Sunday

The Daily WAR (06-12)

Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
 
 
 
    Upon arriving in France on Friday afternoon, Pope Benedict XVI called on the French people to engage in a new level openness to the Church, one which recognizes the "irreplaceable role" of religion in forming consciences and in creating a "basic ethical consensus within society."
 
    Pope Benedict XVI waded into French politics by throwing his weight behind a controversial drive by President Sarkozy to put religious faith back into the life of the strictly secular state.
 
    Pope Benedict XVI condemned unbridled "pagan" passion for power, possessions and money as a modern-day plague on Saturday, as he led more than a quarter million Catholics at an outdoor Mass in Paris.
    "Has not our modern world created its own idols?" Benedict said in his homily, and wondered aloud whether people have "imitated, perhaps inadvertently, the pagans of antiquity?" "This is a question that all people, if they are honest with themselves, cannot help but ask."
 
    Dear friends, as you know, Jesus' prayer was also nourished by the psalms. He went regularly to the Temple and to the synagogue. He spoke there on the Sabbath day. He wished to emphasize with what generosity God looks after man, also including the organization of time.
    I express my respect full of affection for each one of them and invoke fervently on all your families and all your communities a particular Blessing of the Lord of the times and of history, "Shabbat shalom!"
    [WAR: Yes, "God" is the Lord/organizer of times: "He changes times and seasons" (Dan 2:21). But the papacy, specifically Pope Gregory XIII, has acted as "Lord" by trying "to change the set times and the laws." (Dan 7:25)]
 
    Pope Benedict XVI has told tens of thousands of pilgrims in the southern French town of Lourdes that love can be stronger than all the world's evil. The pontiff gave the homily during an open-air Sunday Mass at the highly-revered Roman Catholic shrine.
    He is in Lourdes to mark the 150th anniversary of what many Roman Catholics believe was a vision of the Virgin Mary by a young local girl.
 
 
 
    The Social Democrats try to save themselves with a change of leadership.
 
 
 
    A secret European Union plan to force Ireland to vote again on the Lisbon Treaty has emerged.
    French officials have penned an explosive document entitled 'Solution to the Irish Problem', in which they say the EU should push Ireland into re-running its referendum next year, opening the way for the treaty to come into force next year.
    The European Commission cut its forecast for economic growth this year, conceding that a slowdown in the US, expensive energy and a global housing slump were exacting a heavier price than was expected even 6 months ago.
    With an embattled prime minister in Britain struggling with a housing market slide, a German government under pressure to enact an economic stimulus package and a French government whose spending is hamstrung by a ballooning budget deficit, the gloomy figures only added to a darkening political mood in Europe.
 
Europe frets about its place in a different world order
    Never has the European Union enjoyed such diplomatic prominence as this week, when Nicolas Sarkozy of France led an EU delegation to Moscow to secure yet another promise of Russian troop withdrawals from Georgia.
    Seen from Brussels, the Georgian crisis has exposed a tectonic shift in the global balance of power. It is not just that Russia is back. The crisis has also confirmed Europe's sense of an America in relative decline.
    Yet today's European leaders are not crowing. Talk to ministers and officials in private, and they admit that the new world order is making them anxious.
 
    Russian troops pull back under another ceasefire deal, but new ambiguities arise over deploying European monitors.
 
 
 
    Prime Minister Olmert says the idea of "Greater Israel" - the main motto of the Zionist founders of the Israeli regime - is dead. "'Greater Israel' is finished. There is no such thing as that anymore. Whoever talks in those terms is only deluding himself."
 
    Contrary to common perception, Jewish anti-Zionism is not restricted exclusively to the well know Jewish anti-Zionist movements such as Satmar and Neturei Karta.
    There are in fact many Jewish movements, groups and organizations whose ideology regarding Zionism and the so-called  "State of Israel"  is that of the unadulterated Torah position that any form of Zionism is heresy and that the existence of the so-called "State of Israel" is illegitimate.
    Zionism is wrong from the Torah viewpoint, not because many of its adherents are lax in practice or even anti-religious, but because its fundamental principle conflicts with the Torah.
    Unfortunately,  due to many undesirable factors, the view of Torah-true Jewry has been concealed from the general public.
 
    The furor intensified over Washington's decision to pursue Islamic militant targets inside Pakistan, with opposition lawmakers threatening the country could pull out of the war on terror if the US refuses to respect its borders.
 
    Islamic militant group the Indian Mujahedeen has reportedly claimed responsibility for a string of blasts which have rocked Delhi.
 
    Britain is playing a key role in efforts to block the prosecution of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for the carnage in Darfur.
 
     Nigeria's main militant group in the Niger Delta has declared an "oil war" against forgeign-owned oil companies working in the region.
    The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta said today it had launched "hurricane Barbarossa" and destroyed flow stations and oil pipelines, killing 22 Nigerian soldiers.
    The Niger Delta accounts for most of Nigeria's oil output of 2 million barrels per day, making it the world's 8th biggest oil exporter.
 
 
 
    The International Atomic Energy Agency has denied reports that enriched uranium has disappeared from Iran's nuclear facility in Isfahan.
    "The article, entitled 'Iran renews nuclear weapons development' published in [Friday's] Daily Telegraph is fictitious," IAEA Spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said in a statement.
 
    President Ahmadinejad's recent visit to Turkey marked an important step for relations between the 2 countries, as Iran's role as a key energy supplier and growing trade partner make a deepening of diplomatic ties a necessity for Ankara.
 
    President Ahmadinejad vowed Friday to keep supporting the Palestinian militant group Hamas until the "collapse of Israel."
    He told Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh that Iran views the support of the Palestinian people as part of its religious and national duty and that Iran will stand behind the Palestinian nation "until the big victory feast which is the collapse of the Zionist regime."
 
    Five American religious organizations have announced plans to host a dinner to break the Ramadan fast with President Ahmadinejad during his upcoming visit to the US.
    The Mennonite Central Committee, the Quakers, the World Council of Churches, Religions for Peace and the American Friends Service Committee are sponsoring the meeting with Ahmadinejad on September 25 in New York City.
    The dinner to break the Ramadan fast, called an Iftar, is being billed as "an international dialogue between religious leaders and political figures" in a conversation "about the role of religions in tackling global challenges and building peaceful societies."
 
    Iran will this week launch an audacious bid for election to the United Nations Security Council.
    As the UN General Assembly opens in New York, Iran is lobbying for support from other Islamic states and its anti-American allies in the Non-Aligned Movement in a contest with Japan for a seat that becomes vacant in January.
    The slot, one among the council's 10 non-permanent members, is currently occupied by Indonesia and is reserved for an Asian nation.
 
    Despite reservations in Washington regarding a possible Israeli strike on Iran, the American administration will supply Israel with sophisticated weapons for heavily fortified targets, the US administration announced.
    The US Department of Defense announced it would sell the Israel Air Force 1,000 new smart bombs, rumored to significantly enhance the IAF's military capabilities.
 
    A military solution to the standoff over Iran's nuclear ambitions is unacceptable and there is no need at the moment for new sanctions, President Medvedev said.
 
    A few weeks ago the Russian newspaper Izvestia, a well-known and authoritive daily published nationwide and abroad, came forward with something that would have been looked upon as a conspiracy theory if published by a tabloid.
    The paper suggested that by attacking South Ossetia, the Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili had badly damaged a planned U.S. military operation against Iran. In the newspaper's opinion Georgia was supposed to play the role of another "unsinkable aircraft carrier" for the U.S., i.e. an operational and tactical base for U.S.
aircraft that would be making bombing raids into Iran.
 
    Soon after his inauguration, President McCain ordered the attack on Iran on Jan. 29, 2009. Carried out with support from Israel and Britain, it hit at least 10 targets with tactical nuclear weapons and nearly 800 other targets with conventional weapons.
 
 
 
    The high-heeled, moose-hunting governor of Alaska has sent Barack Obama's campaign into a state of panic as support for Obama haemorrhages in the battleground states he must win.
 
    One of the most significant transformations of American domestic politics over the past 3 decades since the early 1970's, when George H.W. Bush was head of the CIA, has been the deliberate manipulation of significant segments of the population, most of them undoubtedly sincere believing people, around the ideology of 'born-again' evangelical Christian Fundamentalism to create something known as the Christian Right.
    The elite circles behind the Bush Presidency have crafted an extremely powerful political machine using the forces and energies of the Christian Right and millions of American Christians unaware of the darker manipulations.
    Is Sarah Palin a part of such darker manipulations? It appears now, that she was chosen very carefully as she comes out of the very fundamentalist evangelical circles that the CNP uses to mobilize and shape America's political agenda.
 
    Liberals are scornful of blue-collar workers. Blue-collar workers are the backbone, muscle and sinew of this country.
    Their learning is every bit as detailed, life-long and important as a degree from Bryn Mawr, and often more useful. They are the legs and feet and (more often than liberals will admit) the brains that make this country go.
    After all, when the bleep hits the fan, who do you want standing next to you? An expert in 18th-century feminist literature, or someone who can fix, mend, construct, or defend their way out of the problem?
 
 
 
    Hurricane Ike could trigger insurance claims between $8 billion and $18 billion, according to early estimates of the damage.
 
    The outlook is deteriorating even for the best-performing firms, let alone the troubled ones. Anyone tempted to hope that falling energy costs will mean higher profits for other American firms should think again.
 
    Watching the future of America as debts pile up,Unloading US dollars could be detrimental to the economy, efforts to manipulate gold continue, $100bn in losses already written off, South America heats up the Cold War, Saudi walks out of OPEC...
 
    As Lehman Brothers teetered Friday evening, Federal Reserve officials summoned the heads of major Wall Street firms to a meeting in Lower Manhattan and insisted that they rescue the stricken investment bank and develop plans to stabilize the financial markets.
 
    Germany called on US authorities Saturday to find a solution for crisis-hit bank Lehman Brothers before Asian markets reopen for trading early Monday.
    Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck told reporters that "the news that is coming out of the US is bad," confirming that financial markets are still suffering sharply from a credit crisis that started last year.
    Observers who had prematurely spoken of "a light at the end of the tunnel" now had to make sure that they weren't facing an oncoming train, he warned.
 
    Barclays is considering a direct plea from Hank Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, to assemble a cut-price rescue bid for Lehman Brothers, the investment bank which has become the latest victim of the global financial crisis.
    Paulson, the former head of Goldman Sachs, has urged Barclays and a number of other large financial institutions to intervene in the Lehman crisis, which is threatening the future of one of Wall Street's most venerated businesses.
    US officials are concerned that the collapse of Lehman will prompt a fresh contagion among investors worried about the security of institutions.
 
How America's central bank copes with an unusual level of dissent
    The contingent of inflation hawks on the Federal Open Market Committee is one of the largest and most vocal in memory.
    The FOMC has so far refused to yield to such internal pressure. Bernanke would sooner suffer dissent than placate the hawks with what he thought was a premature rate increase.
 
Wall Street privatizes US government
    It is Wall Street, the paradigm of "red in tooth and claw" capitalism, that has turned to government subsidy on an unprecedented scale. Free markets have been abandoned in America at the crucial hour by their chief exemplars, the financial masters of the universe.
 
    A lot of smart people have tried to call the bottom on Wall Street this year. So far, they have all been wrong.
    Now even Wall Street's professional optimists have given up predicting exactly when their industry might stabilize.
    One senior executive at a top investment bank, speaking anonymously so he could speak freely, recently observed that the crisis was entering its "19th inning," with no ending in sight.
 
    We have seen, in the dead of night, 3 major government bailouts in the last year, none of which had more than a few days' positive effect on the markets. Each was done by powerful men in powerful places in the wee, small hours. At the end of the next day, a few were made rich while the many were handed the bill.
    How many more bailouts have to occur before someone asks the questions no one wants to ask? Is this a systemic problem and where does it end?
 
 
[Latest edition of The Religion WAR]
 
    The vast new Cern particle collider has only just hummed into life, but physicists are already drawing up plans for a still larger machine to answer the questions even Albert Einstein was unable to resolve.
 
    Would you like to know the specific day of the Lord's return? Pastor Mark Biltz of El Shaddai Ministries believes he knows – the exact day, if not the specific year. He says much of the church is asleep – unaware of the significance of the feasts in God's holy time clock.
    "Just as the spring feasts were the dress rehearsals for Messiah's first coming, the fall feasts are the dress rehearsals for His 2nd Coming," says Biltz, a Hebraic roots teacher. The video series pinpoints the specific day on the Hebrew calendar for the return of Jesus.
    [WAR: So close, but yet so far. Yes, the feasts are important and need to be observed - at the correct appointed times. But hardly anyone observes them on the correct days - except for some that accidently get Pentecost right.]
 
    The Harvest Moon is the full moon closest to the September equinox. In 2008, this equinox takes place on September 22. The closest full moon is tonight. The precise moment of full moon will come in the early morning hours on September 15 according to clocks in London. So, to astronomers, the September 15 full moon is the Harvest Moon.
 
 
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