Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
Il Whore affrontare i suoi clienti!...
Thursday morning in the Sala Regia of the Vatican, Pope Benedict pronounced his traditional annual address to members of the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See.
The Holy See maintains full diplomatic relations with 177 states, with Botswana being this year's latest edition to the list.
And to these 177 states are added the European communities and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, as well as 2 missions of a special character: the mission of the Russian Federation, governed by an ambassador, and the office of the Organization for the Liberation of Palestine.
The Holy See is also represented with permanent observer status before the United Nations, and is a member of 7 UN agencies and organizations, observer in another 8, and either member or observer in 5 regional organizations.
Among the countries that do not have diplomatic relations with the Holy See are China, North Korea, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia.
The billions in risks created by Commerzbank's recent acquisition of Dresdner Bank posed a threat to the financial institution's very existence.
The bank said Thursday it would receive an 10 billion euro bailout from the German government, which would acquire a 25% share in the bank.
Germany is caught in the midst of a gloomy economic winter with the government attempting to hammer together a new stimulus package while a slew of fresh data underscores a deepening recession taking hold in Europe's biggest economy.
A stark series of data released on Thursday certify the grim state of the European economy, with unemployment up, GDP sliding, and both economic sentiment and business climate indicators reaching all-time lows.
Additionally, the Business Climate Indicator survey of industry for the eurozone fell sharply in the last month, reaching its lowest level since 1985.
The East-West energy crisis has benefited a German-Russian scheme to cut out Eastern Europe to secure gas supplies. The European Union will be all the weaker.
Both Moscow and Berlin are using the Urkraine dispute to promote Nord Stream, a controversial gas pipeline that could weaken already shaky European unity on energy.
A senior US diplomat warned that NATO might have to intervene to help alliance members such as Bulgaria and Romania if the crisis drags on.
"If this persists, I think NATO will have to think how to assist allies who suffer."
Hundreds of thousands of homes in Eastern Europe are without heat as the Russia-Ukraine energy crisis and freezing weather continues.
The EU is today expected to dispatch a team of observers to Ukraine to monitor gas flows at the main metering stations for gas arriving from Russia.
The European Commission said today that Russia and Ukraine had reached an agreement to send a monitoring mission to oversee gas deliveries as part of efforts to resolve a bitter dispute over pricing and transit.
The countdown for Ukraine's presidential election, to be held on January 31 2010, has already started.
The much-anticipated electoral process will be decisive due to its deep geopolitical implications. Its result will have a considerable impact on the world's balance of power.
A fierce battle on Ukrainian soil approaches and it will be fought, once again, between pro-Western and pro-Russian forces.
The global financial crisis is wiping out the wealth and political influence of Russia's once-mighty oligarchs. Yesterday's kingmakers are now having to beg the Kremlin for loans.
Seven retired generals were detained Wednesday along with at least 30 others in simultaneous police operations staged in 6 cities as part of the ongoing investigation into Ergenekon, a shady clandestine network of groups and individuals accused of plotting to overthrow the government.
The hardline, opposition Likud party of former Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu is gaining ground amid the fighting in Gaza.
Premier Paranoid Protestant Prophecy Propagandist...
What is it about Israel that makes it the world's pariah state? Only the Bible can explain the mystery behind the supernatural hatred of the Jews.
Nearly everything you've been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Here are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel's attack on the Gaza Strip.
Israel's military and political leadership took many aggressive steps during the ceasefire that escalated a crisis with Hamas, and possibly even provoked Hamas to create a pretext for the assault.
This wasn't a war of "no choice," but rather a very avoidable war in which Israeli actions played the major role in instigating.
Israel has a long history of deliberately using violence and other provocative measures to trigger reactions in order to create a pretext for military action, and to portray its opponents as the aggressors and Israel as the victim.
The military invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israeli Forces bears a direct relation to the control and ownership of strategic offshore gas reserves.
This is a war of conquest. Discovered in 2000, there are extensive gas reserves off the Gaza coastline.
The diplomatic-security cabinet rejected today a UN Security Council cease-fire resolution and ordered the Israel Defense Forces to expand its current ground operation against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip.
The United Nations has accused Israeli forces of evacuating 110 Palestinians into a house in Gaza which they then shelled 24 hours later.
Hamas has announced that its al-Qassam grad rockets have hit a major Israeli airbase near Tel Aviv, which is believed to house nuclear arms.
"Hezbollah is not aware of the rocket attack. When Hezbollah does something, it announces it and has no problem doing so."
Flashback...
The Levant could be the starting point of a major international conflict with global ramifications and which could quickly spin out of control.
Such a conflict could even involve the use of Israeli or American nuclear weapons against Iran and Syria.
A leading Israeli daily suggested yesterday that Turkish officials rejected a request by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to visit Ankara.
"'If she doesn't want to talk about a cease-fire, she should not come,' was the official response," the English-language daily Haaretz said in an article titled "Gaza op has put an end to Israel's honeymoon with Turkey."
Iran has started extensive diplomatic efforts to stop the conflict in the Gaza Strip.
President Ahmadinejad has dispatched 22 envoys to several Asian and European states with the aim of "an immediate stop of Zionists' (Israeli) aggressions and blockade of Gaza."
Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei announced that he would ban Iranians from leaving the country to carry out suicide attacks against Israel.
The ban is an attempt to silence calls by Iran's far right to take a direct role in confronting Israel on its attacks on the Gaza Strip.
As the conflict between Hamas and Israel in Gaza continues, Germany has agreed it will help mediate between them and is sending its top foreign diplomat to get talks started.
Barack Obama is reportedly prepared to open communication with the Islamist organistation Hamas, in a sharp break from George W Bush's policy of isolating the group.
Venezuela expelled Israel's ambassador in Caracas to protest the offensive in Gaza. The move came just hours after President Chavez called the attacks a "holocaust."
Israel's ambassador to Venezuela, Shlomo Cohen, and his staff were given 72 hours to leave the country.
On Monday US Marines raised the Stars and Stripes over America's $700 million embassy in Baghdad.
Actually, the US has built a fortress. At 104 acres, the complex is just 5 acres shy of Vatican City's size. Washington expects to be Iraq's boss, not its friend.
The Indian government launched a diplomatic offensive against Pakistan this week, with a dossier linking the Pakistan-based Islamist organisation Lashkar-i-Taiba to the Mumbai terrorist attacks.
While none of the evidence links the Pakistani government or its agencies to the operation, Indian leaders accused Islamabad of involvement and indicated that military action was not ruled out.
Iran's regime has accused the BBC of plotting to recruit spies and stir a new revolution by launching a Persian-language satellite channel.
William Perry, who headed the Pentagon during a 1994 nuclear standoff with North Korea, predicted on Thursday that Barack Obama will soon face a nuclear crisis with Iran.
"It seems clear that Israel will not sit by idle while Iran takes the final steps toward becoming a nuclear power."
Barack Obama is officially the next president of the US, Congress declared Thursday in fulfilling its centuries-old constitutional duty to certify and tally the electoral college vote from each state.
Barack Obama's campaign officials and transition office repeatedly have rejected reporters' requests for comment on questions raised over his lack of documentation regarding his birth and the resulting concerns over his eligibility to be president.
Now a number of media organizations apparently don't want questions raised either.
The news that Dennis Ross will be appointed the special envoy to Iran – and, more, that he will function as a Middle East "czar" – is "staggeringly bad news," as Philip Weiss so trenchantly put it.
The appointment, Weiss avers, is "illustrative of the fact that neoconservatism by one of its more amenable names is still in our lives, and the Israel lobby is a big component of the Establishment. ... A friend says that Dennis Ross in Arabic means, &#@! you!"
Come off it, you Obama-ites – there won't be any change in our foreign policy, except for the worse. Just remember: you were warned.
I have to admit I love the excitement of the Chicago mob's takeover of the White House.
Barack Obama is rebuilding the Arkansas mafia before our eyes and, just to up the ante, he's giving the keys to the White House to the Chicago Political Machine.
A new study from the National Academy of Sciences outlines grim possibilities on Earth for a worst-case scenario solar storm.
Damage to power grids and other communications systems could be catastrophic, the scientists conclude, with effects leading to a potential loss of governmental control of the situation.
The worst storms can knock out power grids by inducing currents that melt transformers.
Modern power grids are so interconnected that a big space storm — the type expected to occur about once a century — could cause a cascade of failures that would sweep across the US, cutting power to 130 million people or more in this country alone, the new report concludes.
Following Northcom's denial that US Army combat teams would be used to deal with "civil unrest" after the announcement that thousands of active duty military personnel were being moved inside the United States, an Army.com report now concedes that more than 400 Marines assigned to one unit includes a "security force" that would operate within the homeland.
The Daily WAR to the rescue!...
The American print and TV media have never been very good. These days they are horrible.
If people intend to be informed, they must turn to foreign news broadcasts, to Internet sites, to foreign newspapers available on the Internet, or to alternative newspapers.
A person who sits in front of Murdoch's Fox "News" or CNN or who reads the New York Times is simply being brainwashed with propaganda.
Vice-President Dick Cheney said Thursday that President Bush has no need to apologize for not foreseeing the economic crisis.
"I don't think he needs to apologize. I think what he needed to do is take bold, aggressive action and he has. I don't think anybody saw it coming."
[WAR: No one? This newsblog has been warning readers for years this was coming.]
America's grim fiscal outlook could either be a nightmare or an opportunity for Barack Obama.
In his first major policy speech, Barack Obama on Thursday pushed for speedy passage of his economic stimulus plan, painting a dire picture of the consequences should it fail to be rapidly implemented.
From one standpoint, the speech was a remarkable, if backhanded, acknowledgment of the failure of capitalist market economics and the prospect of a full-blown depression.
But Obama failed to address the global dimensions of the crisis or deal at any level with the deep-seated structural contradictions of the US and world economy.
Obama's proposed solution — the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan — will allocate hundreds of billions of dollars in public funds, the bulk of which will flow into the coffers of the very banks and corporations that reaped massive profits from the policies that precipitated the crash of 2008.
The head of a congressional panel overseeing the $700 billion bailout program said today that lawmakers need to "take a very hard look" at how banks have used the money.
A new document cited an Associated Press investigation that found none of the banks was willing to disclose what they were doing with hundreds of billions of dollars distributed through direct injections of federal money.
Bill Gross is managing director of the world's largest bond fund, Pimco, which manages some $790 Billion in assets. Pimco also is managing the commercial-paper assets for the Federal Reserve as part of the government's Commercial Paper Funding Facility program. As such, Pimco is in many ways an insider.
In his January 2009 Investment Outlook, Gross writes that it is not only Madoff who ran a Ponzi scheme, but the entire U.S. economy is a Ponzi-like scheme. He calls it "our Ponzi-style economy".
This may be obvious to many of us. But the fact that Gross said it is news.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission announced that a new government regulation scheduled to take effect next month will not force thrift and consignment stores to adhere to strict lead and phthalate testing or declare their merchandise hazardous material.
However, the law still affects small businesses that sell new items.
Not only have home prices initiated a freefall in a growing number of countries, but commercial real-estate is now suffering like home real estate has.
Venezuela reduced oil exports to the US, China and Europe as part of an OPEC output cut designed to bolster prices.
[CFR Opinion Roundup][Newseum][Global Incident Map][Earthweek][Day-Night Map][Tonight's Sky][Moon phase]
What do ethicists have to say about the clash of civilizations? Read a report from a recent meeting of the Society of Christian Ethics.
Each time an international union has been tried, those pesky nations and their interests have dashed it all to pieces. And it is happening again.
Cracks are appearing in the foundations of the present international system. Both of its main pilings — economic prosperity and peaceful relations — have been undermined to the point that the whole structure faces collapse.
As Lord Palmerston clearly implied, when national interests are at stake, nations have a solemn duty to see to their own first — and both their allies and enemies be hanged!
In reality only a rudimentary framework of a truly global system exists. While there is interconnectivity and cooperation, the world's sovereign nations are the system's players, each looking out for their own interests, using their own currencies, levying their own taxes, charging their own tariffs, and making their own deals.
Even within the EU, the international system began to splinter along nationalistic lines.
The world is devolving, as it were, into a dangerous, multi-polar configuration.
A new Cold War — head-to-head, non-military confrontation among the world's most powerful nations — seems to be brewing. Hostilities of this kind can quickly turn into shooting wars.
In this vein, we would do well to remember Revelation 17 and 18, which contain several references to kings and nations, not cooperative international bodies.
Perhaps the world is shaping up to fulfill these long-awaited prophecies.
[WAR: As I've been saying for years, there are no prophecies about a one-world government, nor even a "New World Order" -- none! Even Yahshua stated that in this end-time, "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom." (Mark 13:8 / Luke 21:10 / Mat 24:7)]
We've all asked the question from the age of 2. Why did the universe have a beginning but not God?
If God didn't have a beginning why should the universe have a beginning. Couldn't the universe just have always existed? Why a need for God?
This Saturday night, another perigee Moon is coming. It's the biggest full Moon of 2009, almost identical to the one that impressed onlookers last month.
"In the 10th year, in the 10th month on the 12th day, the word of YAHWEH came to me:..." (EZEKIEL 29:1-16)
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