Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
Clueless Catholics Causing Confusion...
To understand the Vatican directive reiterating that the name of God revealed in the tetragrammaton YHWH is not to be pronounced in Catholic liturgy, it helps to know the history behind the Jewish tradition, says a biblical expert.
"As an expression of the infinite greatness and majesty of God, it was held to be unpronounceable and hence was replaced during the reading of sacred Scripture by means of the use of an alternate name: 'Adonai,' which means 'Lord.'"
[WAR: "Because he loves me," says YAHWEH, "I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name." (Psa 91:14)
"They will call on my name and I will answer them; I will say, 'They are my people,' and they will say, 'YAHWEH is our ELOWAH (Mighty One).'" (Zech 13:9)
"'My name will be great among the nations,' says YAHWEH Almighty ... 'And if you do not set your heart to honor my name,' says YAHWEH Almighty, 'I will send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings ... But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings.'" (Mal 1:11 / 2:2 / 4:2)]
Germany is dropping its pursuit of a ban on Scientology after finding insufficient evidence of illegal activity, security officials said Friday.
But domestic intelligence services will continue to monitor the group, officials said.
The continued division of Germany's government between Berlin and Bonn has long been a contentious issue.
But now lawmakers seem to have started a process that could lead to a complete move of government to Berlin.
The number of indicators pointing to foul economic weather continues growing. A new index released on Friday testifies to increasingly empty order books.
Experts predict that over 200,000 jobs are at risk.
Chancellor Merkel has warned that next year could be filled with bad economic news.
Chancellor Merkel faced rising pressure to step up stimulus measures in the face of the global financial crisis on Saturday, including calls from her own conservative colleagues to cut taxes now.
Bankers should stop pointing the finger at others and acknowledge their part in the financial crisis, Germany's president said in some of his harshest criticism of the behaviour that contributed to global market turmoil.
The most important task facing banks was to win back trust after having been blind to risk and detached from the real economy, Horst Kohler told a financial sector conference in Frankfurt.
Investors had chased profits while the US Federal Reserve had kept money artificially cheap, Kohler said in comments that seemed aimed at German and other European banks.
"But too many of you ... ignored the multiple warnings and preferred to play along, rather than going against mistaken developments."
Kohler, a former managing director of the International Monetary Fund, has become unusually outspoken for a German president as the financial crisis has progressed. He previously referred to financial markets as "a monster".
The comments seemed to show Kohler's discomfort at how far some parts of the German economy had moved away from the country's traditional "social market" economy with strong social solidarity.
But he said the benefits of a European economic model, emphasising social equality, were proved and should be more widely adopted.
"We in Germany do not need to reinvent the wheel. The social market economy can now break through internationally. We have the chance of globalisation that is to everyone's benefit."
NATO has promised to send ships to the Gulf of Aden to work with a planned EU force against pirates off the coast of Somalia. Russia's navy has called for more cooperation from the West, while Germany works out just what its sailors can do.
In attempt to deal with the economic consequences of the current financial crisis, the European Commission will unveil its ideas on possibilities of a co-ordinated fiscal stimulus.
Three members of the German Secret Service (BND) have been arrested in Kosovo, for allegedly bombing an EU office in Kosovo, Pristina province. A defense lawyer has said that they are suspected of having committed an act of terrorism.
(And: GERMANY DECLINES COMMENT)
[WAR: The damn BND is up to no good again! They just love to bomb offices in foreign countries to steer political agendas -- with the OKC federal building being their top trophy so far.]
When President Medvedev planned his forthcoming trip through Latin America, Russia seemed poised to present one of the most visible challenges in years to US influence in the region.
With oil prices high, Russia was flush with cash and planning a range of measures. But when Medvedev reaches the region next week, he will find it drastically altered by events - and in some cases, less receptive to his overtures.
Plunging oil prices and the global financial crisis, which have hammered Russia particularly hard, have raised questions about Russia's reliability as an economic partner, while Barack Obama's victory has raised hopes throughout Latin America of a new era of improved relations with the US.
A senior Syrian official all but ruled out new visits by UN inspectors probing allegations that his country had a covert program that could be used to make nuclear weapons.
The US has long been a model for many parts of the Arab world, but the Bush administration's foreign policy led to rifts. Now, the region has high hopes from America, but they aren't sure what to expect from Barack Obama.
A redrawn map of South Asia has been making the rounds among Pakistani elites.
It shows their country truncated, reduced to an elongated sliver of land with the big bulk of India to the east, and an enlarged Afghanistan to the west.
That the map was first circulated as a theoretical exercise in some American neoconservative circles matters little here.
It has fueled a belief among Pakistanis, including members of the armed forces, that what the US really wants is the breakup of Pakistan, the only Muslim country with nuclear arms.
"One of the biggest fears of the Pakistani military planners is the collaboration between India and Afghanistan to destroy Pakistan. Some people feel the United States is colluding in this."
German press
Just a few weeks before the EU anti-pirate mission is set to deploy, German officials are still unsure how much military force they are allowed to use against Somali raiders.
Politicans are frustrated by the indecision, and German commentators joined the fray.
Saudi Arabia said it will join a fleet of NATO warships on an anti-piracy mission, as hijackers bolstered defenses around an oil-laden Saudi tanker captured off the East African coast.
NATO has 4 warships off Somalia. India, Malaysia and Russia have sent warships, and an EU fleet is expected to reach the zone next month. The US coalition in Afghanistan has a task force there, bringing the total of warships in the area to 15.
Fears were growing for the safety of the 25 crew on board the hijacked supertanker Sirius Star moored in Somali waters as fierce factional fighting and political violence erupted across Somalia.
India is in something of a state of shock after learning from official sources that its first Hindu terror cell may have carried out a series of deadly bombings that were initially blamed on militant Muslims.
The revelation is forcing the country to consider some difficult questions.
Israeli intelligence sources say the prospect of military action against Iran has increased significantly in the past few weeks. The revelation comes as Israeli military officials recently sent mixed signals about a calculated attack on Iran.
A top Iranian commander says Iran will retaliate against any country that would aid and abet a potential strike against Iranian interests.
"We have ensured that if any harm is inflicted on Iran, anyone who assists the aggressor will suffer hurtful retribution."
He also claimed that the IRGC naval forces are capable of destroying US warships in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz.
Mounting fears that the US will do nothing to prevent Iran becoming a nuclear power will be outlined by Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, when he meets President Bush in Washington tomorrow.
Once in office, Obama needs to send an envoy to Jerusalem with a simple message for the Israelis: when it comes to Iran, sit down and shut up.
Thousands of people are jumping aboard a petition that demands documentation of Barack Obama's eligibility to hold the highest office in the US, not just assurances from party officials.
Within only a few hours of its launch, more than 10,000 petitioners today had joined the effort coordinated by WND founder and editor Joseph Farah.
The increasingly right-wing character of the transition being organized in preparation for Barack Obama's inauguration in January has elicited expressions of concern from the middle-class "left."
The past 10 days have served to expose the real content of Obama's "change you can believe in."
What is taking shape is a government that represents continuity with the last 8 years far more than change.
Its personnel and the policies with which they are identified spell a continuation of wars of aggression abroad and domestic policies that defend the interests of America's financial elite at the expense of the broad mass of working people.
(And: WHO'S WHO ON OBAMA'S TEAM)
Barack Obama has been accused of selling out his promises of change in US foreign policy by putting national security policy in the hands of establishment figures who supported the Iraq war.
Hillary Clinton has decided to give up her Senate seat to become secretary of state in the Obama administration.
(Cartoon: HILLARY, THE PRESIDENTIAL SEAL)
(Cartoons: SOS HILLARY?)
Barack Obama will name Timothy Geithner to be his Treasury Secretary, according to a knowledgeable Democrat, elevating a Treasury veteran who as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has all year been at the center of the worsening economic crisis.
(Wiki: TIMOTHY FRANZ GEITHNER)
The IMF's chief economist has warned that the global financial crisis is set to worsen and that the situation will not improve until 2010, a report said Saturday.
The weekly newsletter sent out on Friday by Fathom, a London-based economic consultancy, said it all.
"It's getting really ugly out there. It may be true that we have passed the first phase of this crisis, but that does not mean the next phase will not be worse, perhaps very much worse."
With remarkable speed in the past 2 months, a worrying but apparently manageable credit crunch has turned into a global financial crisis and a recession across much of the world's economy.
The same people whose reckless practices triggered the global financial crisis are onto a similar scheme that could cost taxpayers tons more.
What bagging the bear is going to mean, super absorbent paper sucks up losses, toxic waste, merger threats for all non insiders, a bill for the taxpayers...
Massive amounts of money were transferred from the coffers of Lehman prior to filing for bankruptcy. Where did the money go? A similar procedure was used in the The Bear Stearns bankruptcy.
The painful consequences of abandoning asset auctions.
In the biggest number of bank seizures yet on a single day, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and state regulators have shut down 2 banks in Southern California and 1 in Georgia.
The FDIC said late Friday that US Bank, based in Minneapolis, has acquired the banking operations, including all the deposits.
You would think that a 39 city protest involving thousands of people might warrant a national wire story, maybe a mention on cable news, but no.
Reporters don't understand the issue and therefore they ignore it.
Barack Obama said Saturday that he had started work on a sustained, 2-year economic stimulus plan designed to create or save 2.5 million jobs, funnel money toward public works programs to repair the country's failing infrastructure and invest in alternative energy programs.
You know things are bad when, now, even the French say we are fried and our view of capitalism is full of crepe — the president of France now calling for his own economic summit in early January. Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly wants to tame the animal spirits of American capitalism.
The European Central Bank has come under mounting pressure to cut interests rates, amid signs that the continent's recession is deepening and deflation could be on its way.
Amid a debt-deflation spiral, the governments' greatest risk is enacting stimulus measures that are too little to fight the slump.
Judged by the hubristic promises that preceded it, the G20 meeting was bound to disappoint.
The leaders of the world's 20 biggest rich and emerging economies, gathered in Washington, DC, on November 15th, did not remake global finance — as some of them had set out to do.
Nor, as others had hoped, did they come up with a co-ordinated fiscal boost to counter the deepening global downturn.
Fortunately, the G20's attitude to global finance seems realistic. The communiqué was not a grand manifesto but a pragmatic acknowledgment of the tension between a globalising capital market and national regulation.
They also made clear that the governance of global financial institutions must change.
The membership of the Financial Stability Forum, a group of regulators and central bankers charged with the technicalities of financial supervision, is to be broadened.
The IMF and World Bank are to be "comprehensively" reformed. It is easy to be cynical. Talk about reforming power within the IMF has gone on for years.
But with emerging economies now firmly at the top table of international finance, such an overhaul has become much more likely.
Not a new Bretton Woods — but a decisive shift in the old order.
[CFR Opinion Roundup][Newseum][Global Incident Map][Earthweek][Day-Night Map][Tonight's Sky][Moon phase]
This holiday season the multiplexes, the art houses and the glossy for-your-consideration ads in publications like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter will be overrun with Nazis.
The near-simultaneous appearance of all these movies is to some degree a coincidence, but it throws into relief the curious fact that early 21st-century culture, in Europe and America, on screen and in books, is intensely, perhaps morbidly preoccupied.
The number of Holocaust-related memoirs, novels, documentaries and feature films in the past decade or so seems to defy quantification, and their proliferation raises some uncomfortable questions. Why are there so many? Why now? And more queasily, could there be too many?
Michael Jackson has reportedly become a Muslim and changed his name to Mikaeel.
If you've got a date in New York, she'll be waiting in New Wild Boar City, according to a new etymological map of the world.
Wouldn't it be great to be able to remember everything? To see all our most important moments, all the priceless encounters, adventures and triumphs? What if memory never faded, but instead could be retrieved at any time, as reliably as films in a video store?
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