Sunday

The Daily WAR (08-16)

Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
 
 
 
    Exacerbating tensions regarding controversial issues is contrary to the desire of a panel of Jews and Catholics working for growing rapprochement between their creeds, a joint statement affirmed.
 
    The education of future generations is key for keeping 40 years of progress in Jewish-Christian dialogue on the right track, says a Vatican official.
    Cardinal Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, which oversees the Commission for Religious Relations With the Jews, spoke with Zenit about this dialogue and opportunities for interreligious collaboration.
 
    It is time for Christians to leave aside inferiority complexes and become valiant witnesses in the world, says the president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity.
    The cardinal analyzed the situation of Western societies, characterized by the "dictatorship of relativism," and denounced the growth of a new "anti-Christian attitude" that "make attacks on Christians, and particular on Catholics, pass off as politically correct."
    Today, he warned, "one who wants to live and act according to the Gospel of Christ has to pay a price, even in the highly liberal societies of the West. The idea of creating a new man completely uprooted from Judeo-Christian tradition and a new world order is gaining ground."
 
    Religions, if they are faithful to their nature, are messengers and craftsmen of peace, declared a representative of Benedict XVI to the UN general assembly.
    The assembly was considering the theme "Culture and Peace" and Cardinal Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, spoke with the assembly about making fraternity a reality, not just an ideal.
    "All together, without negating our specific cultural and religious aspects, may we work to draw up a plan toward a more secure and solidary world," he encouraged.
 
    For a problem that is not exclusively financial, there needs to be a solution that is not exclusively financial, a Vatican representative is recalling.
    "The crisis that the world is currently living is not just financial, and therefore the solution cannot be purely financial," he said.
    Instead, the economic crisis "verifies what the Church's social doctrine has said for a long time: When an economic-financial system goes into crisis, it is never due to economic of financial motives, but because in its origin, there has been a wound in the global moral system."
    According to the social doctrine of the Church, Bishop Crepaldi continued, "it is necessary to look with more wisdom at the market and the role that it can have. We would not have gotten to where we are now if we would have treated the market as a means and not an end."
 
    Worldwide economic strain is a symptom of a deeper, spiritual crisis and a mistaken set of values, say European bishops.
    This was an affirmation from the Commission of the Bishops' Conferences of the European Community at the end of their autumn plenary assembly, which closed Friday.
    "The sense and value of human work has been pushed to the background in the general struggle for profit."
    "Whoever considers the cause of the financial crisis to reside solely in a lack of transparency and legal accountability is perhaps overlooking the fact that it is far more our societal model that is being called into question. An economic model that is based on the continued and unlimited consumption of limited resources can only end in tears."
 
 
 
Press review
    On Thursday the official news came that Germany has gone into a recession.
    The goverment is scrambling to revive the economy with a stimulus package, but most German newspapers on Friday remain unimpressed.
 
    A manhunt is under way in western Germany for a convicted drug dealer who escaped by mailing himself out of jail.
    The 42-year-old Turkish citizen - who was serving a 7-year sentence - had been making stationery with other prisoners destined for the shops.
    At the end of his shift, the inmate climbed into a cardboard box and was taken out of prison by express courier.
 
 
 
    EU lawmakers will kick off their session in Strasbourg by debating the challenges facing the 15-strong euro area with eurogroup chair Jean-Claude Juncker.
    The mood is likely to be combative, as the eurozone has officially slipped into first ever recession.
 
    Public support for the euro may still be painfully tested as economies deteriorate. Over-high expectations cannot help.
    Calling the euro a haven from the storm is not just economic nonsense. It is political bad sense, since nobody is going to be sheltered from this deluge.
 
    A question that worries a few and excites others.
 
    With Russia's backing for the G20 summit, President Sarkozy proposed a new security and defence arrangement between the EU, Russia and the US to be agreed at a summit mid-2009, calling both on Moscow and Washington to refrain from deploying missiles until that date.
 
    Barack Obama was handed an early foreign policy hot potato when President Sarkozy proposed a truce in the row over US plans for a missile defence system in Europe.
    Taking it upon himself to make the EU's first intervention in the debate – and getting the backing of Russia, which has threatened to position missiles in Kaliningrad – Sarkozy proposed a summit next year on a new pan-European security system.
    The French President's latest piece of off-the-cuff diplomacy caught most of the main players by surprise and raised eyebrows for seemingly trying to bounce the next US President into a policy change as well as talks about a security organisation to rival NATO.
 
    A senior Russian military diplomat is quoted as saying that if NATO grants Membership Action Plans to Georgia and Ukraine, the Russian government will ultimately pull out of the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty.
 
    Many of the world's up-and-coming new powers neither embrace nor aspire to the Western model of liberal democracy. This makes the idea of an "alliance of democracies" a nonstarter.
    The new powers include authoritarian regimes and they demand a role in global governance. Russia is ready to cooperate, if the West is ready to take it seriously.
 
 
 
    A secular entrepreneur is elected to run the holy city.
 
    Hamas militants fired a barrage of rockets at the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon Friday in an increase of violence that has all but buried a 5-month-old truce.
 
    Pakistan has acused America of pushing it closer to bankruptcy by witholding up to $1 billion in military contributions despite the country's efforts to fight terrorism.
    Pakistan has barely enough foreign reserves to cover 9 weeks of imports and is struggling to raise funds to avert a balance of payments crisis.
 
    The UN may send more troops to Congo. Would they do any good?
    United Nations officials have asked the Security Council to approve the deployment of 3,000 more peacekeepers to bulk up the 17,000-strong force already spread across Congo.
    The European Union, which has 2 1,500-strong battlegroups ready to deploy within days, has been deaf to appeals for intervention.
 
 
 
    A Russian diplomat says major world powers remain divided over new sanctions against Iran after a meeting on the nation's nuclear program.
    The Interfax news agency quoted a deputy foreign minister who attended the talks as saying that envoys from the 5 permanent UN Security Council members and Germany reached no agreement on sanctions at Thursday's meeting in Paris.
 
    A top cleric vowed on Friday that "Death to America" will continue to be chanted in Iran for as long as the US maintains what he called its arrogant stance towards the Islamic republic.
    "Statesmen in the United States should know that as long as they keep their arrogant attitude towards Iran the slogan of our people will remain the same and will not change."
 
    Iran has decided to hold a conference to review the outcome of the US election and its implications for Tehran-Washington relations.
 
    Barack Obama's top advisers are setting the stage for a military action against Iran over its nuclear program, new reports have revealed.
    The emerging consensus on Iran in US foreign policy circles underscores the fact that the differences between Obama and John McCain were purely tactical.
 
    Any effort to jeopardize Iran will be a bitter pill for an aggressor to swallow, says Iran's top military commander.
    "After the failure in its 33-day-war on Lebanon the Israeli regime realized that any effort or movement against the Islamic Republic would have bitter and dangerous consequences."
 
 
 
    This week and into next, NorthCom and NORAD are conducting a joint exercise called "Vigilant Shield '09."
    The focus will be on "homeland defense and civil support," a NorthCom press release states.
    From November 12-18, it will be testing a "synchronized response of federal, state, local and international partners in preparation for homeland defense, homeland security, and civil support missions in the United States and abroad."
 
    The California secretary of state should refuse to allow the state's 55 Electoral College votes to be cast until Barack Obama verifies his eligibility to hold the office, alleges a California court petition filed on behalf of Alan Keyes and others.
    The California action was filed by Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation on behalf of Alan Keyes, along with Wiley S. Drake and Markham Robinson, both California electors.
    "Should Senator Obama be discovered, after he takes office, to be ineligible for the Office of President of the United States of America and, thereby, his election declared void, Petitioners, as well as other Americans, will suffer irreparable harm in that (a) usurper will be sitting as the President of the United States, and none of the treaties, laws, or executive orders signed by him will be valid or legal," the action challenges.
 
    Barack Obama is being given ominous advice from leaders on both sides of the Atlantic to brace himself for an early assault from terrorists.
    Lord West of Spithead, the Home Office Security Minister, spoke recently of a "huge threat", saying: "There is another great plot building up again and we are monitoring this."
 
    Come back, Clintons, all is forgiven. This seems to be Barack Obama's message as he draws up appointments for his administration — two thirds of which come from Bill Clinton's.
 
 
 
    Are rich economies heading merely for a bout of falling prices, or for a 1930s-style deflationary spiral?
 
    The financial crisis is deepening, with the risk of seriously disrupting the system of international payments.
    This crisis is far more serious than the Great Depression. All major sectors of the global economy are affected.
    Recent reports suggest that the system of Letters of Credit as well as international shipping, which constitute the lifeline of the international trading system, are potentially in jeopardy.
 
    President Bush came to Wall Street to deliver a speech extolling the virtues of the "free enterprise" system even as multiple economic indicators made it clear that the so-called "magic of the market" is spelling misery for millions more working people in the US and around the globe.
    Behind the banalities and boosterism, Bush's message to those assembling in Washington was clear: Nothing will be accepted that interferes with the unfettered accumulation of wealth by America's financial elite and the defense of their interests, regardless the cost to the world's population.
    Bush effectively acknowledged at the outset that the gathering of presidents and prime ministers this weekend will accomplish nothing — and that his administration will block any attempt to reach binding agreements.
 
    Ahead of the G20 meeting of the world's leading industrialised and emerging economies this weekend, the president of the US and the president of the European Commission have laid down their markers for what should be the solutions to save the global economy.
 
    The World Trade Organization warned that the financing of global commerce is "deteriorating" amid the financial crisis and the situation is likely to worsen over the coming months.
    "The market for trade finance has severely deteriorated over the last 6 months, and particularly since September," WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy told ambassadors of the organisation's 153 members following a meeting with trade experts and bankers.
 
    With nearly $2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves and an economy that is still growing - even if more slowly than it was before the crisis erupted - China is one of the few participants with the financial power to aid countries in distress, either directly or by contributing to the coffers of the International Monetary Fund.
 
    On the eve of the financial summit in Washington DC, Chancellor Merkel told a German newspaper that it is time for systemic reform.
    Warnings that the state should stay out of financial markets, she says, are unwelcome.
 
    Germany has many demands, from more transparency and a supervisory position to a worldwide loan registry and a re-evaluation of banking salaries.
 
    Chancellor Merkel is set to push international leaders to draw up a "world risk map" of global financial institutions to allow financial authorities to quickly identify future trouble spots.
    The chancellor and finance minister Peer Steinbrück are expected to lobby at the G20 world financial summit in Washington this weekend for all financial institutions, markets and jurisdictions to be made subject to proportionate regulatory control in order to eliminate "blind spots" in the financial system.
 
    Russia and the EU agreed today to pile pressure on President Bush to accept far-reaching changes to the global financial system at the G-20 summit in Washington.
    Dmitri Medvedev, the Russian President, said that Russia's ideas were almost identical to those put forward by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, on behalf of the EU.
    Both men have talked of the need for fundamental changes to post-war institutions such as the International Monetary Fund to take better account of the developing economic powers of the world, while President Bush has appeared reluctant to make major alterations.
 
    Government leaders cannot rewrite the rules this weekend. But they can still do some useful things.
(Cartoon: BRETTON WOODS 2)
 
    World leaders have agreed to a series of sweeping changes to the global regulatory framework in a bid to stem the global financial crisis and prevent it happening again.
    Chancellor Merkel dubbed the conference a "great success," saying that "its main message is that nowhere in the world should there be markets, market participants or even products that do not have to submit to regulations and rules of transparency."
    However, the group's final paper did not specify measures to regulate hedge funds, something Merkel has long championed, but which has not resonated with the US government.
    Treading diplomatically, President Sarkozy was careful in Washington not to repeat his recent appeal for a "new capitalism."
    "The financial crisis is the common enemy of the US and Russia," President Medvedev told a gathering at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank after attending the G20 summit.
 
    European leaders said the emergency finance summit in Washington was a success, even though the resulting action plan was less drastic than some of their original suggestions.
 
    More than 40 international and regional networks and movements from different parts of the world vow to stage global protests calling for fundamental structural changes and a new global economic and financial system that is more responsive to the needs of the poor and the developing countries.
    In a global call signed by 209 international, regional and national networks, the groups demanded "new national, regional, and global financial institutions based on economic democracy and equity, ecological sustainability and environmental justice, gender, racial, ethnic and international justice and equality, and self-determination and sovereignty of peoples and nations."
    The groups also called to end "market fundamentalism…that preached deregulation, privatization, the over-leveraging of banks and trade and capital liberalization that have damaged communities and the environment."
 
    Iran has converted financial reserves into gold to avoid future problems, an adviser to President Ahmadinejad said in comments published on Saturday, after the price of oil fell more than 60% from a peak in July.
 
    Tensions at the start of the G20 summit run high as Prime Minister deems return to 1930s policies "unacceptable."
    Brown was already risking confrontation with Obama in barely coded criticism of a planned measure to bail out America's ailing carmakers, a plan Obama supports.
    "I do think it is really important that we send out a signal today that protectionism would be the road to ruin," the Prime Minister said, in a speech to the Council of Foreign Relations in New York.
    The EU said that it was ready to take action against the US at the World Trade Organisation if aid for the stricken US car industry was judged by the European Commission as illegal under international rules.
 
    As if the global meltdown and soaring food prices are not enough, now brace up for food shortage in the coming 2 years.
    Even as the world is struggling to fight global market meltdown with companies sacking employees and Industries scaling down production, the world will also have to tackle food shortage and soaring prices in the coming days.
 
 
 
    For the first time in a decade or more, US consumers are trying to get by on fewer prescription drugs.
    As people around the country respond to financial hard times, drugs are sometimes having to wait.
 
    Researchers are discovering how light can manipulate the nervous system.
 
    A Texas pastor is asking all married couples in his congregation to have sex for 7 straight days.
    [WAR: But what about "resting" on the 7th day after 6 days of "work"?! ;-)]
 
    A cool picture of Endeavour's Friday night launch.
 
 
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