Sunday

The Daily WAR (10-20)

Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
 
 
 
Prostituzione online...
The Vatican will soon have its own channel on the video sharing site YouTube where the Catholic faithful or the curious will be able to see Pope Benedict or Church events, a Vatican source said on Saturday.
 
    Build relationships with the state authorities so as to enable Christians to better fulfill their mission, Benedict XVI urged Iranian Church leaders.
    The Pope said this today to the members of the episcopal conference of Iran, in Rome for their five-yearly visit.
    He recognized "the richness of unity in the diversity that exists" in the Church in Iran, which includes 3 communities: Armenian, Chaldean and Latin.
    Christians and other non-Muslim religions make up only about 2% of Iran's population of nearly 66 million. The nation has 6 dioceses or archdioceses.
 
    There are so many failed efforts to achieve peace in the Middle East because there is a lack of political will to succeed, says the Holy See.
 
    [WAR: They can argue all they want, but they'll never get it right. Why? Because all (100%) of Christianity is anti-Messiah -- believing in their pagan God-man.]
 
 
 
    In 2003, before her conservative party chose Angela Merkel to run for chancellor, she gave a seminal speech in the eastern city of Leipzig. There, she espoused the virtues of the free market, of competition, of a state cut down to size.
    The speech galvanized the ranks of her party, the Christian Democratic Union. Merkel stuck with her philosophy until the 2005 elections, when she tested it on the public.
    It was not popular: voters so disliked the idea of Germany's conservatives abandoning their special identity, in which the state would always provide a social safety net for the weak, that Merkel barely eked out victory and has since been forced to govern in an awkward coalition with the left.
    Merkel has ditched her commitment to tight budgets and fiscal rectitude in favor of state intervention and a dose of populism.
    Among German conservatives, this principle is core to the social-oriented, Roman Catholic wing of the Christian Democrats, and permeated their ranks during the 41 years of West Germany. This wing remains powerful - and Merkel has apparently taken notice.
    The wing that has emerged as the most successful is the Katholische Soziallehre, or CATHOLIC SOCIAL DOCTRINE -- led by Jürgen Rüttgers, state premier of North-Rhine Westphalia, the biggest of Germany's 16 states, and his minister for labor, health and social affairs, Karl-Josef Laumann.
 
    The imploding economy casts a grim shadow over German elections in 2009.
 
    Germans in the state of Hesse went to the polls today in a regional election that marks the start of an important political year for Chancellor Merkel.
    Hesse, one of Germany's most prosperous states where the banking centre of Frankfurt is located, has been administered by a caretaker government since inconclusive elections in January 2008.
 
    Bavaria has demanded that a British publishing company stop reprinting Nazi-period newspapers and recall released copies. The state finance ministry says Bavaria has sole possession of the copyrights.
 
    The participation by the state in one of Germany's biggest credit institutions marks a political turning point. Up to now the government has always rejected any state participation in a major private bank.
    The participation by the state in these banks means a further consolidation of the interests of the financial elite and the policy of the German government. This applies to both domestic and foreign policy.
 
    Germans are more worried about the future than their European neighbors, reveals the latest Eurobarometer survey.
 
    Germany has been threatened with attacks for its presence in Afghanistan in a video released yesterday.
    In the 30 minute Video message, a man says the Germans are "gullible and naive" if they thought they could "escape unscathed when they are the third occupation force in Afghanistan."
    "Time is running out for the Germans. I say to the German people 'arise and become just again'."
 
    It's a big night for Russian Prime Minister Putin. The former KGB officer will return to his old Dresden haunt for the Semper Opera Ball.
    There, the man who just turned off natural gas supplies to half of Europe will receive a medal of honor -- handed to him by a man with a communist past of his own.
 
 
 
    Events are moving fast in Europe.
    A great ring of EU states stretching from Eastern Europe down across Mare Nostrum to the Celtic fringe are either in a 1930s depression already or soon will be.
    Greece's social fabric is unravelling before the pain begins, which bodes ill.
    Each is a victim of ill-judged economic policies foisted upon them by elites in thrall to Europe's monetary project – either in EMU or preparing to join – and each is trapped.
    EMU-land has become a Völker-Kerker – a "prison of nations," to borrow from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
    Fixed exchange systems – and EMU is just a glorified version – rupture suddenly.
    Don't expect tremors before an earthquake – and there is no fault line of greater historic violence than the crunching plates where Latin Europe meets Teutonia.
    This is a dangerous game. It stores up "roll-over risk" for later in the year. Hedge funds are circling.
    Traders suspect that investors are dumping their Club Med and Irish debt immediately on the European Central Bank in "repo" actions.
    In other words, the ECB is already providing a stealth bail-out for Europe's governments – though secrecy veils all.
    An EU debt union is being created, in breach of EU law. Liabilities are being shifted quietly on to German taxpayers.
    What happens when Germany's hard-working citizens find out?
 
    Violent political protests sweeping parts of Eastern Europe spread Friday to Lithuania. The violence followed similar riots this week in Bulgaria and Latvia amid a wave of discontent over economic woes, difficult reforms and government corruption.
 
    Russia injects new fizz into the European Union's continuing debate over energy policy.
 
    Prime Minister Putin of Russia presented a new way to solve the dispute with Ukraine that has left several European countries with scant heat and energy.
    The proposal, involving leading European energy companies working with Russia's Gazprom, won support from Germany and could finally break 2 weeks of deadlock.
    Given his authority, and the close ties of the European firms he named to Gazprom, the plan may work where efforts brokered by the European Union have so far failed.
    Russia has often made plain its preference for dealing with Europe's big powers and companies rather than the EU.
 
 
 
    The UN diplomatic corps was astonished when the US abstained on the 14-0 resolution Rice had crafted and claimed her country supported. Arab diplomats say Rice promised them she would vote for it.
    Public gloating by an Israeli prime minister that he can order a US president off a podium and instruct him to reverse and humiliate his secretary of state may cause even Ehud's poodle to rise up on its hind legs one day and bite its master.
 
    Israeli Foreign Minister Livni had a testy press conference Friday in Washington, DC. From the starting moments of the press conference, Livni was beset by a less-than friendly barrage of questions.
 
    A high-level Iranian cleric has called for the shooting of Israeli Foreign Minister Livni in a speech before worshippers, it was reported Saturday.
    Ayatollah Jannati said during Friday prayers that he wanted someone to shoot Livni. "Every time the picture of this woman is shown, I really wish that somebody would expend a bullet on her."
    Jannati is the head of the powerful hardline Iranian Council of Guardians which ensures the government remains true to the principles of the Islamic revolution.
    Jannati also criticized Barack Obama during his sermon. "The world is on a slope of collapse. One is shocked when a president (Obama) sits, smiles and says 'my concern is to find a dog for my daughter.' Shame on you and those who voted for you."
 
    The West has come to view Muslim militancy as one of its biggest threats in the 21st century, but for many Arab countries including Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia the same threat has existed for much longer.
 
    Egypt has invited several world leaders for talks today on the violence in Gaza after signs Israel may halt its military campaign in the coastal enclave.
 
    Israel should be barred from the United Nations while it ignores the organization's calls to stop fighting in Gaza, Turkey's prime minister said, urging the world not to turn a blind eye to Israel's "savagery."
    "How is such a country, which totally ignores and does not implement resolutions of the UN Security Council, allowed to enter through the gates of the UN?"
 
    This is a war against the Palestinians of Gaza, and less directly those in the West Bank, designed primarily to crush their political rights and their hopes of statehood.
 
    Gaza, one of the world's most impoverished strips of land, has been plunged deeper into the abyss by Israel's 3-week war, which has reduced vaste swathes of the territory to rubble.
 
    Israel declared an end to its first war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip today, but few think it will be the last.
    Determined to deny the Islamist group any gains from the 22-day conflict, Israel opted for a unilateral ceasefire that leaves largely unsettled the issues at the heart of the conflict -- Israel's blockade and Hamas's future role.
 
    Hamas and Israel have exchanged further attacks in Gaza, just hours after the declaration of a ceasefire.
    Israeli Prime Minister Olmert admitted the ceasefire was fragile and was being reassessed on minute by minute basis.
 
    In the Middle East, it is widely believed that the war against Gaza is an extension of the 2006 war against Lebanon. Without question, the war in the Gaza Strip is a part of the same conflict.
    Prime Minister Olmert told President Sarkozy, in so many words, during his visit to Tel Aviv in early January that today Israel was attacking Hamas in the Gaza Strip and that tomorrow it would be fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon.
    Lebanon is still in the cross-hairs. Israel is searching for a justification or a pretext to launch another war against Lebanon.
 
    Israel's bloody offensive in Gaza may be drawing to a close but there were growing fears that a new conflict may be looming with Hamas's ally in Lebanon, Hezbollah.
    Nearly a year after suspected Israeli agents assassinated the group's military commander, sources on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border predict renewed conflict.
    Hezbollah has vowed to avenge his death -- and with the first anniversary coming up (Feb 13), Israel fears an imminent attack.
 
    It appears Israel is hell-bent on fulfilling Samuel Huntington's "Clash of the Civilizations" theory in which he argued that a war between Islam and the West is inevitable.
    The worry for many now is the aftermath of the Gaza massacres.
 
Foreign Affairs flashback...
    Summary: World politics is entering a new phase, in which the great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of international conflict will be cultural.
    Civilizations-the highest cultural groupings of people-are differentiated from each other by religion, history, language and tradition. These divisions are deep and increasing in importance.
    From Yugoslavia to the Middle East to Central Asia, the fault lines of civilizations are the battle lines of the future.
    In this emerging era of cultural conflict the United States must forge alliances with similar cultures and spread its values wherever possible.
    With alien civilizations the West must be accommodating if possible, but confrontational if necessary.
    In the final analysis, however, all civilizations will have to learn to tolerate each other.
 
    A suicide car bomb attack outside the German embassy in Kabul has killed at least 4 Afghan civilians and injured 5 American soldiers.
    A Taliban spokesman said the suicide bomber had been targeting German soldiers. "The Germans have forces in the north of Afghanistan and they are involved in the killing of innocent Afghans. The Taliban will target all those countries who have forces in Afghanistan."
 
    The North Korean military declared an "all-out confrontational posture" against South Korea on Saturday as an American scholar said he was told by officials in North Korea that it had "weaponized" 30.8 kilograms of plutonium.
 
 
 
    Georgia's President Saakashvili is involved in high level negotiations with members of the US government on the construction of American military bases in the South Caucasian country, according to a representative of a Georgian opposition party.
    Discussions concerning American bases in Georgia will also bring to the surface again the possibility of Washington launching pre-emptive air strikes against Iran.
 
 
 
    A new survey of denominational loyalty reports that churchgoing Catholics are significantly less likely than churchgoing Protestants to change denominations.
    According to the survey results, denominational loyalty does not vary significantly by gender, household income, age, or type of community. It does vary by race or ethnicity and by region of the United States.
    Hispanic churchgoers, who are majority Catholic, are the most intensely loyal to their denomination. African-Americans reportedly have the least denominational loyalty.
    Denominational loyalty is highest in the Northeast US, where Catholicism is more common than elsewhere in the country. Such loyalty is lowest in the South, where Catholicism is less common.
 
    Officials at Occidental College in Los Angeles have been served with a demand to produce records concerning Barack Obama's attendance there during the 1980s, because they could document whether he was attending as a foreign national – in 1 of 3 fronts now established by those contesting the president-elect's constitutional eligibility for the Oval Office.
    The Supreme Court and Congress also both are being challenged to address the worries that Obama doesn't meet the requirements of the Constitution that the president be a "natural born" citizen.
 
    Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Barack Obama had the "stench" of President Bush and was at risk of being killed if he tries to change the American "empire."
    "I hope I am wrong, but I believe Obama brings the same stench, to not say another word. If Obama as president of the United States does not obey the orders of the empire, they will kill him, like they killed Kennedy, like they killed Martin Luther King, or Lincoln."
 
    A man has been arrested for threatening to assassinate Barack Obama, saying he appointed Jews in Key posts.
    "I have decided I will assassinate Barack Obama. It's really nothing personal about the man … But I know it's for the country's own good that I do this. It's not because I'm racist that I will kill Barack, it's because I can no longer allow the Jewish parasites to bully their way into making the American people submit to their evil ways."
 
Sodom on the Potomac...
     A Washington, DC, inaugural week event that originally was described in an e-mail as a "pig sex" event has been confirmed by a homosexual publication as opponents ask the public health department to investigate the threats from the sex activities that apparently will take place.
 
    Barack Obama's swearing-in Tuesday will incorporate several elements out of America's Masonic past.
    Although it became fabulously popular in America, at one time encompassing 10% of the population, Pope Clement XII condemned Freemasonry in 1738 as heretical.
    The latest pronouncement was issued in 1983 by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger - now Pope Benedict XVI - who called Masonic practices "irreconcilable" with Catholic doctrine.
 
    Three days before the inauguration, the distinctions have largely been effaced between the outgoing and incoming administrations.
    Far more decisive than these illusions are the policies of the Obama administration.
    There is ample reason to believe that popular opposition to Obama will grow rapidly, and that anger and outrage over the gross deception involved in the electoral process will add fuel to the fire.
    The Obama administration, like that of Bush, will defend the interests of the corporate elite against the working people, and of American imperialism against the world.
 
    Barack Obama's victory in November demonstrated, to the surprise of many Americans and much of the world, that Americans were ready to see a black man as president.
    Of course, we had seen several black presidents already, not in the real White House but in the virtual America of movies and television.
    The presidencies of James Earl Jones in "The Man," Morgan Freeman in "Deep Impact," Chris Rock in "Head of State" and Dennis Haysbert in "24" helped us imagine Obama's transformative breakthrough before it occurred.
    In a modest way, they also hastened its arrival.
    [WAR: This is exactly what I told my father a couple of weeks ago. And there's also the many hero roles played by Will Smith and Denzel Washington.]
 
    Barack Obama will play down Britain's importance and cast it as merely "one of the crowd" of countries with which America has a special relationship, sources close to the incoming president have warned.
    Foreign Office officials admit that they feel "threatened" by Obama's plans to "flirt" with others and they know that the British influence may seem to wane in Washington as Obama looks elsewhere to forge friendships and alliances on the world stage.
 
    Newly uncovered audio from recordings of NORAD staff responding to the airliner hijackings on 9/11 may provide more evidence to suggest air defense officials were under the impression that the attacks were part of ongoing drills and exercises.
 
 
 
    Most Americans have been told by the Bush administration and the talking heads that things will get worse for a couple of months, but then the economy will start to turn around and improve in the 2nd half of 2009 after Bushco and Obamaco's bailout and stimulus programs kick in.
    In fact, the smart money is saying that the exact opposite will happen.
    Mish and Societe Generale think the market could tank very soon - say a couple of days after the inauguration. Faber and McHugh seem to think the crash will come in the spring.
    But they all agree that the exact opposite of what the mainstream talking heads say will occur: things will seem temporarily better, and then the market will crash dramatically.
 
    Why China and Germany need to do more to boost demand.
    Industry is in grave trouble. Around the world factory output is plunging at its fastest pace in decades as the consequences of slumping demand have rattled along the supply chain.
 
    While much of the debate over the $700 billion federal bailout plan has focused on whether the money is being spent wisely or well, concerns are growing among many conservatives about its constitutionality.
    Some conservatives have argued that the law creating the program, which Congress passed hastily in October, violates constitutional principles that limit the amount of power that lawmakers can delegate to the executive branch.
 
    Citigroup capped a devastating 2008 by announcing Friday that it would split into 2 entities and that it had posted a $8.29 billion loss for the 4th quarter.
    Bank of America posted a more modest loss of $1.79 billion during the same period, just hours after receiving a new infusion of government support that could end up costing more than $100 billion.
 
    Two out of 3 hedge funds lost money last year, and according to agreements with investors, their managers are supposed to recoup all losses before they start skimming fees from their profits again.
    And it's unclear whether these traders, so accustomed to flush times, will stick it out long enough to make investors whole again.
    Their decisions will reverberate beyond Greenwich, Connecticut, the New York suburb that is a haven for hedge fund honchos. Pension funds, endowments and charities — not just wealthy individuals — all invest in hedge funds.
    Assets held by hedge funds (around 10,000) surged to nearly $2 trillion as of the start of 2008.
 
    The history of the banana tells us about the corporations that increasingly dominate the world -- and where they are leading us.
 
    Many people are wondering why gold isn't exploding upwards while others believe gold has topped out and is set to decline. The truth most likely is someplace in between the two as the battle between bulls and bears rages on.
 
 
 
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