Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
After another eruption of terrorist attacks, this time in India, Benedict XVI is appealing for an end to terrorism as a grave offense to human dignity.
The Vatican has warned that our obsession with modern technology, such as the internet and mobile phones, is not leaving people enough time for spiritual pursuits.
Da Vinci Code director Ron Howard has hinted that he defied a ban on filming in Vatican City churches during the shooting of the prequel Angels and Demons.
(Trailer: ANGELS & DEMONS)
A day after Chancellor Merkel criticized a proposal from Brussels for an EU-wide stimulus package, commentators in the German media are divided about Merkel's can't-do attitude.
It was not exactly the most ambitious stimulus package ever invented, which the European Commission launched this week.
But Germany has now rejected even this mini-stimulus, according to Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
Peer Steinbruck, the finance minister, explicitly rejected any EU initiative on the grounds that Germany would have to pay a quarter of whatever the EU proposes.
An all-party parliamentary report published in Dublin cleared the way for a re-run of the failed Lisbon Treaty referendum in Ireland, which threw the Union into crisis.
The global financial crisis creates new losers each day. So far, though, the EU is looking like a winner.
For many countries along the continent's northern edge, euro-skepticism is a luxury they can no longer afford.
A senior Georgian opposition party figure said today that President Saakashvili and his immediate circle were preparing to flee the country, and had already started transferring money into foreign banks.
He also said Georgian Defense Minister Kezerashvili had transferred $80 million to Israel.
Russia's president has welcomed a decision by the US government against speeding up NATO membership to Georgia and Ukraine.
Dmitry Medvedev said he was "satisfied [that] common sense prevailed" in Washington's decision not to fast-track Tblisi and Kiev through the membership process.
"Whatever the reasons, European pressure or whatever else, the main thing is that they [Washington] no longer push ahead with their previous ferociousness and senselessness."
Iraq's Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has declared 3 days of mourning after the ratification of the 'humiliating' US-Iraq security pact.
Russian Foreign Ministry sources are reporting that Prime Minister Putin has telephoned India's Prime Minister Singh urging him to react to the attacks upon his Mumbai with 'calm' after being informed by Singh that he has invoked India's National Security Act which puts their Nuclear Forces on 'full alert'.
Indian Military Intelligence sources are also reporting to the FSB that the initial 'confessions' of those terrorists apprehended show that they are from Pakistan and had entered into Mumbai with what is being termed a 'strategic attack plan' giving full details of the attack including the security plans and procedures of all hotels targeted in these attacks.
Not being understood by the American people about the attacks upon India is their Bush Administrations long push to have the Indian government and military factions join with them in their attempt to enjoin our World in Total War, and which up until today India has strongly resisted and which after today their own peoples may not allow them to do.
If the worst is to be expected, than our World will see a rapid escalation of hostilities between India and Pakistan leading to nuclear strikes which will destroy the already bankrupt Nation of Pakistan and lead to the 'last buffer' between the West and its goal of South and Central Asia hegemony over the last remaining proven oil and gas riches on Earth to be removed.
If the attacks in Mumbai were carried out by Islamist militants as it appears, the Indian government will have little choice, politically speaking, but to blame them on Pakistan.
That will in turn spark a crisis between the 2 nuclear rivals that will draw the United States into the fray.
(And: INDIA-PAKISTAN TIES CHILL)
As Indian troops cleared the last terrorists from buildings across Mumbai this morning, UK authorities were following up reports on local news channel NDTV that the terrorists included "British citizens of Pakistani origin".
(And: GLOBAL OUTRAGE OVER ATTACKS)
Israel may aid the efforts in Mumbai.
Speaking at the situation assessment held on Thursday in light of the developing crisis in Mumbai, Foreign Affairs Minister Tzipi Livni did not negate the possibility Jerusalem would dispatch aid to the region.
Iran's navy can strike an enemy well beyond its shores and as far away as Bab al-Mandab, the southern entrance to the Red Sea that leads to the Suez Canal, an Iranian naval commander said on Thursday.
"We have now attained the capacity to take our defence capability to the depth of the seas, oceans and the Red Sea and face the enemy at the Bab al-Mandab strait if the enemy should have an evil intention."
Of course there's nothing all that unusual about a spy going to work for a Washington thinktank.
Ex-CIA employees do it all the time: so do all sorts of other spooks, who would otherwise be haunting the world's darkest corners. No big deal.
But what I've never seen, and don't recall ever hearing about, is the spectacle of a spy for a foreign country being hired by any organization that hopes to influence US foreign policy.
The question of whether Barack Obama was actually born in Kenya thus disqualifying him to run as a presidential candidate will not go away.
It is like the little mushrooms that appear every morning under the tree, they keep coming back. What should the President Elect do?
Digital forgery is nothing new and has been around for years. Before this, no one has either been bold and/or dumb enough to take it to such a magnitude in attempting to fool the masses.
Mikhail Gorbachev has urged Barack Obama to "muster his courage" and bring change to the US once he reaches the White House.
Gorbachev said that "America needs its own perestroika" (or restructuring) to rebuild its reputation around the world.
"The entire world felt that America wanted change and was expecting change. America is needed - an America that is strong, democratic and sure of itself - for the entire world, not just for Americans. We are seeing that if it's bad for America, it's bad for us all."
Barack Obama defended his decision to pack his new Cabinet with veteran Washington insiders and former Clinton officials yesterday after a campaign in which he promised change.
There have been mounting concerns, particularly from the liberal wing of his Democratic Party, that Obama has pivoted sharply to the centre-right with his choice of top Cabinet posts.
(And: OBAMASCAM)
The agreement by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to remain at the Pentagon under the incoming Democratic administration is the starkest and most brazen rebuff given by Barack Obama to the tens of millions who voted for him based on the false promise that he would bring "change" to Washington.
In retaining Gates, and thereby embracing the policies of occupation and semi-colonial domination with which he is associated, Obama is dropping any antiwar pretense and emerging openly as the newest commander-in-chief of American imperialism.
In electing Barack Obama, the country traded the foreign policy of the 2nd President Bush for the foreign policy of the 1st President Bush.
What's most striking about Obama's approach to foreign policy is that he is less an idealist than a realist.
The truth about Obama's worldview was hidden in plain sight in his most politically consequential foreign policy speech. Not once but 5 times did Obama declare, "I don't oppose all wars."
The series of terror attacks in Mumbai comes at a sensitive time for the US. President Bush is no longer in a position to lead, and Obama has not yet been given the reins. Still, the attacks represent Obama's first foreign policy test.
Barack Obama and George W. Bush seem to have come away from their study of the Great Depression with similar conclusions.
We are headed either for default on our debts and bankruptcy as a nation, or something less honorable: a quiet cheapening of the debts we have incurred by inflating and destroying the dollar, robbing our creditors of what we owe them and robbing our own people of the value of what they have earned.
And so it has come to this. What would the Founding Fathers think of us now?
The elections, the economy, the world
America's most influential public intellectual, Naom Chomsky, gave a speech to a packed house in Boston on November 24th, his first public address since the US presidential elections.
Xmas kills!...
A worker died after being trampled and a woman miscarried when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island Wal-Mart this morning, witnesses said.
(Cartoons: XMAS CREDIT CRUNCH)
The British government took control of Royal Bank of Scotland today after investors shunned the lender's share sale, paving the way for a larger government role in Britain's banking sector.
A steep fall in eurozone inflation and a rise in the jobless rate has raised hopes that the European Central Bank will cut rates sharply next week.
Black Friday's retail shoppers hunting for holiday bargains won't be enough to stave off what's likely to become the next economic crisis.
Malls from Michigan to Georgia are entering foreclosure, commercial victims of the same events poisoning the housing market.
Hotels in Tucson and Hilton Head also are about to default on their mortgages. That pace is expected to quicken.
"We're probably in the first inning of the commercial mortgage problem."
As we frequently remind it in the GEAB, the global systemic crisis seems to unfold like a spiral.
And it is now the time of company profits to be directly and suddenly affected by the ongoing recession, as they are caught in the crossfire between insolvent consumers and banks in a state of shock.
According to LEAP/E2020, this could be the next tipping point in the global systemic crisis, one likely to bring down the world's entire financial system.
There is only 6 months left at most for global leaders to limit the damage.
The magnitude of the CDS bubble burst will not compare to anything ever experienced in the financial world.
One doesn't need to read beyond the first sentence of a front-page article from the November 26th edition of the New York Times to see more absurdist logic rearing its ugly head.
"The Federal Reserve and the Treasury announced $800 billion in new lending programs on Tuesday, sending a message that they would print as much money as needed to revive the nation's crippled banking system."
Yee ha! Hyperinflation here we come! Little short on spending cash? Print some more!
Balzac's maxim that "behind every great fortune lies a great crime" may yet prove a fitting epitaph for American capitalism.
A recent survey by the Wall Street Journal reveals that CEOs at major US financial and real estate firms converted tens of millions of dollars of overvalued stock into cash prior to the eruption of the current financial crisis, even as many of their corporations approached the precipice.
The Journal's findings underscore the parasitism and criminality of the US financial elite.
Crude oil prices will rally in the near-term, but then investors will see another sharp selloff that will take crude back down to seven-year lows, according to one technical analyst.
Looking at the chart for light, sweet crude, prices will rise to $76 to $80 in the next 2 months. But then another slide is expected.
For the first time in a decade, oil producers are facing a real test of their unity.
As the OPEC cartel meets in Cairo on Saturday, exporters are being pummeled by a triple whammy of lower prices, falling demand and declining revenue.
The group, whose members account for more than 40% of global oil exports, is desperately seeking ways to stop the drop in prices.
One of the top experts on derivatives warns that supermarkets may not be able to borrow against their inventory, and will thus be forced to shut down.
[CFR Opinion Roundup][Newseum][Global Incident Map][Earthweek][Day-Night Map][Tonight's Sky][Moon phase]
The foundations of Western civilization are fast crumbling.
The forces of chaos will continue to play themselves out, regardless of the self-righteous arrogance with which they are opposed by politicians, public opinion polls, and the babblings of journalism-school-trained news "reporters."
Haven't geologists proved from scientific dating methods that the earth is 4.5 billion years old?
Doesn't astronomy prove that the universe must, at least, be billions of years old since it would have required billions of years for light from the nearest stars to reach the earth?
Don't all qualified scientists, including geologists, believe in Darwinian evolution and a billions of years old Earth and universe?
The simple answer is "No".
Both evolutionists and creationists have certain built-in assumptions in interpreting and using scientific data when it comes to the earth's age.
The issue many times comes down to which assumptions are more reasonable.
Venus, Jupiter and a very young Moon
You should have no trouble spotting Venus and Jupiter in your southwest sky. After all, Venus and Jupiter are the brightest celestial bodies to bedeck the heavens – after the sun and moon.
As soon as these planets pop out into the evening twilight – perhaps around 30 minutes after sunset – look for the moon to the lower right of this dazzling pair of planets.
(And: SKYMAP)
[WAR: A crescent Moon ruling with the stars, will make the next day the 1st day of the 9th month.]
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