Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
King whorin' around...
This morning in the Apostolic Palace of Castelgandolfo, Benedict XVI received in audience King Hamad Bin Isa Al- Khalifa of Bahrain, according to a communique released by the Holy See Press Office.
"Emphasis was given to the shared commitment in favour of inter-cultural and inter-religious dialogue, and to the importance of collaboration between Christians, Muslims and Jews for the promotion - in the Middle East and throughout the world - of peace, justice and spiritual and moral values. The king invited the Holy Father to visit his country."
Benedict XVI has affirmed to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown that only generosity will ensure that the Millennium Development Goals meet their deadline.
(And: Brown's letter to B16)
(And: B16's response)
Archbishop Celestino Migliore, Holy See permanent observer to the UN in New York, participated in the High-Level Segment of the 2008 Economic and Social Council, which was meeting to reflect upon the importance of addressing the development needs of rural communities.
In his English-language talk, the prelate recalled how a recent resolution adopted by the Human Rights Council on the "Right to Food" highlights "the obligation of States, with the assistance of the international community, to make every effort to meet the food needs of their populations through measures which respect human rights and the rule of law".
Angela Merkel is a rare phenomenon. As chancellor since late 2005, she is the most popular politician in Germany and most of Europe. But the polls are misleading.
There is a wide gap between Merkel as chancellor and Merkel as leader of her conservative Christian Democratic Union party. "The party is not in good shape," says a federal legislator and deputy leader of the CDU. "You can't underestimate the tensions, especially among traditional party members who long for the old days."
Berlin, a city torn apart by war, is the perfect setting for an American president preaching peace. Now Barack Obama wants to grandstand there too.
But a simmering row between the German Government and the local Berlin authorities could rob the Democratic politician of a photogenic moment at the Brandenburg Gate and derail his flagship tour of Europe this month.
The President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, is going to be the President of the European Union for the next 6 months. This happens at a decisive point of world history, with the financial and monetary tsunami hitting the coasts of Europe.
The tragic dilemma is that the true interest of the Western European states and population cannot be fulfilled and protected by the present institutions of the EU, a tower of Babel already rejected by France and the Netherlands in 2005, and now by the Irish "no" vote to the Lisbon Treaty.
The European scene is therefore like a show of handcuffed dwarfs possessed by the delusion to rule an Empire, while their own peoples shout "shame" at them, and the true Empire, in London, laughs at their act and despises their impotence.
This is precisely why I am writing now: "Mr. Sarkozy, pull down the Tower of Babel and go for the Europe of the fatherlands and great infrastructural projects, from the Atlantic to the Urals and the Sea of China," a Europe freed from the financial and political grip of the British Empire.
Italian Treasury and Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti, a leading proponent of a New Bretton Woods and a supporter of Lyndon LaRouche's Eurasian Land-Bridge program, has launched a series of initiatives against financial speculation at the G-8 meeting, and in the European Union, which have put the Anglo-Dutch oligarchy on the defensive.
As a reaction, the "Britannia" faction is running an operation to topple the Italian government by judicial means.
Barack Obama will make his first trip as Democratic presidential nominee to London next week, at the start of a tour of Europe where a warm embrace may be overshadowed by his effort to explain how - and when - America's military should disentangle itself from Iraq.
In his debut on the international stage Obama will visit 7 countries in as many days, with stops in Britain, France, Germany, Israel and Jordan. He is likely also to make undisclosed trips to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Georgia said it had killed 4 members of the security forces from the breakaway Abkhazia region today but separatist officials said none of their men had been killed.
The breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia has rejected a US proposal to deploy an international police force there, the leader of Abkhazia said.
The regional government, which is not internationally recognized, instead pledged to keep Russian peacekeepers in place, despite accusations from Georgia that they are fomenting tensions.
"We are not going to listen to any recommendations from the State Department, which always has a unilaterally pro-Georgian position."
The Russian President Dmitri Medvedev warned the US that he would consider retaliatory "counter-measures" if Washington went ahead with the construction of a missile defence shield in Eastern Europe.
[WAR: Russia is just reacting to the US provocation.]
Worried about increasing insurgent attacks in Afghanistan, the U.S. military says it is sending extra air power there by shifting an aircraft carrier away from the Iraq war.
Defense officials said that the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln was moved out of the Persian Gulf and to the Gulf of Oman, shortening the time that the carrier's strike planes must fly to support combat in Afghanistan.
Three policemen and 3 unidentified gunmen have been killed during a 15-minute gun battle at the US consulate in Istanbul.
German press:
Monday's suicide bombing in the Afghan capital Kabul was the deadliest since the 2001 ouster of the Taliban. German commentators fear it could fan regional tensions between Pakistan and India, which are fighting a kind of proxy Cold War in Afghanistan.
The son of terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden has appeared on a terrorist film on the internet calling for Britain and its allies to be wiped out. In it, the boy dubbed the Crown Prince of Terror, called for an acceleration in the "destruction" of America, Britain, France and Denmark.
(And: OBL dying of kidney failure?)
Iran today test-fired a missile whose range puts Israel within reach, angering the US amid growing fears that the standoff over the contested Iranian nuclear drive could lead to war.
"Our missiles are ready for shooting at any place and any time, quickly and with accuracy. The enemy must not repeat its mistakes. The enemy targets are under surveillance."
(And: Pentagon plumbs for clues)
Iran would "set fire" to Israel and the US navy in the Gulf if it were attacked, the regime said, as its elite Revolutionary Guards began a major military exercise.
"The first US shot on Iran would set the United States' vital interests in the world on fire. Tel Aviv and the US fleet in the Persian Gulf would be the targets that would be set on fire in Iran's crushing response. The Zionist regime is pressuring the White House leaders to plan a military assault on Iran" and Tehran would react "if they commit such a stupidity."
As back-channel negotiations between Washington and Tehran try to dampen the risk of a military confrontation, one apparent wild card that some officials fear could further inflame tensions is the Revolutionary Guard Corps navy.
A question I'm often asked is whether military action against Iran is still an option for the Bush administration. The short answer is "yes." So with less than 4 months to go until the presidential election, an October surprise is still very much within the realm of possibility.
Pakistan's former Army Chief says the US is supporting the outlawed Jundullah group to destabilize Iran. He said that the US is providing training facilities in eastern areas of Iran to create unrest in the area and affect the cordial ties between Iran and its neighbor Pakistan. He added that Iran and Pakistan are under the siege of western conspiracies.
What is the worst scenario that is more likely? I keep coming back to the same event: war with Iran. This can happen in either of 2 ways.
First, the President unilaterally issues an order to one or more aircraft carrier task forces to bomb suspected Iranian nuclear production facilities. Second, the Prime Minister of the State of Israel issues a similar order to the Israeli Air Force.
There are signs that the Israelis are preparing to launch such an attack. While this is not being discussed on the evening network news shows, it is being discussed in the fringes of the mainstream media.
I suggest that you think through your plans on the assumption that there will be an attack by the Israeli Air Force on Iran before January 20, 2009. That's what I am doing; so, I suggest that's what you should do.
You would be wise to factor such an attack into your economic strategy. I suggest that you sit down with a pencil and a piece of paper and write down the changes in your life that would be imposed by gasoline at $10 a gallon. Then think about a shift to the euro by Middle Eastern oil exporters. It's an ugly scenario.
Neo-Con news outlets are busy recycling a debunked 2005 report that stated Iran could be planning to detonate deadly EMP bombs above American cities, presumably in the belief that the public will now believe the same snake oil salesmen that pushed non-existent weapons of mass destruction and Saddam's mythical biological drone armies as reasons to invade Iraq in 2003.
[WAR: It will be Germany that will EMP us.]
John McCain's sick obsession with slaughtering brown people in the Middle East betrayed itself again yesterday when he responded to a question about exporting cigarettes to Iran by saying, "maybe that's a way of killing them."
The tectonic plates of the geopolitical landscape are shifting, visibly, as the consequences of our crazed foreign policy are being felt at home and abroad.
The most agonizing decision we Americans make as a nation is whether to go to war. Our Constitution ambiguously divides war powers between the president (who is the commander in chief) and Congress (which has the power of the purse and the power to declare war).
A bipartisan group that we led, the National War Powers Commission, has unanimously concluded after a year of study that the law purporting to govern the decision to engage in war - the 1973 War Powers Resolution - should be replaced by a new law that would, except for emergencies, require the president and Congressional leaders to discuss the matter before going to war.
Questions over a birth certificate for Barack Obama – the document that could prove his constitutional qualifications to run for the presidency – have been revived by a report from Israel Insider.
Everyone is complaining and crying about the high gasoline prices and, well, the rising prices of most everything else, especially food. The problem is that hardly anyone wants to admit that it's all part of the cost of empire and imperial adventurism.
James Howard Kunstler's new novel describes a small town in upstate NY where a chain of global crises has forced the community to fend for itself.
As politics converges, a growing undercurrent of discontent can be heard. We should listen before it is too late.
Federal policy makers have reached a consensus that the turmoil plaguing the housing and financial markets is likely to spill deep into 2009.
As US home prices decline and Washington struggles to end the economic malaise, Wall Street is starting to send a sobering message: The worst is yet to come.
The continued fall in equity markets has rattled European newspapers this morning. Most analysts and investors quoted see more troubles ahead, especially in the financial sector.
With Denmark entering recession, data issued from across Europe indicates that other countries could quickly follow suit.
An FDR-style battle against financial speculators, especially as they are ravaging the world's poor through food and energy prices, is being brought to 2 summits this week: one, of the G8 in Japan; the other, of the EU economic and finance ministers' meeting in Brussels.
The Greater Depression has begun, with the misallocations of the previous boom being liquidated, the business cycle climaxing and "most people's standard of living declining." Both federal and state governments are bankrupt and many big companies in the US will be bankrupt.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she deplored that Group of Eight leaders failed to call for more orderly developments in world currency markets. She also said the crisis in world credit markets has not yet been overcome, depicting a "danger" among fellow leaders "to return to business as usual."
Facing what is arguably its most serious crisis since the end of WW2, the global capitalist economy has never been in greater need of co-ordinated policies from the world's major national governments.
But unity and collaboration in the face of the mounting problems posed by climate change, oil and food price hikes and the ever-present threat of recession, have been conspicuously absent from the meeting of the G8.
As the current G8 meeting demonstrates, far from bringing greater international unity and co-operation, the global economic and environmental problems will bring greater national divergence and conflict among the capitalist powers.
This is because the divisions are not the product of individual politicians or the result of lack of knowledge or understanding but are rooted in the very nation-state structure of the world capitalist order.
Despite Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke's warm words, aimed as much at soothing the markets as sending a message to investment banks on what to expect in the future, the majority of investors remain nervous about the near-future and where markets are headed.
The collapse of IndyMac -- one of America's largest mortgage lenders -- would send real shockwaves through the US mortgage market and would act as a reminder that the worst of the credit crisis is far from over.
The analyst at the credit ratings agency was blunt: "Let's hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters."
That candid assessment, e-mailed to a colleague in December 2006, referred to the market for certain investments linked to subprime mortgages - investments that were assigned top, AAA ratings from major agencies, only to later plummet in value.
That e-mail message and dozens like it were disclosed Tuesday in a blistering 37-page report issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which confirmed what many on Wall Street had long suspected: The major ratings firms, including Fitch, Moody's and Standard & Poor's, flouted conflict of interest guidelines and considered their own profits when rating securities, among other suspect practices.
Crude oil rose, rebounding from its biggest decline in 3 months, after Iran test-fired a long- range missile capable of reaching Israel and the dollar fell.
"While we're still in a phase of verbal attacks, the danger of military strikes is real and Iran might halt its oil exports," said a trader at BayernLB in Munich. "This is driving the oil price up and the situation remains tense."
Oil's meteoric rise since the start of the year to nearly $150 has distressed consumers and policy makers the world over, but the stark reality is prices are likely to rise higher still.
The White House on Tuesday rejected a call from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to release oil supplies from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help bring down fuel prices.
In a letter on Tuesday, Pelosi asked President Bush to order a drawdown of "a small portion of the oil" held in the emergency stockpile and put more supplies on the market to "reduce the record prices that are helping push the economy toward recession."
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It will "be fought in the electromagnetic spectrum"
The Moscow newspaper Zavtra reported only a week ago that Russia has developed "special powerful electromagnetic impulse generators that may be used in design of new type radars and as a basis of electromagnetic weapons that will render enemy electronics inoperable."
Fifteen years have passed since Foreign Affairs published Samuel Huntington's "The Clash of Civilizations?" in its summer issue. It has subsequently become the most sought after article for reprints in the magazine's history.
The essay, and the book by the same title minus the question mark, caused a storm among political scientists. "The dominant source of conflict will be cultural," Huntington famously predicted, and "fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future."
"In the 30th year, in the 4th month on the 5th day, while I was among the exiles by the Kebar River, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of Elohim..." (Ezekiel 1:1 -- 3:15)
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