Thursday

The Daily WAR (04-27)

Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
 
    [WAR: I'm still on the road -- currently in Texas, but fixin' to go on a 12-state journey . . .]
 
 
 
    Pope Benedict XVI began his summer vacation on July 27, flying to northern Italy for a 2-week stay in the Alpine town of Bressanone. He is reportedly working on a 2nd volume of his work on Christ, following up on Jesus of Nazareth. He may also be finishing work on a new encyclical devoted to Catholic social teaching.
    [WAR: Finishing-up book on the anti-messiah, and preparing the wine for the nations to drink...]
 
    The Holy See is following with "serious attention" the request from the Traditional Anglican Communion for "full, corporate, sacramental union" with Rome.
 
 
 
    Chancellor Merkel's Christian Democratic Union said it had surpassed the rival Social Democratic Party on the basis of membership figures for the first time since being founded in 1945. Comparing the 2 parties is not strictly fair to the CDU, which does not campaign in Germany's largest state, Bavaria. It leaves the field free in the southern state for its sister-party, the Christian Social Union.
 
    It has been a long, and at times rapid, decline. Now, for the first time ever, the Social Democrats are no longer Germany's largest party. It is just one more symptom of the country's fast-changing political landscape -- one in which the SPD is struggling to find its role.
 
    The German express mail company DHL is not having a good year. Losses are mounting and now a planned cooperation with US competitor UPS has become a campaign issue. An Ohio senator accuses Deutsche Post of "not playing it straight with us."
 
    If Barack Obama accomplished one thing in Berlin, it was to make it painfully obvious just how uninspiring German politicians are.
 
    If you imagine a soufflé puffed up with hot air, and just about to collapse in on itself, then you've got a good image of Barack Obama's speech before the Victory Column in Berlin on July 24.
    The man is simply shallow, with little of substance, whereas what his PR writers mixed into his text, along with the usual hot-air bubbles of rhetoric, is nearly indistinguishable from the policies of the current Bush-Cheney Administration.
    Events over the coming weeks and months will prove that this image of a new Kennedy or King, is nothing but deceptive packaging—or a soufflé, which will collapse on its first exposure to the rough outside world.
 
    Erwin Huber, chairman of the center-right Christian Social Union of Bavaria, called Obama's statement "a disappointment for Europe and Germany." Huber also said that "it is the opposite of solidarity and partnership when one side is to make more sacrifices and the other gains an advantage from it."
 
    In his regular column for the weekly Die Zeit newspaper, the former German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, summed up "Barack Obama's recent speech in Berlin" as follows: "Put an end to European free-riding when the military situation is serious!"
    Calls for closer transatlantic co-operation cannot hide the fact that beneath the surface the struggle for power and influence between the great powers is growing.
 
 
 
    He was elected on a right-wing platform of law and order and has vowed to dismantle Roma camps and reduce street crime. But the new Mayor of Rome, a member of the far-right Alleanze Nazionale, has balked at the government plan to put troops on the streets of the Eternal City.
 
    European businesses would choose Tony Blair as the new EU president, with Chancellor Merkel and Luxembourg's prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, featuring as other front-runners for the position in a fresh poll.
 
    I  have just been bashing out a note to my bureau chief about what will be keeping us busy in the back half of the year. Here are some of the thoughts, although just as battle plans don't survive first contact with the enemy, templates for news and current affairs coverage are bent out of shape by first contact with stuff that's happening.
 
    Since its formation 10 years ago, the idea of a common European defense has hardly made any progress. However, some important lessons can be learned from the decade of wasted opportunities, writes Nick Witney of the European Council on Foreign Relations.
 
    Perhaps the most unsettling aspect of the current US Presidential campaign, aside from the studied avoidance of any serious proposals to address the worst economic depression since the 1930's, is the fact that Barack Obama and John McCain have to date been stone silent on the most pressing issue of future war or peace, namely the steps taken by the Bush-Cheney Administration to encircle Russia with a new Iron Curtain of NATO member states, including strenuous efforts to push Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, and to establish an advanced nuclear missile defense system which, from a standpoint of military strategy, far from defense, puts the world on a hair-trigger to nuclear holocaust in the few years ahead.
    In this context, it is equally disturbing how the Western major media and the Washington Administration have chosen to ignore what might be a last glimmer of hope for diplomatic resolution of a looming nuclear war by miscalculation.
 
 
 
Why?...
    Some  neoconservatives in Washington are obsessed with attacking Iran before President Bush leaves office at the end of this year. Hence, they have been pushing the Bush administration for increased economic and political isolation of Iran in order to weaken its current regime.
    Crucial to this plan is the support of Turkey, a traditional US ally and an increasingly critical player in the region. But to the enormous frustration of the neoconservatives, such an attack does not align with Turkey's interests given its newly enhanced regional ties, maturing democracy, and new foreign policy.
 
Because...
    The nation of Turkey has been rocked by the indictment of a criminal network, the Ergenekon, for planning a military coup against the government. These revelations occur at a time when Turkey is playing a key role in mediating peace talks between Israel and Syria, and taking major initiatives with Iraq and Iran that directly counter British efforts to launch another Southwest Asia war.
    US intelligence sources have told EIR that the British are fully committed to destabilizing, if not overthrowing, the Erdogan government. Turkey is targetted because of its central role on several fronts to promote peace and economic development throughout the Middle East, a role that threatens to overturn the British Middle East chessboard.
 
    Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, tearfully announced that he would step down in September, ending months of speculation over whether he could ride out a string of corruption probes.
    The disclosure is likely to have a juddering effect on the fraught Middle East peace process, since much of the recent progress in talks with the Palestinians had hinged on the close personal bond Olmert had forged with the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas.
 
    In the wake of an increased threat from al Qaeda and the Taliban, as well as growing skirmishes between militants and the Pakistani military, Pakistan has raised security levels at all its nuclear facilities.
    One threat to Pakistan's nuclear security that is rarely mentioned in Washington is one that could come from that country's military, which has total control of the nation's arsenal.
 
    The Security Council voted unanimously Wednesday to end its eight-year peacekeeping mission between Eritrea and Ethiopia, a failure that Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has warned could lead to war between the 2 neighbors in the Horn of Africa.
 
 
 
    Germany's federal export control office has cleared the way for an engineering company to build 3 plants for Iran to liquefy natural gas, a government spokesman said.
 
    The Leader of the Islamic Revolution says Iran will not bow to threats made by bullying world powers and abandon its nuclear program.
    "They [the West] know that the Iranian nation is seeking nuclear technology to generate electricity; however, do not want to allow it as this know-how would empower Iran. With 30 years of experience in resistance, the Iranian nation will continue on its [nuclear] path without taking notice of their [the West's] language of threat."
 
    Ron Paul says should there be an Israeli strike on Iran over its nuclear work, it would not be unilateral. The Texas congressman told Press TV that there is no "such thing as independent Israel doing anything", dismissing speculation that the world may witness unilateral Israeli bombardments of Iranian nuclear sites.
    "No matter what they do, it is our money, it is our weapons, and they are not going to do it without us approving it."
 
    Bush administration officials reassured Israel's defense minister this week that the US has not abandoned all possibility of a military attack on Iran.
 
    The US reaffirmed a weekend deadline for Iran to give a final answer to world powers seeking a breakthrough in the nuclear crisis, warning of consequences on any defiance by the Islamic republic.
 
    American taxpayer dollars are being used, with the permission of Congress, to fund activities that result in Iranians being killed and wounded, and Iranian property destroyed. If CIA money and planning support are behind these actions, the agency's backing constitutes nothing less than an act of war on the part of the United States against Iran.
    One day, in the not-so-distant future, Americans will awake to the reality that American military forces are engaged in a shooting war with Iran. Many will scratch their heads and wonder, "How did that happen?" The answer is simple: We all let it happen. We are at war with Iran right now.
 
 
 
    Moscow thinks that the United States could face a serious domestic crisis in the near future. "The US is on the brink of a mass crisis of surviving," a source with the Russian Foreign Ministry told journalists.
 
    The bottom has been blown out of the US banking system by the collapse of the biggest speculative bubble in history, and there is no recovery in sight. With each passing day the situation becomes more dire.
    The Plunge Protection Team has been reacting to the crisis, pumping in money, cooking the books, taking measures to prevent a collapse, yet the relentless disintegration continues, destroying everything in its path.
 
    The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America is dead, says Robert A. Pastor, the American University professor who for more than a decade has been a major proponent of building a North American Community.
    "The April summit meeting was probably the last hurrah for the SPP," he wrote, referring to the 4th annual SPP meeting held in April in New Orleans. He blames critics for the failure of the SPP, charging it has come under attack from both ends of the political spectrum.
    "From the right have come attacks based on cultural anxieties of being overrun by Mexican immigrants and fears that cooperation with Canada and Mexico could lead down a slippery slope toward a North American Union. From the left came attacks based on economic fears of jobs lost due to unfair trading practices."
 
    Veteran Republican US Senator Ted Stevens was charged on Tuesday with concealing more than $250,000 worth of gifts, including home renovations, that he received from an Alaska oil services company
 
Connection or coincidence?!...
    Air Force officials say the commander at Alaska's Elmendorf Air Force Base likely died Sunday night of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Brigadier General Thomas L. Tinsley suffered a gunshot wound to his chest. No note from Tinsley was found.
 
 
 
    Prospects for a global free trade agreement were dashed this week as negotiations in Geneva collapsed in bitter acrimony and mutual finger pointing. After a marathon 9-day round of high-level talks, trade ministers left the table with nothing.
    They failed to bridge the gap between the demands of the Western capitalist powers for unfettered open markets and the insistence of the "emerging" economies of India and China on retaining the means for protecting their agricultural sectors from a flood of cheap exports generated, in particular, by US agribusiness.
    There is a deep-seated concern within ruling circles in both the US and Europe that the collapse of the Doha Round and the potential weakening of the WTO could lead to the breakdown of the multilateralism upon which trade relations have been based since the end of WW2.
    The fear is that in its place will emerge a series of antagonistic trading blocs and the growth of protectionism, reproducing key features of the crisis that gripped the world economy during the Great Depression of the 1930s, producing mass unemployment and paving the way to world war.
 
    The WTO efforts to strike a new global trade pact ended in failure, after the US resisted what is saw as protectionism from China and India. German papers are gloomy about the impact on the global economy.
 
    The International Monetary Fund says there's no end in sight to the credit crisis gripping world financial markets. As Australia's NAB and ANZ have already discovered, the IMF believes banks are in for more pain as mortgage defaults soar and economies slow. The IMF has a particularly gloomy assessment of the US economy.
 
    Euro zone inflation jumped to another record high of 4.1% year-on-year in July as forecast, data showed on Thursday, but a bleak economic outlook may discourage interest rate increases this year. Separately, unemployment in the euro zone unexpectedly edged up, in another sign of a slowing economy.
 
    According to LEAP/E2020, the end of the 3rd quarter of 2008 will be marked by a new tipping point in the unfolding of the global systemic crisis.
    At that time indeed, the cumulated impact of the various sequences of the crisis will reach its maximum strength and affect decisively the very heart of the systems concerned, on the frontline of which the United States, epicentre of the current crisis.
 
    The Federal Reserve extended its emergency lending programs to Wall Street firms through January after policy makers judged that markets are still "fragile." The action reflects continued financial turmoil, with premiums banks charge each other for 3-month funds over the Fed's expected benchmark rate little changed since May.
 
    The Bush administration is going to be mailing out more "stimulus" checks in the very near future. There's just no way around it. The Fed is in a pickle and can't lower interest rates for fear that food and energy prices will shoot into the stratosphere. At the same time, the economy is shrinking faster than anyone thought possible with no sign of a rebound.
 
    Officially, "stagflation" is a thing of the past, but a deeper look reveals a different, very current reality for most Americans.
    Stagflation in America? Well, unless you're among the wealthiest, you're soaking in it and have been for quite a while. But you're not likely to hear much about that story. The reality is that those who aren't at the very top or the very bottom of America's economic food chain have been mired in a long period of painful stagflation.
 
    Jurisprudence and Ownership of Real Property defined how things were done, until shorting stocks came along, Interest rates and strategies on bullion, IMF stands with Bullion insiders, dollar rallies vainly moderate inflation but gold continues to consolidate...
 
    The agenda of neo-conservatives in the economy calls for a very active central government. Indeed, while there are some neo-conservatives who continue to use the rhetoric of limited government, and who oppose increases in the federal income tax as a way to maintain the political benefits that apply to those who talk about free markets, it is now the neo-conservatives who promote fiat monetary policies even more than those on the liberal left.
 
    The world's financial storm has swept through Australia and New Zealand this week amid mounting signs of contagion across the Pacific region. The picture is darkening across the Pacific Rim.
 
Will the fall of an Aussie bank rock Wall Street?
    The scariest news of the week comes from down-under, where the National Australia Bank announced it would "slash a £400m bond sale by 66%.
    The original article appeared in the Business Spectator and was titled "NAB will shock Wall Street." "Shock" is an understatement. This is more like a meat cleaver crashing down on a butcher block.
    "The National Australia Bank's decision to write off 90% of its US conduit loans will have dramatic repercussions around the world. Wall Street will be deeply shocked when they understand the repercussions of what NAB has done."
 
    In early July, the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates announced that the country would drop its 30-year peg to the dollar by June 2009, linking instead the national currency, the dirham, to a basket of currencies which would include the dollar and the euro. The UAE is one of the world's main holders of dollar-denominated assets.
 
    Dollar hegemony is a geopolitically constructed peculiarity through which critical commodities, the most notable being oil, are denominated in fiat dollars, not backed by gold or other species.
    Echoing the Holy Roman Empire, the global economy has been operating as a global Holy Dollar Empire with the Federal Reserve as the Holy Dollar Emperor. Similar to the Holy Roman Empire, which disintegrated from the rise of Lutheran nationalism, this Holy Dollar Empire will eventually disintegrate from progressive centrifugal forces of a new populist economic nationalism.
 
 
[Latest edition of The Religion WAR]
 
    A 2,100-year-old "computer" found in a Roman shipwreck may have acted as a calendar for the Olympic Games, scientists report. Researchers have long suspected the ancient clockwork device was used to display astronomical cycles. A team has now found that one of the dials records the dates of the ancient Olympiad.
 
     I wish to critique a popular line of argument (epitomized in a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Andrew Klavan) that "Batman is George W. Bush." We'll see that this comparison is misguided for 2 reasons.
    First, Batman is infinitely cooler than Bush (and that's not really a criticism of Bush). Second, Batman really isn't the assumed hero that these foreign policy hawks believe; Bruce Wayne is making a tragic mistake with his life.
    [WAR: I saw this movie and was motivated by Alfred's comments to Bruce Wayne: "You can be the outcast. You can make the choice that no one else will face -- the right choice."
    I am an outcast (no family, no job/career, no real home, no church/group affiliation) and can make the choice to do the right thing: Later today, I will file a petition in the Collin County district court to have the date of birth changed on my birth certificate. This is legally unprecedented and will force a judge to rule on the legality of the Gregorian Calendar -- which has never been done in any court in the US.
    This will be is the 1st shot in a war/crusade against the villainous Vatican -- the most dangerous and evil entity on Earth. And the irony is that I've had a number of people tell me that I look like Christian Bale, who plays Batman. But I'm not playing ... I'm deadly serious...]
 
 
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