defeat by Boris Johnson in the contest for London Mayor, is a major staging post in the ongoing collapse of New Labour.
Sharply diverging performances by the eurozone's main economies have added to the European Central Bank's discomfort ahead of Thursday's interest rate setting meeting in Athens, according to survey data released on Tuesday.
Growth accelerated in Germany in April but slowed markedly in France – while the Spanish economy contracted sharply, the latest purchasing managers' indices for the 15-country region showed.
When the euro was launched there were plenty of people who thought it would crash and burn. Ten years on, its role as a global currency is secure, even if it hasn't achieved everything its founders hoped. Today is the 10th anniversary of the agreement that launched the single currency.
(Blog: 10 years of the euro)
The Commission of the EU is celebrating the forthcoming 10th anniversary of the euro with an ambitious new plan to direct the economic strategy of the world's largest trading bloc.
In a report to mark the anniversary, Monetary and Economic Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia called today for the commission to extend its powers to include "adequate wage developments, flexibility and security on labor markets."
It would also represent a dramatic increase of the commission's powers over those of the individual member states, despite repeated protestations that the EU does not seek to become a federal super-state.
Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Thomas Hoenig said today "serious" inflation pressures may compel the central bank to raise interest rates. "There is a significant risk that higher inflation will become embedded in the economy and require significant monetary policy tightening to reduce it." Consumers are gaining an "inflation psychology to an extent that I have not seen since the 1970s and early 1980s."
In this report, I introduce you to an amazing chart. It is getting zero attention from the mainstream financial media. The information it conveys is at the heart of Bernanke's looming problem.
What is really going on? Deception on a massive scale – a fully legal deception that the US government's bank auditors understand and go along with.
After nearly 5 hours, the Vallejo City Council voted unanimously late Tuesday night to file Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection. The city faces a $16 million deficit in the 2008/9 budget starting July 1 and unsuccessfully negotiated with its police, firefighter and electrical workers unions for contract concessions through 2012.
Sales of previously-owned US homes fell 20% in March as the downturn in the housing market continued, the nation's main estate agency trade body has said.
As waves of poverty wash over the once-affluent, it's nice to know that you can share the pain. A week ago, the New York Times Style section ran an article about Americans' newfound openness in discussing their financial woes, signaling a new trend: poor is the new rich!
Oil hovered today just below a record set a day earlier as investors remained worried about the supply of crude, threatened by violence in Nigeria, and the increasing demand in places like China.
The food price crisis is caused largely by greed and speculation rather than food shortages, the head of Southern Africa's development bank said on Tuesday.
"These increases in food prices are not the consequence of food shortages, it's the consequence of human greed that is putting at risk the lives of millions of men, women and children. There are companies that are making super profits on this issue."
The fiery letters of an unprecedented human catastrophe already stand flickering on the wall, and it will be fatal for the world as a whole, if we do not succeed immediately, in the coming days and weeks, to declare globalization a failure, and to set everything into motion to double agricultural production capacity in the shortest possible time!
A survey of bee health released Tuesday revealed a grim picture, with 36.1% of the nation's commercially managed hives lost since last year.
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