Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
Benedict XVI addressed the world Synod of Bishops to propose overcoming divisions between exegesis and theology that can lead to a reading of the Bible without faith.
Germany remains contaminated with unexploded bombs that are becoming increasingly unstable with age, warns one of the country's most experienced bomb defusers. He has just retired after a perilous career spent tackling the deadly legacy of WW2.
To financial institutions around the world, the collapse of Lehman Brothers turned what was a mostly American mortgage crisis into a global financial meltdown whose resolution is still far from certain.
But to tens of thousands of individual German investors with modest investments, the Lehman collapse hits much closer to home. Their mistake, they now say, was to believe the bankers who told them the investments were safe.
Chancellor Merkel urged lawmakers to support her government's plan for a financial rescue deal worth 500 billion euros. EU leaders were to discuss their approach to the finance crisis at a summit today.
Merkel warned that Europe's biggest economy was facing tough times and stepped up calls for new rules to regulate the world's crisis-hit financial system. "Germany is strong; however, Germany will go through a difficult period," she told parliament.
Merkel also announced plans to set up a special expert group to review rules governing the world financial system.
(And!...: Meanwhile Chancellor Merkel -- former Secretary of Agitprop for the Young Communists at Marks-Lenin University in East Berlin in her student days -- is on the rack. It seems George H.W. Bush has been doling out bribes to her; the quid pro quo, as she guards funds owned by Bush Sr. & Company in the largest German financial institution.)
The banking crisis has made bedfellows of rival parties across Germany's political spectrum, with a majority of parliamentarians agreeing that the regional states need to support the federal bailout.
Bavarian finance minister Huber, however, did slam the federal government for pushing some of the burden onto the states. "The nation calls the shots and the states pay the bill. This is not exactly fair play."
German press review
The German bailout package presented by Chancellor Merkel was unprecedented in size. And, so far at least, it seems to be working. German commentators, though, are skeptical about its long-term prospects.
German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier backed Turkey's EU bid yesterday. "Turkey may still have a little way to go here, but we should support Turkey on this way." He stressed that Turkey's "integration with the EU" is important for the integration of the Turkish community in Germany.
The minister underlined that a critical criterion for joining the EU is freedom of expression, however, adding that Turkey needs a "change of mentality" in this area on top of passing new laws.
Details of the composition of a planned but somewhat controversial reflection group in charge of anticipating long-term challenges to the Union are starting to emerge. It now appears that the 9 wise men will in fact be 12.
EU leaders meeting in Brussels this week have lots on their plate with a financial crisis raging, soured relations with Russia, and questions about the bloc's future after Ireland's rejection of the Lisbon Treaty.
Relief over the success of Europe's intervention in the banking crisis will give way today to discord over climate change, with nations battling over whether a looming recession makes European Union carbon-reduction targets unaffordable.
The dispute is one example of how the financial crisis has changed Europe's political landscape in several respects.
Russia has ended a decades-old border dispute with China by giving it a stretch of river island territory in a ceremony symbolising the Cold War rivals' warming ties.
"This event completes the delineation and the legal establishment of all parts of the Russian-Chinese border, which is over 4,300km long. The border issue, a historical legacy that had been left to Russia and China, has received its complete and final resolution."
A long-running row over the rights to a rooftop section of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre could bring the entire structure tumbling down, destroying Christendom's holiest site.
Against all tides, he had the audacity to band together with Hezbollah in 2005. Now Lebanese Christian leader Michel Aoun is aiming higher by seeking ties directly with Iran, the staunchest state supporting the Shiite militant group.
The lawmaker, who returned to the country in 2005 after 15 years of exile in Paris, is on a high-profile official visit to Tehran. His trip, which started Sunday, was described by Iranians as "historic" and was an occasion for them to show that they support the Christians of the region.
Iran's Ambassador to the UN has criticized efforts by certain powers to negotiate with extremist and terrorist groups. "This move will lead to return of extremism in Afghanistan which will not only fail to resolve the country's problems but intensify insecurity."
The US is putting the finishing touches on a National Intelligence Estimate on Pakistan. And while much of the document is expected to remain classified, those privy to the contents of the document say it paints a "very bleak" picture. Another summarized the conclusions as "no money, no energy, no government."
A senior Iranian military official has rejected the speculations that the US and Israel might launch an attack against the country. "The enemy does not have the courage to carry out military action against our country. The risks of attacking Iran have increased dramatically in the enemy's calculations."
With the Bush's administration in its last [few month's] in office, the danger of a US military attack on Iran still looms as a dangerous possibility. The continuing, ideologically driven extremism in the White House means that the danger of a reckless, unilateral military attack remains, and such an attack could happen despite the consequences.
The battle for the White House could well come down to how the West is won. For the first time, 3 former frontier states are all up for grabs, with Barack Obama targeting Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico -- because the expanding Hispanic population is pivotal to Mr Obama's path to the presidency.
(And: Goodbye, GOP)
The New York Post reported Tuesday that Jesse Jackson said the US will rid itself of years of "Zionist" control under an administration headed by Barack Obama.
The daily quoted the veteran civil rights leader as having said that although "Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades" remain strong, they will lose a much of their clout when Obama enters the White House.
The McCain campaign insists it is not fanning the flames of racism. But has Sarah Palin gone too far in painting Barack Obama as "the other?"
Todd Palin interfered regularly in his wife's affairs as governor, and there's every reason to assume he'd do the same in the White House.
Were you told this was how Congress was browbeaten into passing this law? Were you told that Congress was essentially threatened that tanks would be deployed into our cities and towns if Congress did not pass this bad law that Paulson and Bernanke demanded?
But the law was in fact to allow the buying of $700 billion of "troubled mortgages" and related assets. Or was it? See, buried in that bill was a nasty little catch-all "any other asset the Treasury says promotes financial stability."
One little sentence, with which you surrendered forever the principles of economic capitalism and replaced them with government totalitarianism. Fascism.
CNN's Glenn Beck became the only mainstream media source thus far to address on national TV the reality of the situation Americans are facing with the manufactured financial implosion - the direct threat of domestic martial law and a global financial dictatorship.
Beck's guest, Peter Schiff, joined him in outlining that martial law, the use of armed troops on the streets to quell dissent, is a real possibility should the economic crisis not improve or worsen to the point where civil unrest is fomented.
The price of oil slumped below $72 today, its lowest level for more than 13 months, as recession fears raised concerns about a prolonged drop in energy demand, analysts said.
Grim reality hit stock markets across the world today as dealers assessed the effects on the real economy of spending vast sums rescuing a sick banking system. While the actions of western governments to inject capital into their banks may have staved off financial meltdown, it has done little to affect fears for the wider economy.
The arbiter of whether this rescue package has worked or not is the money market, where conditions have improved marginally but not a lot.
The most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression shows no sign of letting up. The financial edifice of US
Two things stand out about this crisis. First, there is the ferocity of its global shocks and the speed with which it has spread. Second, unlike the debt and financial crises of the last 30 years, this crisis initially exploded in the US
Despite coordinated and dramatic cuts in interest rates, massive cash infusions and even nationalization of banks, the world's credit remains crunched and its financial infrastructure keeps crumbling.
Entire nations teeter on the brink of insolvency. Deserted by their old friends, they are forced to seek new ones. The very idea of European unity now seems a bit naive, and the New World Order is suddenly and frighteningly unstable.
Paulson and his wheeler-dealer pals have proven more interested in preserving their own wealth than in stabilizing the American economy.
The Bush administration's latest effort to resolve the financial crisis embraces an approach it had resisted just a few weeks ago. In deciding to inject fresh capital into US banks in return for ownership stakes, the administration adopted a plan that many leading economists had long been pushing.
The shift in approach suggests the administration had miscalculated the time it had to take corrective action before realizing the urgency of the crisis demanded the swiftest possible response.
The government may guarantee nearly $2 trillion in US banks' debt and deposit accounts for more than 3 years in an effort to break the crippling logjam in bank-to-bank lending.
The new bailout plan is widely referred to in the media as a "partial nationalization" of the banks. It is nothing of the kind. It is, rather, a massive intervention by the state to use public funds to protect the social interests of the financial elite that is responsible for the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Paulson has made clear that the stock obtained by the government will be "non-voting," that is, it will not entail the banks' ceding any control to the state.
There will be no letup in Wall Street bankers' ruthless pursuit of profits and personal wealth.
While the government and politicians of both parties are calling for all Americans to "sacrifice" for the sake of the "nation," the CEOs of major banks and financial companies are exploiting the crisis of their own making to extract new concessions from the government.
The G-7 subsequently published a short communiqué containing information that the Refunding Program was originally called, as Christopher Story tells us, "The Wanta Plan" -- as in former Ambassador Leo Wanta, a former US Treasury official appointed trustee of an astronomical sum of money by President Ronald Reagan.
Wanta holds the "financial golden key" to $27.5 trillion dollars, money he claims is now held in public trust for the American people, and not its Illuminati thieves.
Well, it's colonisation all over again. Gerald Warner points out that Gordon Brown has just seized the Queen's savings. But it's all more extraordinary than that: Gordon Brown has just seized a piece of the government of China, and an amount of it that makes the contents of Her Majesty's safe deposit boxes look trivial.
It's a strange outcome of the collapse of the Western economy as we know it. But when Brown and Darling pumped 20 billion pounds into the Royal Bank of Scotland, in return for half ownership, the UK Treasury accidentally acquired half of RBS's assets, which include a stake in the Bank of China.
Gordon Brown today called for the EU's 27 member states to move to "stage 2" of the effort to restore confidence in the financial system, and urged regulators to adopt an early warning system to prevent the collapse of banking groups.
Brown soberly warned that there were further "difficult problems" to come around the world in the coming days.
European Union leaders gathered here today for a summit that is being dominated by the fallout from the global banking crisis and calls for a comprehensive overhaul of the world's financial structures.
EU officials are also worried that several countries will use the crisis to try to alter long-established rules designed to deter state aid to ailing companies, one of the central pillars of the EU's internal market.
So where are the European governments who are pledging that money and more to help shore up their banks, going to get the money? By selling bonds.
While some of the bonds will be bought by investors in the West, Asian central banks and sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East will also likely buy large amounts of the new bonds issued by the US and European nations to help pay for their bailouts.
Amidst this historic crisis of the capitalist system, some of those opposed to Paulson's Wall Street bailout have claimed that the measures employed are "socialist."
Suddenly — 17 years after the Soviet Union's collapse and the supposed "death of socialism" — the "S" word is being bandied about by American politicians and media pundits.
The claim that the Wall Street bailout is a socialist measure is absurd on its face. Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, who has an estimated personal fortune of $700 million and is a member of the most right-wing administration in US history, has authored a bill that will ultimately divert trillions of dollars to the coffers of the biggest banks in the land. This is socialist? Such claims display a combination of stupidity and deceit.
A central component of this debasement of political and intellectual life has been the promotion of anti-communism, based largely on the false identification of socialism and Marxism with their political opposite, Stalinism.
After rescuing the British and European banking system, can Gordon Brown re-order the world's regulatory system?
The euphoria that swept Wall Street on Monday gave way to a sober reality on Tuesday: a recession, perhaps the deepest one in decades, may be unavoidable.
What, then, will the next stage of the downturn be about? It is likely to revolve around the worst slump in US worker pay since — you knew this was coming — the Great Depression.
Gordon Brown may have saved the world, but the bad times are rolling in regardless. We have no inkling of how bad or for how long, but we are preparing ourselves.
(Cartoon: Father, I've been greedy)
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I had rather believe all the tales in the Talmud, than that there is any truth to psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud was a quack, although a successful one. There is no "id," "ego," or "superego," the concepts being either superfluous or unverifiable.
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