Wednesday

The Daily WAR (12-06)

Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
 
 
 
    A Vatican cardinal said Tuesday that the Catholic Church did not stand in the way of scientific realities like evolution, though he described as "absurd" the atheist notion that evolution proves there is no God.
    He said the Vatican believed there was a "wide spectrum of room" for belief in both the scientific basis for evolution and faith in God the creator. "We believe that however creation has come about and evolved, ultimately God is the creator of all things."
    [WAR: Evolution is a theory, not a reality!]
 
Troppi follie a contare!...
    To the ecclesiastical historian the century immediately preceding the Reformation (1417–1517) is one of the most fascinating and also the most tragic in the history of the Church.
 
 
 
End of the world alert...
    For Bavarians, the fasting period of Lent is a favorite time to drink beer. This year, though, suds lovers may be out of luck, with brewery employees threatening to go on strike. It's just one of many such labor disputes brewing in Germany.
 
 
    The building housing Cologne's municipal archive collapsed on Tuesday, bringing parts of some surrounding structures down with it. Some of the documents housed in the archive date back to the year 922.
 
    German police have launched a nationwide search of more than 200 homes and businesses of people suspected of belonging to the country's extreme right.
 
    All these forecasts assume some stabilisation later in the year. On annualize basis, investment is falling at a rate of some 30% during the 1st quarter. This means German is en route to a depression.
 
    Domestic interests are beginning to set policy as Chancellor Merkel positions herself to vie for re-election in September. That means disappointments for some of Germany's international partners.
 
 
 
    The proposed Nabucco pipeline should not receive European funding because it may not be adequately supplied, German officials said.
    Germany is obligated to a significant portion of the funding as an EU member but has long moved in opposition to the project.
 
    Countries as export-dependent and politically reliant on the EU as Germany and the Netherlands cannot afford to be blasé about economic crises in neighboring countries. They should support proposals for eurobonds that share risks.
    If one country suffers a crisis, it will almost certainly trigger a wave of crises, plunging the EU, and especially the euro zone, into turmoil.
    There is a worst-case scenario. If Italy or Spain were to default on their sovereign debt, the repercussions for the euro zone could be dramatic and could well lead to its breakup.
 
    With the financial crisis showing no signs of bottoming out, the opportunity for Paris and Berlin to promote unity should have been ideal.
    Instead, they have adopted opposing approaches over how Europe should respond to the global meltdown.
    Many Germans remember with nostalgia the days of their strong national currency, the Deutsche mark, and fear that high inflation could destroy wealth and erode economic confidence.
    Berlin, now more than ever, is conducting its economic policies according to its perception of its national interests.
 
    Europe's financial authorities have revealed the existence of a contingency plan to rescue eurozone states at risk of default, giving the first clear assurance that the EU will mount a defence if monetary union comes under speculative attack.
 
    Milton Friedman was right to predict that the euro might not survive a recession.
    Friedman said: "The euro is going to be a big source of problems, not a source of help. The euro has no precedent. To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a monetary union, putting out a fiat currency, composed of independent states. There have been unions based on gold or silver, but not on fiat money – money tempted to inflate – put out by politically independent entities."
    It is what lies below the surface of this observation that is putting not just the euro, but the entire confection of the European Union, under such intense pressure.
    Any recession would bring into play tensions between idealism and nationalism: the desire by those who pilot the European project to maintain the confection for as long as possible and as intact as possible, that it might come out on the other side of this economic horror bloodied but unbowed; and the inevitable identification of hundreds of millions who stand outside the fantasy world of the political class with their own nation state, their own nationals and their own national interest.
    It may soon become apparent that this attempt at a currency for disparate nations is about to disappear under the weight of reality – nationalist reality – and the big boys are going to have to come in and sort some nations out.
 
    The European Monetary Union is about to go bust. There is already speculation that the euro may collapse under pressure.
    We are now at the point we have predicted from the beginning, before the euro came into being.
    And the crisis which we see in Europe, is really the result of crimes which occurred when the fall of the Wall occurred in 1989.
    At that point, John Paul II strongly made the point that the collapse of communism did not prove the moral superiority of the unbridled free-market economic system.
    That caused a gigantic freakout at the time, but the Pope was absolutely right.
    Then you had Margaret Thatcher who launched the "Fourth Reich" campaign against Germany and the unification.
    French President Mitterrand put an ultimatum to Chancellor Kohl, saying that France would only allow unification, if Germany would give up the D-mark.
    Jacques Attali, Mitterrand's advisor, wrote in a biography that Mitterrand threatened war against Germany, and Kohl, in an interview, said "this was a question of war and peace," to give up the D-mark at that time; and Bush Sr. said, we will only go with German unification, if Germany agrees to self-containment by entering the EU's Maastricht Agreement.
 
    When the government of the first major European country is toppled, this may unleash a full-scale European revolution comparable to the great 18th and 19th century revolutions sweeping across the continent.
    We may indeed be witnessing the beginning of a profound change.
 
Ruh-Roh...
    A collision between US and Russian satellites in early February may have been a test of new US technology to intercept and destroy satellites rather than an accident, a Russian military expert has said.
    Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Leonid Shershnev, a former head of Russia's military space intelligence, said in an interview published by Moskovsky Komsomolets on Tuesday that the US satellite involved in the collision was used by the US military as part of the "dual-purpose" Orbital Express research project, which began in 2007.
    The February collision could be an indication that the US has successfully developed such technology and is capable of manipulating "hostile satellites," including their destruction, with a single command from a ground control center, the general said.
 
 
 
Ethnic cleansing...
    One of the more disturbing developments in the Middle East is a growing consensus among Israelis that it would acceptable to expel -- in the words of advocates "transfer" -- its Arab citizens to either a yet as unformed Palestinian state or the neighboring countries of Jordan and Egypt.
 
    Iran's supreme leader delivered a blistering speech today in support of militant opposition to Israel, describing Obama administration and moderate Arab efforts to bring peace to the Middle East as doomed to failure.
    Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the ranking cleric who is Iran's most powerful political and religious figure, spoke at a Tehran conference this morning.
    "The deliverance of Palestine cannot be obtained through begging from the United Nations or the dominating powers, and more so from the usurper regime. The sole path of its deliverance is through resistance and fortitude."
    But Khamenei stopped short of calling for the military destruction of the Jewish state, instead proposing a referendum in which all those with a stake in Israel and the Palestinian Territories, including Jews and those living abroad, would vote on a new government.
 
    Iranian missiles can reach Israeli nuclear sites, a top military commander said today. "All the nuclear facilities in different parts of the land under the occupation of the Zionist regime are in the reach of Iran's missile defences."
 
    Disputes between the country's Kurds and central government go back to the early days of the foundation of modern Iraq by British colonialism in 1920s.
    At the heart of contention are large chunks of territory marking the separation line between Kurdish and Arab Iraq.
    As tensions appear to escalate, a consensus is taking shape among many analysts that things are moving toward a possible flare-up point.
 
    A Pakistani minister accused India of being behind the attack on Sri Lanka's cricket team in the city of Lahore on Tuesday, saying the attackers had crossed into Pakistan from India.
    "The evidence which we have got shows that these terrorists entered from across the border from India. This was a conspiracy to defame Pakistan internationally. It is a declaration of open war on Pakistan by India."
 
    The sophists of ancient Greece were known for their ability to prove that anything – however demonstrably false – was true. Today's equivalents are the neoconservative prognosticators.
    What Boot doesn't mention is that these tactics will increasingly bring nuclear-armed Pakistan into the fighting since regions overlap and Afghani clans and the Taliban live on both sides of the border.
    Pakistan, itself, faces internal challenges and the threat of disintegration – to say nothing of the potential for war with India – and could be destabilized by these actions.
    Boot doesn't mention the million troops that might be necessary to stabilize Pakistan, occupy key military sites, and protect Israel from the fallout of dimension to the conflict, as well as fighting with Iran and Turkey vs. Kurdistan (Kurdish Iraq).
    World War I started from a very small beginning. Sophist Max Boot fails to anticipate that his "winnable war" could turn out to be the spark for WW3.
 
    Sri Lanka's Sunday Times has revealed plans for a US-led military mission into the island's northern war zone in the guise of evacuating civilians trapped by intense fighting between the army and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
    According to the newspaper, the task would be carried out by a Marine Expeditionary Brigade attached to the US Pacific Command. The US Navy and Air Force would also be involved.
 
Kingdom of the South turmoil...
    Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir told the International Criminal Court that it could "eat" the warrant it was expected to issue for his arrest on charges of war crimes and genocide in Darfur.
    "They will issue their decision tomorrow ... this coming decision, they can prepare right now: they can eat it. Any decision by the International Criminal Court has no value for us, it will not be worth the ink it is written with."
    [WAR: Will this eventually result in the jailed Hassan al-Turabi -- "the Black Pope of Terrorism" -- to return to power?...]
 
    As Japan continues to fret over a planned test launch in North Korea, the military is preparing to deploy the "Son of Star Wars" missile defense system in case they decide to try to shoot down a North Korean rocket.
 
 
 
    Iran could sell some of its crude oil on the St. Petersburg commodity exchange as ties with Russia in the energy sector increase, officials said.
    "The Russian side has proposed that our Iranian partners consider the possibility of selling a part of Iran's oil at the St. Petersburg commodity exchange."
 
    Saudi Arabia's top diplomat urged Arabs on Tuesday to stand up to Persian Iran's ambitions in the region, including its nuclear program.
    The predominantly Sunni Arab Middle East has been wary of the growing influence of Shiite Iran and Saud's comments were a clear call for Arab unity.
 
 
 
    Barack Obama last night reaffirmed his belief in the special relationship between Britain and America, highlighting his own mother's British heritage and pledging that the bond would "only get stronger" during his presidency.
     "Great Britain is one of our closest and strongest allies and there is a link and bond there that will not break."
 
    A member of the US military whose suspicions about Obama's eligibility to be president prompted him to sign onto a legal demand being sent to Attorney General Eric Holder has now been silenced.
    Attorney Orly Taitz, the activist who through her DefendOurFreedoms.us foundation is assembling the case, told WND today she's been informed one of the members of the military has been ordered by commanding officers not to speak with media.
 
    If you're inclined to believe Igor Panarin, and the Kremlin wouldn't mind if you did, then Obama will order martial law this year, the US will split into 6 rump-states before 2011, and Russia and China will become the backbones of a new world order.
    Panarin might be easy to ignore but for the fact that he is a dean at the Foreign Ministry's school for future diplomats and a regular on Russia's state-guided TV channels.
    "There is a high probability that the collapse of the United States will occur by 2010," Panarin told dozens of students, professors and diplomats Tuesday at the Diplomatic Academy.
    Panarin didn't give many specifics on what underlies his analysis, mostly citing newspapers, magazines and other open sources.
    But he said the recent economic turmoil in the US and other "social and cultural phenomena" led him to nail down a specific timeframe for "The End" — when the US will break up and Alaska will revert to Russian control.
 
    In its final days, the Bush administration issued a Justice Department opinion dramatically reversing most of the legal arguments that governed its war on terrorism.
    It remains unclear why the Bush administration reversed the legal basis for so many of its actions so late in its term.
 
    Responding to the recent release of several legal justifications for President Bush's most criticized policies, former Nixon White House counsel John Dean summarized: "Reading these memos, you've gotta almost conclude we had an unconstitutional dictator. It's pretty deadly and pretty serious, what's in these materials."
 
    The following is the brief introduction to The Revolution that Wasn't, that chronicles the dismal failure of the Republican Revolution. May we always remember that as bad as the Democrats are, the Republicans are hardly an alternative.
 
From the pot to the flame...
    Buried in an large New York Times Magazine profile of Newt Gingrich is a little nugget of information: A Baptist since graduate school, he said he will soon convert to Catholicism, his wife's faith.
 
    There is a growing fear in US security circles that Mexico may descend swiftly into chaos and prove an immediate threat to the US.
 
 
 
    Every US state, with the exception of a band stretching from the Dakotas down to Texas, is now shedding jobs at a rapid pace.
    And even that band has recently begun to suffer, because of the sharp fall in both oil and crop prices.
 
    A Depression doesn't have to be Great — bread lines, rampant unemployment, a wipeout in the stock market.
    The economy can sink into a milder depression, the kind spelled with a lowercase "d." And it may be happening now.
    The trouble is, unlike recessions, which are easy to define, there are no firm rules for what makes a depression.
    But with each new hard-times headline, it seems more likely that the next depression is on its way.
 
    A senator berated Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Tuesday for refusing to name banks that borrow from the central bank and introduced legislation that would require public disclosure.
    When he pressed on whether Bernanke would name the firms that borrowed from the Fed, the central bank chairman replied, "No," and started to say that doing so risked stigmatizing banks and discouraging them from borrowing from the central bank.
 
    Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said policy makers may need to expand aid to the banking system beyond the $700 billion already approved and take other aggressive measures even at the cost of soaring fiscal deficits.
 
    Ron Paul, who is seeking to abolish the Federal Reserve, has stepped up his attack, introducing an interim plan that would require the private agency to open all of its books for examination.
 
    Prime Minister Brown and Barack Obama on Tuesday discussed a "global new deal" to rebuild the world economy and urged nations to cooperate in regulating financial markets.
    "There is the possibility in the next few months of a global New Deal that will involve all the countries of the world in sorting out and cleaning up the banking system," Brown said.
 
    Financing for international commerce is drying up fast, contributing to the first fall in global trade in decades and making it even harder to pull the world economy out of its downturn.
 
    We're at a point in history, the like of which has not been seen in Europe since the 14th-Century New Dark Age.
    And one of the problems we face in the world today, is precisely that: that there is no one living today, or for several generations in the past, who has any inkling whatsoever, of the event which grips the entire planet at this moment.
 
 
 
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