Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
Those nicknames from the past — God's Rottweiler, the Panzercardinal — don't seem to stick anymore.
After acquiring a reputation as an aggressive, doctrine-enforcing Cardinal, Pope Benedict XVI has surprised many with his gentle manner and his writings on Christian love.
But with the Christmas season upon us, there is growing proof that the 82-year-old Pope is also quite willing to play the part of Scrooge to defend his often rigid view of Church doctrine.
At the heart of liberalism is the Christian image of God, and rediscovering that is the key to overcoming the current crisis of ethics in Europe and the world, says Benedict XVI.
The social, political and economic crisis has an answer, Christian leaders say: the common path toward full union between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.
This was the main point of the homilies of Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I and Cardinal Kasper, the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, during a joint celebration of the feast of St. Andrew on Sunday.
Germany completed the demolition of a communist-era building that doubled as a house of parliament and palace of culture, clearing the site for a replica of the earlier Berlin royal palace.
A proposal by the CDU to constitutionally protect the German language triggered controversy and unease in Germany Tuesday.
They call her "Madame No" in Brussels. But criticism of Chancellor Merkel's handling of the growing economic crisis has increased in Germany as well.
It's been her first real test as chancellor -- and many say she is failing.
German commentators have their doubts about Angela Merkel's wait-and-see attitude towards the economic fallout from the financial crisis.
It's time she started getting specific about what she intends to do stave off recession, newspapers are saying.
German car sales have plunged to the lowest level since reunification almost 20 years ago, increasing pressure on Chancellor Merkel to abandon budget restraint and back plans for an EU-wide rescue package.
Could it be that the former president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel, believes Bohemia (as the Czech Republic used to be known before 1918) is still part of the Habsburg Empire?
Havel is a subject of the Habsburg empire come back to life, a leftover from an ideology long believed to be dead and buried!
I just never realized the Habsburg legacy would still be so strong today.
The debate concerning a joint European stimulus package has led to sharp international tensions.
In particular, Chancellor Merkel has become the focus of criticism for her refusal to support a wide-ranging package of measures aimed at stimulating the economy.
Merkel's stance has met with fierce criticism in the British, French, Italian and American press, and she is also coming under increasing pressure within Germany.
The impact of the economic and financial crisis has undermined the basis for Germany's previous European strategy.
It is proving increasingly difficult to dominate the European Union by peaceful means. As a result, political conflicts between the European powers are intensifying.
With over 6 months to go before the selection of a new European Commission and uncertainty on the Lisbon treaty looming over the process, speculation is in any case mounting over who will take the top jobs in Brussels for the next 5 years.
General elections in Germany in September complicate predictions. If the socialist SPD faction wins, it may put forward the leader of the European Parliament's socialist group, MEP Martin Schulz, as commissioner.
But in the event of a "grand coalition" or a conservative victory, German media have named conservative interior minister Wolfgang Schauble, former Bavaria president Edmund Stoiber, Hesse president Roland Koch, interior ministry official Peter Altmaier and economy ministry official Peter Hintze as candidates.
The EU's police and justice mission will start deploying throughout Kosovo on Dec 9th, including to Serb-controlled areas, EU officials say.
The outgoing US administration still tries to have Georgia and Ukraine involved in NATO in spite of the fact that they are not prepared for the endeavor.
The US Secretary of State visited Europe to speak about the above-mentioned controversial issues and sow discord within the European Union.
Rice's current goal is to split Europe, make European countries wage war in Afghanistan for the American heroine and aggravate Europe's relations with Russia to the maximum.
How should NATO approach Russia? Contrary to Germany, the Baltic countries and Poland want to enlarge the alliance to include Georgia and Ukraine.
With NATO foreign ministers meeting this week, the alliance has hardly ever been so at odds.
NATO foreign ministers led by Germany managed to forestall fast-track membership for Georgia and Ukraine, and likewise reached an agreement to resume limited ties with Russia.
NATO foreign ministers put an end yesterday to the dream of Georgia and Ukraine joining the alliance within the next few years.
Membership of NATO was kicked so far into the grass that Moscow must be wondering what all the fuss was about when it became concerned in April that the 2 former Soviet republics were going to be fast-tracked into the Western alliance.
The navies of Russia and Venezuela on Tuesday began 3 days of joint naval war exercises in the Caribbean Sea, near the US territorial water, marking the first time a Russian fleet entered the region since the end of the Cold War.
Israel wants to strengthen its relations with the EU and change what it calls Europe's "outdated" perception of the Jewish state in the hearts and minds of Europeans, the country's foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, told MEPs on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad warned the EU against this move, citing lack of progress in the Middle East peace process.
Dozens of Jewish settlers went on the rampage against Israeli troops in the West Bank city of Hebron after a rumour spread that the military was about to demolish a disputed apartment block.
Elsewhere in the West Bank, Palestinian residents said that settlers burned animal feed and slashed tyres in what appeared to be part of a broader tactic designed to deter Israeli authorities from dismantling unauthorised settlements, or attempting to rein settlers in.
(Analysis: SETTLERS MAY BE ISRAEL'S TOUGHEST BATTLE)
Lebanese President Suleiman met with Chancellor Merkel to discuss moving forward the Mideast peace process. Germany and Lebanon are working on a pilot project to improve security along Lebanon's border with Syria, Merkel said today.
Many vessels patrol the Gulf of Aden already and the EU is planning to send 10 more warships next month under a centralised British command.
Ships from India and Russia have moved into the area, and Japan is considering sending ships.
The increased militarisation of the oil-rich region represents a major danger to the peoples of the region and the entire world.
Warships from Britain, France, Germany, India, Malaysia, Russia and the US are all currently operating in the region.
The prospect of the world's navies and an assortment of mercenary outfits taking action in the region raises the potential of further conflict in Somalia and possible clashes between the competing forces.
At stake is control of one of the world's most vital sea lanes. Whichever country can claim to have dealt with the pirates will have gained a potential stranglehold over a significant part of world trade.
A bomb exploded in a train coach in India's insurgency-hit northeast on Tuesday, killing at least 3 people and injuring another 29.
While no one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, Sharma said an ethnic insurgent group, Karbi Longri National Liberation Front, fighting for wide autonomy in the state for the past 5 years, was suspected.
The Mumbai massacre comes at a time when the US is about to switch battlefields in its avowedly "generational" war on terrorism, from the Middle East to South Asia.
As we move our forces eastward into Afghanistan and, inevitably, Pakistan, the events in Mumbai light up the geopolitical landscape like lightning at midnight, prefiguring a new and even bigger quagmire than the one we're supposedly leaving behind in Iraq.
Forget the differences between Sunnis and Shi'ites. That's so yesterday.
What we're dealing with now, in the Pakistani-Indian rivalry, is a true war of civilizations, pitting Muslims against Hindus.
"The main motive behind the terrorist attacks, which were orchestrated from outside the region, was to strain relations between Indian and Pakistan."
India's Foreign Minister today said that the deadly attacks on Mumbai were led from inside Pakistan, and said India would act decisively to protect its territorial integrity.
"I understand why Israel is saying that all the options are on the table, but I do think that any armed action or any war would be really a catastrophe. ... A war is only justified in very, very extreme conditions. War is not something that should be easily started and this I mean very seriously."
A familiar coalition of hawks, hardliners, and neoconservatives expects Barack Obama's proposed talks with Iran to fail – and they're already proposing an escalating set of measures instead.
Iran poses the greatest foreign policy challenge to Barack Obama, with Tehran on course to produce a nuclear bomb in the first year of an Obama administration, a coalition of top think-tanks gave warning yesterday.
The warnings came in a report entitled Restoring the Balance. The Middle East strategy for the Obama was drafted by the Council for Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution.
To whom should Homeland Security officials turn when faced with terrorist threats? They should turn to God, according to one state's law.
When Kentucky formed its state Office of Homeland Security in 2006, it listed the department's initial duty as "stressing the dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth."
According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, Homeland Security must proclaim God's protection in its reports.
The office also features a plaque at its Emergency Operations Center declaring: "The safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God."
The Armchair Survivalist believes the nation is falling into chaos, and he wants to help.
He offers practical advice for dealing with riots, wars, natural disasters and food shortages, which he says are imminent because of the worldwide economic meltdown and the incoming Obama administration.
After Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee let a Dec. 1 deadline slip by without responding to Pennsylvania attorney Philip J. Berg's petition for writ of certiorari demanding Obama produce a legitimate birth certificate, the attorney is now filing a motion to stop Obama from taking office in January.
Berg has filed an emergency motion for immediate injunction.
He is asking the court to stop state certification of electors to keep the Electoral College from meeting Dec. 15 and casting votes for Obama.
He is also seeking to postpone the official vote count Jan. 6 until the court reaches a decision on his appeal.
A lawyer playing a major part in a California lawsuit urging officials to prevent the state's 55 Electoral College votes from being recorded for Barack Obama until questions about his citizenship are resolved has written to county clerks around the state, seeking an investigation into a process that has allowed a dead woman to be listed as an official elector.
A constitutional lawyer said were it to be discovered that Obama is not a natural-born US citizen, it would have grave consequences for the nation.
Barack Obama's grandfather was imprisoned and tortured by the British during the violent struggle for Kenyan independence, Obama's Kenyan family has claimed.
Barack Obama has made some major shifts to the Right in his rhetoric on the position of America in the world.
He now sounds as resolutely determined to defend the principle of American global intervention in the name of freedom and national security as most Republicans could have wished.
So the question is: has he always felt this way?
Was his Left-liberal stance during the presidential campaign which seemed to be consistent with his opposition to the Iraq war and to the military surge which succeeded it, just a ruse to seduce a new generation of dissident voters?
Or has he changed his tone in response to the security briefings he will have received as a consequence of being elected?
So what exactly has happened to "change we can believe in"?
(And: BARACKRACY HYPOCRISY)
Dream on if you believe it, and something must be up if Karl Rove says it.
In a November 28 Wall Street Journal op-ed, he called it "a first-rate economic team" while at the same time objecting to possible (not yet announced) stimulus package elements not entirely to be the kinds "conservatives" prefer like tax cuts for the rich.
He nonetheless called Obama's team "reassuring" and hopes it will leave a "market-oriented imprint."
Barack Obama spoke to some 40 governors on Tuesday. Yet in his brief remarks, he presented not a single concrete proposal and made only a few vague references to the social problems engulfing state governments.
Barack Obama is considering appointing his top Mideast adviser, Daniel Kurtzer, as US envoy to the Middle East, a senior Israeli diplomatic source told Israel's Haaretz newspaper.
Kurtzer, a former US ambassador to Israel, long has been seen in Jerusalem as one of the Jewish state's greatest foes in Washington.
He has been identified by Jewish and Israeli leaders, including prime ministers, as biased against Israel and is notorious for urging extreme concessions from the Jewish state.
While Hillary Clinton's nomination to be secretary of state is being scrutinized - and generally welcomed - across the globe, the view in the Middle East is more complicated.
Now Obama must take charge of the CIA, in what is already proving to be one of the more treacherous patches of his transition to the White House.
Among the parallels between the present financial turmoil and the Great Depression of the 1930s, few are more important to understand than the implications of economic upheaval for America's national security.
One lesson from the Depression bears repeating loudly: Economic policy and foreign policy are not two distinct domains. They constitute a strategic nexus whose interconnections we ignore at our peril.
The price of key industrial metals has fallen further over the last 4 months than occurred during the worst years of Great Depression between 1929 and 1933, according to research by Barclays Capital.
The 4th quarter will prove to be "ugly" for Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley with meaningful write-downs as markets continue to be challenging, an analyst at J.P. Morgan Securities said.
The year 2008 witnessed the end of an era on Wall Street.
Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers disappeared. Merrill Lynch is being folded into Bank of America. And Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, with few choices left, have changed their status to become bank holding companies.
Those moves marked the end of the securities firm model that has dominated Wall Street since the Great Depression.
Anglo-Saxon monopoly on global economic and financial governance, is coming to an end
Without a complete overhaul of the system by summer 2009, the failing of the current system and that of the United States at the center, will lead the whole planet to an unprecedented economic, social, political and strategic instability, and more specifically to a breakdown of the global monetary system by summer 2009.
The country's top trends forecaster, who accurately predicted the "panic" of 2008 nearly a year before it unfolded, is now ominously suggesting that next year will come to be known as "the collapse of 2009.″
Having correctly forecast the "Economic 9/11″, he is warning that people should prepare for something much worse in 2009.
The US and the global economy are at risk of a severe stag-deflation, a deadly combination of economic stagnation/recession and deflation.
In the next few months, the flow of macroeconomic and earnings news will be much worse than expected.
The credit crunch will get worse, with deleveraging continuing as hedge funds and other leveraged players are forced to sell assets into illiquid and distressed markets, leading to further cascading falls in prices, other insolvent financial institutions going bust and a few emerging market economies entering a full-blown financial crisis.
The worst is not behind us: 2009 will be a painful year of a global recession, deflation and bankruptcies.
The chairman of China's sovereign wealth fund said that China had no plans for further investments in Western financial institutions, nor did it have any plans to "save" the world through economic policies.
"Right now we do not have the courage to invest in financial institutions because we do not know what problems they may have. China can only save herself because the scale of China is still rather small. If China can do a good job domestically, that is the best thing it can do for the world."
A decline in the Chinese currency's value against the US dollar after months of hovering in a narrow range is threatening to bring the long-simmering issue to full boil as US-China economic talks get under way in Beijing.
The current strength of the dollar is temporary and the US currency risks a hard landing in 2009, according to a team of United Nations economists who foresaw a year ago that a US downturn would bring the global economy to a near standstill.
[CFR Opinion Roundup][Newseum][Global Incident Map][Earthweek][Day-Night Map][Tonight's Sky][Moon phase]
A comet orbiting our Sun may be an interloper from another star system.
A photograph of the surface of Mars showing a mysterious object has prompted a wave of speculation over alien involvement.
(Book: THE MARS MYSTERY)
On Monday, the 3 brightest objects in the night sky converged, producing a triple-conjunction of stunning beauty.
Venus, Jupiter and the crescent Moon crowded into a patch of sky just a few degrees across and wowed observers around the world.
"In the 4th year of King Darius, the word of YAHWEH came to Zechariah on the 4th day of the 9th month..." (Zech 7:1 - 8:23)
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