Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
The Vatican Publishing House has recently released a new edition of the Statistical Yearbook of the Church, comprising information on the main aspects of Catholic Church activity in various countries for the period 2000-2006. Over these 7 years, the Catholic presence in the world has remained stable at around 17.3% of the total population.
[WAR: "17.3%"? Let's throw-in the closet Catholics and round this up to 18% -- 6+6+6!]
Press review
Chancellor Merkel's government will limp on to the next general election in 2009 but is too divided to rule the country effectively, write commentators. The latest coalition row heralds a future alliance between the Social Democrats and the Left Party.
Germany's ruling grand coalition may be breaking apart more than a year ahead of the general election but, in the key EU policy area of energy and climate change, the collective Berlin government is digging its heels in. So much so that there's talk here of Europe's biggest country running the show.
On energy, German opposition has effectively killed stone dead the commission scheme to force integrated groups to sell off their gas and electricity transmission networks or grids - "ownership unbundling" in Brussels jargon.
[Europress] [Russopress]
As the polls narrow in the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty a respected German think tank argues that a "no" vote would be a catastrophe" for Europe. It would provoke another big debate on why the European Union exists and whether it is fit for purpose.
The President of the European Commission has intervened in Ireland's referendum on the Lisbon Treaty by saying that there will be a price to pay if Ireland votes the wrong way. This attempt at outside bullying of Ireland's voters is unwelcome, but his comments are indicative of an ideology prevalent in Brussels.
Plans to eliminate Eurosceptics as an organised opposition within the European Parliament are expected to be agreed by a majority of MEPs this summer. The EU assembly's political establishment is pushing through changes that will silence dissidents by changing the rules allowing Euro-MPs to form political groupings.
Plans to build a gas pipeline beneath the Baltic Sea, connecting Russia and Germany, have run into strong criticism in the European Parliament, with a number of lawmakers calling for alternative overland routes to avoid potential environmental damage.
The first Russian think-tank based in the US has yet to officially open its doors. But it's already generating a lot of controversy.
Critics say the Russian Institute for Democracy and Cooperation is little more than a new propaganda tool for the Kremlin as it sharpens its attacks on the West. But the head of the institute's New York branch says he and his colleagues intend to study US democracy - not criticize it.
The Belarusian president said Tuesday he had named Vladimir Putin the prime minister of the Russia-Belarus alliance. Russia and Belarus signed an agreement in 1996 that envisaged close political, economic and military ties, but efforts to achieve a full merger have foundered. Structures of the alliance have limited powers.
An Israeli legislator who caused outrage in Israel for indicating that Premier Olmert deserved the death penalty for returning the Golan Heights to Syria, refused to retract his remarks Tuesday and said he had based his comments on the law.
Intelligence and law enforcement sources tell ABC News they are expecting al Qaeda supporters will post a new video on the Internet in the next 24 hours, calling for what one source said is "jihadists to use biological, chemical and nuclear weapons to attack the West."
Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan's northwestern Chitral region bordering Afghanistan, AFP reported, citing an Afghan intelligence official. Afghan authorities received information about bin Laden's whereabouts 4 or 5 months ago, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.
The People's Liberation Army conducted its first-ever concurrent military exercise operation to simulate a nuclear war. The maneuvers were conducted from midnight April 26 through midnight May 15.
President Ahmadinejad has asked for an audience next week with Pope Benedict which would be the first meeting between the 2 leaders, a diplomatic source said on Tuesday.
Ahmadinejad is among the heads of state expected to visit Rome to attend a June 3-5 United Nations summit on global food security, hosted by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
Vatican sources said earlier this week that it was not yet clear if the pope would meet individual heads of state attending the UN event or hold a collective audience for them in order to save time.
Iran's newly elected parliamentary speaker has warned his country may revise its co-operation with the UN's nuclear watchdog after the agency released a report critical of Tehran's nuclear drive. "If they want more sincere co-operation with Iran, they need to have more balanced reports and not look to create a media frenzy."
The Bush administration is planning to carry out air strikes against Iran by August and 2 US Senators have already been briefed on the attack according to a report in the highly respected Asia Times, which cites a former assistant secretary of state and US career diplomat as its source.
The article claims that Senators Diane Feinstein and Richard Lugar were informed of the attack plan and planned to voice their opposition to it in a New York Times editorial in an attempt to offset the air strike. The editorial is yet to materialize.
According to the source, the Neo-Cons believe that they can perpetrate a "limited" air strike aimed more at sending a message than destroying Iran's supposed nuclear program, but the consequences of such a move are likely to provoke a massive Iranian retaliation.
Iran's inevitable response would send oil prices skyrocketing towards $200 dollars a barrel as global instability threatened to boil over into numerous different regions in the aftermath of any attack.
The impending invasion of Iran has been on the grapevine for the past 3 summers running and many are beginning to fear that the "boy who cried wolf" mentality is starting to discredit those who repeatedly warn of the coming attack. However, rhetoric has notably heated in the past few months.
Thanks to the neocons...
Former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski says Washington has founded its Iran policy on 'paranoia' and 'demagogy'. "The widely propagated notion of a suicidal Iran detonating its very first nuclear weapon against Israel is more the product of paranoia or demagogy than of serious strategic calculus. It cannot be the basis for US policy, and it should not be for Israel's, either."
Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan writes in a surprisingly scathing memoir to be published next week that President Bush "veered terribly off course," was not "open and forthright on Iraq," and took a "permanent campaign approach" to governing at the expense of candor and competence.
John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the UN, faces a citizen's arrest when he addresses an audience at the Hay Festival in Wales this evening.
The Pentagon is already spending approximately $14 million per day on oil ($5.1 billion/year) to stay in Iraq. Less than a month ago, the US lost its claim to superpower status when a barrel crude oil roared past $110 on the international market.
The corporate-controlled media made the most provocative interpretation of Hillary Clinton's remarks — beginning, significantly, with the New York Post, owned by right-wing billionaire Rupert Murdoch, which did not even have a reporter following the Clinton campaign. From the Post it was picked up by the Drudge Report, the right-wing gossip web site.
Both these publications have a vested political interest in fomenting internecine strife within the Democratic Party, something which screaming headlines suggesting Clinton wishes Obama dead were calculated to achieve. The rest of the major media, regardless of their political predilections in the presidential race, obediently followed suit.
(Video: War on the Clintons)
British politics is in a state of flux, largely due to the country's increasing economic crises. The shift in the political landscape in Britain will have significant consequences for global affairs in general and Africa in particular. This would mark the rise of the Right in Britain, which would be in line with political trends in France, Germany and Italy.
(Op-ed: A whiff of insurrection in the air)
"The onrushing collapse of the global floating exchange rate monetary system is accelerating, in a hyperinflationary mode. Nothing is being done by any governments around the world to stop it.
Today, with petroleum prices soaring past $130 a barrel, with prices of food and other basic commodities skyrocketing, with the collapse of the international banking system moving apace, it is certain that the situation we shall encounter in June, July, and August will be far more severe than the crisis we face at this moment, as bad as it already is.
We are now approaching an actual breakdown-crisis, more or less like that hyperinflatinary crisis which struck Weimar Germany in the Autumn of 1923."
The "not a recession" recession (cartoon)
Revolt begins against British policy
Not a moment too soon, a group of 7 former European heads of state, 5 former finance ministers, and 2 former presidents of the European Commission have gone public with an open letter to the EU Presidency and the EU Commission.
They warn that the systemic collapse of the global financial system brings with it the threat of unprecedented poverty, the proliferation of "failed states," migration of entire populations, and further military conflicts.
The financial world, they argue, has accumulated a massive amount of "fictitious capital," with very little improvement for humanity. Among the immediate countermeasures they propose, is creation of a European Crisis Committee, and the convening of a world financial conference to "reconsider" the current international system and the globalized world order.
Any impediment to vulture capitalism in defense of the citizenry, represents a threat to London, which wants to remain the undisputed headquarters of the British Empire, and certainly not a "regional branch."
The Toronto Globe and Mail ran a story on money laundering and new Web-based businesses that allow people to buy small amounts of gold and then spend this gold as money. The development of these businesses is the preliminary step to the restoration of private money.
This is regarded with great hostility by national governments and central banks. National governments ever since 1914 have worked with central banks to remove gold from circulation as money. This began with the outbreak of World War I. It has never ceased.
All civil governments, with the lone exception of Byzantium from 325 to 1453, have deliberately tampered with the metal content of the monetary unit. They have practiced counterfeiting. This is theft.
"The oil market is a farce. The speculators have seized control, and it's basically a free-for-all, a global gambling hall. And it won't shut down unless and until responsible governments step in. We've closed one loophole, where we hope to stop some of the excessive speculation that's taken place on the electronic exchange by closing the 'Enron loophole,' but there are other loopholes that need to be addressed, which we will now call the 'London Loophole.'"
Oil prices dropped below $127 a barrel today in Asia, extending a decline of more than $3 in the previous session on a growing sense that soaring prices have cut demand for gasoline and other fuel.
(Q&A: Oil prices)
(Cartoon: Oil on Mars?)
Indonesia will withdraw from OPEC citing a continuing decline in its oil production. Energy Minister Yusgiantro said he will sign a decree today to have Indonesia pull out of OPEC and focus on domestic production.
The Iraq War means oil costs 3 times more than it should. How are our lives going to change with oil heading toward $200 a barrel?
The invasion of Iraq has trebled the price of oil, according to a leading expert, costing the world a staggering $6 trillion in higher energy prices alone. The oil economist Dr Mamdouh Salameh, who advises both the World Bank and the UN Industrial Development Organisation, told The Independent on Sunday that the price of oil would now be no more than $40 a barrel, less than a third of the record $135 a barrel reached last week, if it had not been for the Iraq war.
The Red Cross warned Tuesday of a possible surge in "food-related violence" because of soaring prices that are increasing hunger around the world. Most of the debate surrounding the global food crisis has focused on boosting aid to poorer countries, but there is also concern about the potential for violence as people become desperate for food.
No one can doubt that the news being transmitted from Egypt, and also from Sudan in early May, is dramatic. Both developments are expressions of the economic and strategic crisis engulfing the entire world, and neither can be understood as a "local" phenomenon.
What we are dealing with is the manifestation in 2 key Horn of Africa nations, of the worldwide economic breakdown crisis, and the concomitant strategic assault by Western financier-backed forces, to break the will of independent nations, smash their sovereignty, and impose their own economic and political agenda.
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[Latest edition of The Religion WAR]
Last Friday, presidents and representatives of 12 South American countries met in Brasilia to sign a treaty creating the Union of South American Nations, or UNASUR.
One of the principal objectives is to develop political, economic and social coordination between the South American states. The countries that make up Unasur, however, have different opinions and objectives with regard to the real role that the regional union should play.
The project, despite the nationalist rhetoric, represents no real threat to big international capital. Not only the government of Colombia, but that of Brazil as well as those in other countries, act in open unity with the interests of the multinationals and big international capital.
The creation of such an economic bloc will not, in the final analysis, constitute even a defense of the nationalist economic interests of the countries involved.
European particle physics laboratory CERN is set to launch its gigantic experiment which hopes to throw light on the origins of the universe within a month, the laboratory's head said Tuesday. If things go according to plan, the greatest experiment in the history of particle physics could unveil a sub-atomic component, the Higgs Boson, known as "the God Particle."
A potentially historic change is occurring on Jupiter. An upstart storm now rivals the gas giant's Big Red Spot as king of storms, astronomers announced last week. Astronomers remain mystified by the angry red color of the storms. The Little Red Spot only changed color in late 2005 after it formed from earlier mergers of three smaller storms.
Oops!...
"On the 6th day, they gathered twice as much and the leaders of the community came and reported this to Moses. He said to them, 'This is what YAHWEH commanded: "Tomorrow is to be a day of rest, a holy Sabbath to YAHWEH. So bake what you want to bake and boil what you want to boil. Save whatever is left and keep it until morning." (Exo 16:22,23)
"So they saved it until morning, as Moses commanded, and it did not stink or get maggots in it. 'Eat it today,' Moses said, 'because today is a Sabbath to YAHWEH. You will not find any of it on the ground today. Six days you are to gather it, but on the 7th day, the Sabbath, there will not be any.'
Nevertheless, some of the people went out on the 7th day to gather it, but they found none. Then YAHWEH said to Moses, 'How long will you refuse to keep my commands and my instructions? Bear in mind that YAHWEH has given you the Sabbath; that is why on the 6th day he gives you bread for 2 days. Everyone is to stay where he is on the 7th day; no one is to go out." So the people rested on the 7th day." (Exo 16:24-30)
[WAR: As mentioned earlier, this year the week doesn't sync-up with the events of this particular week in Exodus. But this historical event does show, beyond doubt, that manna=morning=day -- that the day starts in the morning, just like it says right there in Genesis. But because of Babylonian/Jewish tradition and pagan translators, we've been prevented from seeing it.]
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