Sunday

The Daily WAR (10-06)

Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
 
 
 
    The crowds turning out for Pope Benedict XVI's preachings and blessings at the Vatican are dwindling fast as the dour pontiff pays the price for his lack of charisma and visibility compared with John Paul II.
    The figures are expected to drop further as the economic downturn hits global travel.
    "I don't think he'll tear his hair out. The Pope isn't a celebrity. His problem is the clarity of his teaching – not how many listen, but how many remember the message."
 
    The BBC has been allowed into the Pope's observatory at his home outside Rome.
 
 
 
    The parties in Chancellor Merkel's government clashed today over new measures to shield Europe's largest economy from what threatens to be its deepest recession since WW2.
    Bowing to pressure from conservative allies at home and partners in Europe, Merkel has now acknowledged the need for a new package, but faces the daunting challenge of uniting her left-right 'grand coalition' around a common approach.
    Her conservative allies, the Christian Social Union, have vowed to reject any package that does not include tax cuts.
    But Merkel now looks likely to agree to tax relief sooner to appease the CSU allies and avoid the impression she is politicising her response to the economic crisis.
    She is due to meet CSU leader Seehofer this evening in the Chancellery to try to agree a common position on the stimulus package before reconvening on Monday afternoon to hammer out an agreement with the SPD.
 
    The global reverberations of the financial crisis have severely shaken the stock portfolios of Germany's richest families. Some $55 billion have been lost by the country's wealthiest people.
 
 
 
    Plans to create a museum celebrating the "common historical memory" of the European Union have run into controversy over attempts to agree an account of key events including WW2.
    The creation of the museum goes hand in hand with moves by Germany and France to create a "European history book", to be taught in all schools across the EU to foster a common cultural identity.
    But moves to define a "common European history" have been dogged by controversy and deep political differences over events including WW2 and the role of the US in Europe.
    The project to "promote an awareness of European identity" is the brainchild of Hans-Gert Poettering, President of the European Parliament and a Federalist German Christian Democrat.
 
    Greek defence officials granted permission to the Russian navy for its aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov to use Athens-controlled airspace for "training missions" over the course of the next week. The war games will take place south of the Greek islands of Rhodes and Crete.
 
    Russia accused Ukraine of stealing gas destined for Europe today as the 2 countries became further entrenched in a payment dispute. Shortfalls were registered across the Balkans, as Europe began to feel the effects of the row which culminated in Moscow cutting supplies on Thursday.
 
    Today, the winds of change in Russia are blowing again - harsh winds that may yet turn into a storm.
 
 
 
    Israel has tried to take the initiative in the propaganda war over Gaza but, in one important instance, its version has been seriously challenged. The incident raises the question of how to interpret video taken from the air.
 
    Few in the media even recognize how they are being manipulated and spun on this war by an organ of state power, not a mere advocacy group. Their propaganda has become our propaganda smoothly infiltrated into our news.
 
    The aerial bombings and the ongoing ground invasion of Gaza by Israeli ground forces must be analysed in a historical context.
    Operation "Cast Lead" is a carefully planned undertaking, which is part of a broader military-intelligence agenda first formulated by the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001.
    The broader question is whether Israel in consultation with Washington is intent upon triggering a wider war.
    Mass expulsion could occur at some later stage of the ground invasion, were the Israelis to open up Gaza's borders to allow for an exodus of population.
 
    Fears of a huminatarian crisis in the Gaza Strip grew on Friday as Israel pounded the area for the 7th day. Sewage flooded the streets when fuel for pumps began to run out because of the Israeli blockade.
    In Damascus, the exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal warned Israel that it faced a "black destiny" if it decided to launch a ground offensive. "You will soon find out that Gaza is the wrath of the God."
 
    Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak says Tel Aviv's wide-ranging ground offensive in the Gaza Strip will be "full of surprises," and predicted a long and difficult operation.
 
    Medics tell Press TV they have found traces of depleted uranium in some Gazan residents wounded in Israel's ground offensive.
 
    As international protests against the offensive in the Gaza Strip continue, Israel also faced a fresh round of condemnations from world leaders.
    Harsh remarks from across the world followed on the heels of the UN Security Council's failure to issue a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire despite hours of closed-door talks on Saturday.
 
    Egypt on Saturday night strongly condemned Israel for launching its ground operation in the Gaza Strip earlier in the evening.
    In a presidential statement, Egypt called on Israel to stop its attacks against Gaza "immediately," warning Israel of the consequences of sending ground troops into Gaza.
 
    Syrian President Assad on Saturday met Iran's Supreme National Security Council chief to discuss the situation in the Gaza Strip.
    They discussed the "consequences on security and stability in the region of the Israel's aggression continuing" and "ways Islamic countries can force Israel to immediately stop the massacres against the Palestinian people, end the Gaza blockade and open the crossing points."
 
    Syrian President Assad and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev Saturday reviewed in a telephone conversation the "grave situation" in Gaza due to the continued Israeli aggression.
 
    As Israeli tanks rolled into Gaza on Saturday, the European Union failed to agree on a common approach to the latest escalation.
 
    Amid a scathing attack today from the Arab League, several European diplomats and leaders were readying to travel to the Mideast in a bid to push for a ceasefire after Israel's military incursion into the Gaza Strip.
 
    Israel doesn't seem to get that superior power doesn't buy security as long as the adversary's grievance lingers. The enemy just gets more desperate and resorts to terrorism.
    Israeli government policy will make the long-term security situation worse for the Israeli people – with the US subsidizing and giving the green light to such irresponsible behavior.
    Same stuff, different year.
 
    Rabbi Dr. Michael Ben-Ari thinks the leaders of Israel should follow King David's advice from Psalm 18:37 regarding Gaza: "I will chase my enemies and catch up to them and I shall not return until I annihilate them."
    "This should be the slogan of every leader and IDF commander," he said. "The enemy must know that whoever raises his hand on Israel, we will teach him a lesson and annihilate him as well as all his helpers and supporters, and only thus will we take out their will to fire missiles at us."
 
    Roseanne Barr, herself of Jewish ancestry, has nonetheless blasted Israel for its recent attacks on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, calling Israel a "Nazi state" bent on torturing "the Jewish soul."
    Her venom over the attacks, however, has not been reserved only for the Israeli state, but stings American Christians, too.
    "This is what the pro-life, right-wing, neo-con, evangelical, Zionist, Bible-banging Americans really mean when they say: 'America is a Christian nation,' or when they say: 'Israel must defend itself,' or when they say: 'The Bible is the Word of God.'" (pic caption).
    "I am sick of Israel and I am sick of Zionists. They are propped up by evangelical Christians who cannot wait for the Arabs to kill them so that their genocidal war god whom they misname Jesus can come back."
    Raised in a family of both Jewish and Mormon faiths, Barr now claims on her website, "I am a kabbalist, as was Jesus Christ."
 
    As world leaders and international organizations rush to rescue Hamas, Israel faces complex battlefield challenges - while fearing a stab in the back from the incoming Obama administration.
    Israel's leaders are asking themselves 2 questions:
    Is the cost of sending sufficient ground forces into Gaza just too high?
    And will Obama undercut Israel's counterterror offensive before its goals have been reached?
    As government leaders and generals in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv weigh the question of whether or not to send tanks into Gaza's streets, they hear the clock ticking.
    [WAR: The solution for Israel is easy: Keep Bush in office by making sure Obama doesn't make it to inauguration day...]
 
    The Bush administration's infatuation with presidential power has finally pushed the country over a constitutional precipice. As of New Year's Day, ongoing combat in Iraq is illegal under US law.
    Bush allowed the UN mandate to expire on December 31 without requesting a renewal. At precisely 1 second after midnight, Congress' authorization of the war expired along with this mandate.
 
    The Russian Ambassador to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, once told his British counterpart that NATO was making all the same mistakes that the Soviet army did in the country in the 1980s.
    "The Soviet Union tried to bring socialism to Afghanistan. Unfortunately, you are trying to do the same with democracy."
 
    A month-long operation by British, Afghan and coalition forces saw fierce close-quarter combat.
 
    Sources in China are eager not to call Pakistan any culprit. The shadow ISI may have received direct help and intelligence from Chinese secret military intelligence in carrying out the Mumbai massacre.
 
 
 
    The following is a Press TV interview with Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki conducted on the New Year and ahead of his visit to Iran.
 
    As 2009 dawns, there is some good news.
    For example, Bonkers Bolton is no longer, officially, in a position to precipitate an illegal attack by the Bush-Cheney Administration on certain Iranian facilities.
    Having returned to his civilian perch at the American Enterprise Institute, Bolton is now reduced to attempting, unofficially, to precipitate an illegal attack by someone – anyone – on those Iranian facilities.
    Okay, the rest of the world is in Iran's corner on this issue.
    So, the question is what will happen if the paranoid Israelis attack Iran and "we" are viewed as having – as Bonkers Bolton urges – enabled them?
 
 
 
    The much criticized - and usually with good reason - US news media missed or underreported a lot of big stories in 2008.
 
    Charges that Barack Obama is not a natural born citizen of the US and, therefore, constitutionally ineligible to serve as president top the list of the 10 most "spiked" or underreported stories of the last year, according to an annual WND survey.
 
Paranoid Protestant Propaganda Poop...
    Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, announced at his staff's annual prayer retreat that God told him Americans would embrace socialism in 2009 "in order to relieve their pain" and that the economy would rebound under an Obama administration.
    "The Lord said the economy of your nation will recover. The steps taken will lead to a dramatic increase in the power of government.
    "The people will welcome socialism in order to relieve their pain. Nothing will stand in the way of a plan by Obama to restructure the economy in the same fashion as the New Deal in the '30s.
    "Cast off the gloom and the doom, because things are getting ready to turn around. The Lord said the dollar is going to go down dramatically.
    "If I'm hearing him right, gold will go to about $1900 dollars an ounce and oil to $300 a barrel."
 
 
 
    Governors of 5 US states urged the federal government to provide $1 trillion in aid to the country's 50 states to help pay for education, welfare and infrastructure as states struggle with steep budget deficits amid a deepening recession.
 
    The US economy probably lost more jobs in 2008 than in any year since the end of WW2 as firings rippled from homebuilders and automakers to banks and retailers, a government report may show this week.
 
    Detroit has been given a brief reprieve, but the threat of bankruptcy still looms.
 
Hold on while I get some Kleenex...
    Billionaire investor Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway slumped 32% last year, the worst performance in more than 3 decades, as the US recession forced down the value of the firm's equity holdings and derivative bets.
 
    What is the difference between a recession and a depression?
 
    The riots in Greece last month show what happens in countries where you can't vote to change the economic policy.
    Taking to the streets is the only recourse open to nations that can't devalue, and where the burden of debt is suffocating the economy.
    Exports from the eurozone are cripplingly expensive.
    Before too long, there is going to be chaos in the eurozone, mark my words.
    The confrontation between rhetoric [COG "prophets"] and reality [WAR!] cannot be long delayed.
    The bending of those rules cannot long escape the currency markets. They have picked off sterling and the dollar – the time cannot be far off when the short sellers go after the euro.
    For a start, the ECB's macho stance relies on Germany's willingness to be, effectively, the lender of last resort for the ECB. Germany has already shown a readiness to operate a freelance economic and financial policy when the going gets tough.
    If the ECB and Brussels have to manage meltdown on several fronts at once, they will fail.
    The demise of the euro is being made more certain each day that the political reality of its members is ignored, and with every breach of the rules to allow unsuitable economies to remain part of it.
    When the secret does get out, the fall will be swift, ugly and contagious. But that cloud, like all others, will have a silver lining. It won't just make things cheaper on the Costas: it could well signal THE COLLAPSE OF THE WHOLE EXPERIMENT FOR THE EUROPEAN SUPERSTATE ITSELF.
 
    The news from Japan, China, and the Pacific tigers has moved from awful to calamitous since the global industrial system snapped in October.
    A raw reality is being laid bare. The mercantilist export model of the East is proving dangerously geared to the debt-driven excesses of the West.
    As we go down, they go down too. Some are going down even harder.
    The point is that this experiment has now blown up. Whether or not we slam straight into a global depression depends on how we – East, West, all of us – handle this.
 
    Manufacturing in the US is collapsing, with a key index falling to its lowest level in 20 years on Friday. Other figures released show a downturn in production throughout the world.
    The manufacturing index figures open 2009 with a sign of what is to come: a global economic slump on a scale not seen since the 1930s.
 
    Banks themselves are involved in a sort of Ponzi scheme, one that has been perpetuated for hundreds of years.
    What distinguishes the legal scheme known as "fractional reserve" lending from the illegal schemes of Bernie Madoff and his ilk is that the bankers' scheme is protected by government charter and backstopped with government funds.
 
 
 
    The swarm of more than 500 tremors is the largest series of back-to-back quakes to hit the area in years.
    "It's not business as usual. This is a large earthquake swarm, and we've recorded several hundred. We are paying careful attention. This is an important sequence."
 
    We were watching the sunset at Key West, FL on New Years Eve, and saw this launch...
 
    Was it a meteor falling from space? Officials think that might be what residents saw shooting through the Alaska sky near Tok on Monday afternoon.
    A tremendous explosion, like a sonic boom, drew some people outside, where they watched irregular contrails scribe a path in a clear sky.
    Turning her eyes to the sky, Olding saw the oddest contrail. "It was just like somebody took a pen and made a white cloud that went up and down and up and down and squiggly."
 
A timely look at the problems of clocks and calendars
    If it is any consolation, tinkering with time is something our forebears once had to endure with becoming fortitude.
    Nor was it a matter of the occasional leap second, rather the "loss" of 11 days. When Britain belatedly adopted the Gregorian calendar, the day after September 2, 1752, was September 14.
    The Council of Nicaea in 325AD had established the Julian calendar across Christendom. Unfortunately, its calculations were out by 11 minutes a year.
    This had added up to 10 days [Rev 2:10] by the 16th century. In order to bring the commemoration of Easter back into line, Pope Gregory XIII approved [decreed!] a more accurate calendar in 1582. It was adopted by Europe's Catholic countries.
    However, papal endorsement only aroused instinctive Protestant suspicion.
    More seriously, changing the calendar created all sorts of ... problems that were not easily unscrambled.
 
 
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