Sunday

The Daily WAR (12-17)

Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
 
 
 
    Sources at the Vatican have indicated that Benedict XVI is ready to accept an invitation from Gordon Brown to visit the UK. It would be the first state visit by a pope to Britain and could take place as soon as next year.
    The Holy See has yet officially to accept Brown's invitation, which followed similar invitations by the former prime minister Tony Blair. However, a report published in The Sunday Telegraph today claims he may do so as soon as next month.
 
    The general-superior of the Society of St. Pius X thanked Benedict XVI for his letter concerning the situation of his congregation as the text refocused the debate to doctrinal concerns.
 
    The New York Time's headline, "A Genial Enforcer of Rome's Doctrine," blew the gaffe at the outset, as if there were Rome's doctrine.
    In fact, there is one Catholic truth; it is safeguarded and transmitted by the Church's magisterium; the locus of that magisterium is "Rome" -- meaning the Bishop of Rome and the bishops in communion with him. The Church does not have "doctrines."
 
L'attrattiva del accattivante puttana...
    Faithful say they find comfort in time-honored rituals such as Latin Masses, indulgences.
    While some critics see a challenge to the modernity and openness forged by the epochal Second Vatican Council, which concluded 45 years ago, the Catholics who seek the time-honored practices say it is largely a matter of appeal and aesthetics -- they say they simply experience a better, more vigorous practice of the faith in the more traditional rituals.
    [WAR: Yes, the Catholic Church can be very comforting and appealing to the senses -- just like how some prostitutes can be very appealing to the senses. But remember: "the prostitute reduces you to a loaf of bread (and) is a deep pit" (Pro 6:26; 23:27).]
 
 
 
 
    The US, Canada and Italy have said they will not attend the United Nations Conference on Racism out of fear that it will be used primarily for attacks on Israel. With states like Iran, Libya and Cuba dictating the agenda, calls are growing for Germany to join the boycott too.
 
    Chancellor Merkel defended her government's decision to hold off new spending for economic stimulus to confront the global crisis, saying that current investments should first be given a chance to work.
 
    Germany is facing the biggest economic slump since WW2 as a reliance on exports shows itself to be the country's Achilles heel.
    "Germany's industrial landscape now looks like a war zone -- completely obliterated," said a European economist at BNP Paribas SA.
    "I don't see any ray of hope," said an economist at West LB in Dusseldorf, Germany. "Orders are catastrophic and push the stabilization of the economy into the distance. We're very pessimistic."
 
    When Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg jets into Washington today, he plans on asking some tough questions.
    Germany's new Economy Minister is due to meet US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and bosses at embattled American carmaker General Motors.
    Opel, a Germany-based division of GM, is fast running out of cash and GM and Opel bosses recently went cap in hand to Berlin to ask for $4.25 billion in state aid.
    In return, GM say they will restructure Opel by cutting costs and loosening the company's ties with the parent company in Detroit.
    Opel would become an autonomous legal entity, half of which could end up in the hands of private investors.
    The question is: should German taxpayers help out America's biggest carmaker?
 
    In Austria's recent general election, nearly 30 per cent of voters backed extremist right-wing parties. Live visits the birthplace of Hitler to investigate how Fascism is once again threatening to erupt across Europe.
 
 
 
    It makes me feel like a traitor to write this -- WW2 was my religion for most of my life.
    How can we be sure that Churchill's war was a good war? What if the Men of Glory didn't need to die or risk their lives?
    What if the whole thing was a miscalculated waste of life and wealth that destroyed Britain as a major power and turned her into a bankrupt pensioner of the USA?
 
    Irish Europe minister Dick Roche has said there was "serious external interference" in the run-up to the country's referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.
 
     The next 7 days are a big week for Brussels with the premiers and presidents of the European Union member states gathering in the EU capital for their spring summit where they are meant to hammer out a unified position to take to the upcoming G20 talks at the beginning of April.
 
    The US will set forth a concept to reform NATO during the upcoming summit of the alliance.
    In accordance with the concept, the alliance will be expanded with the help of the countries of not only the Euro-Atlantic region, but of Asia too, for instance, Australia, Japan and South Korea.
    The renewed alliance may even replace the United Nations, The Kommersant wrote.
 
    The promises of Ukraine's Orange Revolution are ringing very hollow.
    Democracy is certainly flourishing — but instead of bringing stability and prosperity, the Orange revolutionaries and their Western values seem to have brought nothing but chaos and disaster.
 
    President Medvedev is preparing to clear out officials loyal to Vladimir Putin after drawing up a list of potential replacements for hardliners in the Russian government.
    The creation of a list of allies dubbed the "Golden 100" signals Medvedev's determination to assert his authority and build his own power base amid a growing split with his predecessor, who as prime minister has maintained a stranglehold on the Russian state.
 
 
 
    Professor Shlomo Sand, the Tel Aviv University history professor and author of a controversial book on the genetic origins of the Jews, received a top critics prize from French journalists.
    His book "When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?" ignited controversy in Israel and in Jewish circles and deals with questions that remain taboo in Israeli society -- among them the ancestral origins of the Jewish people and the genetic lineage shared with modern-day Israelis.
 
    The Zionist ideal of a Jewish state is keeping Israelis and Palestinians from living in peace.
    In 1944, the president of the American Council for Judaism felt comfortable equating the Zionist ideal of Jewish statehood with "the concept of a racial state -- the Hitlerian concept."
    For most of the last century, a principled opposition to Zionism was a mainstream stance within American Judaism.
    Even after the foundation of Israel, anti-Zionism was not a particularly heretical position.
    Assimilated Reform Jews like Rosenwald believed that Judaism should remain a matter of religious rather than political allegiance; the ultra-Orthodox saw Jewish statehood as an impious attempt to "push the hand of God"; and Marxist Jews -- my grandparents among them -- tended to see Zionism, and all nationalisms, as a distraction from the more essential struggle between classes.
 
    Amid lingering talks of war on Iran, Israel's prime minister-designate raises the alarm about a major military conflict in the coming months.
    The soon-to-be prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu believes that "a national emergency" such as Israel's involvement in a major war would help him in his frantic attempts to form a new ruling coalition.
    Netanyahu, who is known as "Mr. Iran" in Israeli circles, has so far failed to gain the trust and support of opposition parties of Kadima and Labor.
    "His main consideration is that Israel expects to be embroiled in a major military confrontation in the next few months with Iran, Hamas or Hezbollah -- or all 3 at once," reads a Debka report.
    "A national emergency" would then compel Israeli rivals to join Bibi's government, unnamed political sources were quoted as saying.
 
    A hawkish general, who cancelled a trip to London 4 years ago because he feared being arrested on war crime charges, is expected to become Israel's new defence minister.
    Moshe "Boogie" Ya'alon, former chief of staff of the Israel Defence Forces, is reported to have accepted an invitation from Binyamin Netanyahu, the incoming prime minister, to serve in the new government.
 
    Barack Obama will not cut the billions of dollars in military aid promised to Israel, a senior US administration official said. The $30 billion in aid promised to Israel over the next decade will not be harmed by the world financial crisis, the official told Israel Radio.
 
    Britain's decision to engage directly with elements of Hezbollah is causing unease in the Obama Administration.
 
    Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden accused conservative Arab leaders of plotting with the West against Muslims and urged his followers to prepare for jihad, in a recording posted on Islamist websites.
    "The hearts of our rulers are like those of the enemies. Whether in Najd (Saudi Arabia) or in Egypt, they never soften, Pharaohs who have returned to humiliate Arabs."
    He also called for the creation of a body of devout clerics to draw up a list warning Muslims about "enemies, hypocrites, their media such as newspapers ... radio stations and satellite channels, of which the most dangerous are the latter two."
 
    The Leader of the Islamic Revolution urges political, religious and intellectual leaders of Muslim countries to promote unity and fight discord.
    "It is upon the religious scholars and other influential figures in the Muslim world to enlighten people about those attempting to sow discord among Muslims," Ayatollah Khamenei said today.
 
    Pakistan's President Zardari has buckled under pressure from Britain and America by agreeing to strike a deal with the opposition to stave off political turmoil.
 
    The fragile rule of government in Pakistan is looking increasingly unstable after Nawaz Sharif, the opposition leader, was allowed to defy a house arrest order and join a protest march that has raised fears of a return to military leadership.
 
    India is worried over a possible army intervention in Pakistan in the face of a political turmoil in the neighboring country, triggered by protest rallies called by lawyers and former Premier Sharif, a senior Indian official said today.
    "India is keeping a close watch on the political unrest in Pakistan amid reports that the Pakistani Army could take over the reins of the country if Pakistan President Asif Ali Zaradari and Nawaz Sharif do not reach a consensus on the issue of the restoration of the nation's deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Chowdhury, and lifting of Governor's rule in the Punjab province."
 
    "Western imperialism left the Islamic countries in the last century after it destroyed them and exploited their wealth through direct conquest, and came back to them via the window of conquest and destruction for its own ends, by means of the legal frameworks it set for itself such as the International Criminal Court, with the excuse of defending human rights and disseminating justice via Western, rather than international, criteria."
    Is this a Western effort to unseat Bashir and divide Sudan into 3 districts, so that the West can rule the country?
 
 
 
    President Ahmadinejad said that pressure from Western powers trying to keep Iran in economic isolation have in fact spurred the country to become a space and nuclear power.
    "Had you not been bad-tempered and blocked the way, the Iranian nation would not have been present in space, and would not have become a nuclear power."
    He said Western powers are unable to stop Iran's technological and scientific progress with their "spiteful actions." He also called the international economic sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program a "grave blunder."
 
    I have -- in a series of columns, and as a cautionary warning against the misguided view of Iran as nothing but a society of mad mullah terrorists bent on nukes -- been examining distinctive characteristics of Persian society.
    Another distinctive characteristic of Iran is the presence of the largest Jewish community in the Muslim Middle East in the country of the most vitriolic anti-Israel tirades.
    My evocation of this 25,000-strong community, in the taboo-ridden world of American Middle East debate, has prompted fury.
 
    Israel's army chief of staff, Lieutenant General Ashkenazi, is heading to the US for talks over Iran's nuclear program, Israeli media report.
 
 
 
    A California attorney lobbying the US Supreme Court for a review of Barack Obama's qualifications to be president confronted the chief justice yesterday with legal briefs and a WND petition bearing names of over 325,000 people asking the court to rule on whether or not the sitting president fulfills the Constitution's "natural-born citizen" clause.
    According to Orly Taitz, the attorney who confronted Chief Justice John Roberts at a lecture at the University of Idaho, the judge promised before the gathered crowd that he would, indeed, read and review the briefs and petition.
     "I see you have papers. I promise you I will read all your papers, I will review them. Please give them to my Secret Service and I will review all of them."
 
    A California court has ruled that apparently anyone can run for president on the California ballot – whether or not they are eligible under the Constitution of the United States.
    "Secretary of State Debra Bowen contends that there is no basis for mandamus relief because the Secretary of State has no 'ministerial duty' to demand detailed proof of citizenship from presidential candidates," said Judge Michael P. Kenny. "The court finds this argument persuasive."
    That even though, as WND has reported, California in the past has exercised the authority to determine whether presidential candidates are qualified, and remove them from the ballot if they are not.
    The judge also threw out a subpoena issued to Occidental College to provide copies of Obama's records of attendance there.
 
    A freshman representative has introduced a bill to the US Congress that would require presidential candidates to provide a birth certificate and other documents to prove their eligibility to occupy the Oval Office.
 
    Now that we know the Washington Institute for Near East Policy's "Presidential Task Force" was actually telling – not merely advising – Obama what to do.
 
    Revelations that a political assassination unit which reported solely to Dick Cheney was in operation during the Bush administration are absent the fact that the unit in question, the Joint Special Operations Command, has been active for decades, has been deployed domestically in the US, has killed US citizens, and is an integral part of Barack Obama's expanded wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
 
THE OBAMA DECEPTION (Movie review)
    The Obama Deception could in time be remembered as one of the most important films in our history.
 
    The US is facing what has been described as its "most serious instance of domestic terrorism" to date, the FBI has warned.
    Officials say a 2nd generation of Somali immigrants is becoming increasingly radicalised and could pose a growing threat to security.
 
    The Catholic Church in Mexico has chimed in and sided with Mexico´s President Calderon on the controversial subject of US government corruption and demanded that the US government have a "change of attitude" that involves a "serious anti-corruption program to eliminate the protection that — from the highest levels of power to the businessmen and public servants — is provided the traffickers, whose impunity makes possible the commerce and consumption of drugs."
 
Right questions, wrong answer...
    While the Obama crowd is hoping the nation and the world will put behind them Ronald Reagan conservatism, now personified by Rush, they eagerly embrace the failures of the past with a new brand of supercharged Franklin D. Roosevelt-style Big Government.
    But are those really the only choices facing this nation? Is the choice really between Reagan and Roosevelt? Is the choice between conservatism and liberalism? Or are there other choices we should consider?
    We can learn from Reagan, but, indeed, America needs to think beyond Reagan if we are to recover what we have lost.
    I don't see the fundamental conflict in America between "conservatives" and "liberals." I see the conflict as between good and evil.
    Where is the movement to teach freedom? Where is the movement to revive truth and justice? Where is the cultural movement to change hearts and minds and expose the insidious forces of evil for what they are?
    "Liberals" are not the enemy. Liberals are mostly people who have been deceived. America won't be saved just by electing Republicans in 2010 or 2012 – not by a long shot.
    We need bigger goals, a more radical agenda, as opposed to a more "conservative" one, and plans to change and redeem America's culture, not just its political institutions.
    [WAR: He's so close, but yet so far! Yes, the people of the US need to go beyond all the "isms" and do something much "more radical" -- not "recover what we have lost," but to do what has never been done: "Repent! Turn from your idols and renounce all your detestable practices (Judeo-Christianity included)!" (Eze 14:6) and "contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints" (Jude 1:3).
    And what faith was that? "The faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all." (Rom 4:16) Only then could it be said: "Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter, the nation that keeps faith." (Isaiah 26:2).
    But, because of this: "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith in the country/land/world?" (Luke 18:8), I'm pretty pessimistic...]
 
Darn!...
    Most of the decrease in the number of Christian Americans and the simultaneous increase in Americans who say they have no religious faith come from huge decreases in the population among liberal mainline Protestant denominations.
 
    Will the United States of America break into regional nation states, breaking up the centralized federal government and it's oppressive control?
    As much as I love the US, I would rather see America split into smaller nations than merge with Canada and Mexico and form a super nation state.
 
    In another sign of just how far the US auto industry has fallen, this is likely to be the first year since 1945 when the number of new cars bought will be less than the number of cars turned in to the junk yard.
    Auto industry research firm R.L. Polk is forecasting a drop in total auto registrations for the first time since car plants were busy turning out tanks for WW2.
 
    In his new book, Meltdown, Thomas E. Woods Jr. suggests that the American dream became the American Nightmare through the reckless, self-serving actions of government institutions.
 
 
 
    Legal experts were flummoxed by the fraudster's willingness to admit every criminal charge laid before him, but was he trying to protect others who may have been implicated?
 
    The American International Group, which has received more than $170 billion in taxpayer bailout money from the Treasury and Federal Reserve, plans to pay about $165 million in bonuses by Sunday to executives in the same business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year.
    The bonuses will go forward because lawyers said the firm was contractually obligated to pay them.
    The payment of so much money at a company at the heart of the financial collapse that sent the broader economy into a tailspin almost certainly will fuel a popular backlash against the government's efforts to prop up Wall Street.
 
    In a bid to avoid default, the American International Group warned regulators that the "company's collapse could cripple money market funds, force European banks to raise capital, cause competing life insurers to fail and wipe out the taxpayers' stake in the firm."
    AIG's statement to the Fed and Treasury includes language suggesting that American capitalists are coming to the realization that the current crisis could quickly bring down the world economic system.
    The report warns of the global implications in the most alarming way.
 
    America's life insurers are now under siege, as fears mount about the losses on the non-government debt that forms about 75% their assets.
 
    A top presidential adviser says the US is in an "economic war" — one that is not being won yet.
 
    It was a moment of brazen honesty. On February 20, the don of Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board and former chair of the Federal Reserve, Paul Volker, told a conference at Columbia University's Center for Capitalism and Society that, in essence, we're screwed.
    Volcker said the crash of 2008 might be "the mother of all financial crises… I don't remember any time, maybe even the Great Depression, when things went down quite so fast, quite so uniformly around the world."
 
    The latest evidence shows that global trade flows are plunging at an alarming rate. The pace of the decline is unprecedented in modern times, economists say.
    "We doubt even during the Great Depression that trade collapsed with such ferocity," said an economist for Morgan Stanley.
 
    The world's biggest economies yesterday sanctioned an unprecedented cash injection into the International Monetary Fund and pledged to launch a major overhaul of the way it distributes cash, as the fund prepares to bail out a further swathe of struggling governments.
    The finance ministers' commitments were overshadowed by the fact that the summit failed to commit on a specific target for the amount countries should now pump into their economies, or to agree on specific reforms to the system of financial regulation.
 
    Gordon Brown's hopes of uniting the world's most powerful economies behind a massive new package of tax cuts and public spending increases suffered a serious blow yesterday when he failed to persuade France and Germany to back his plan to revive the world economy.
 
    The German finance minister stressed that any economic stimulus must work itself through the system before governments can contemplate further steps aimed at reviving consumer demand.
    Germany's view stands in conflict with that of the US, Britain and Japan, which pressed for further stimulus packages.
    The dispute between the US and continental Europe highlights a continuing gap on a range of economic and strategic issues.
 
    At a time when our public finances are in a state of catastrophe, it is right to look for savings.
    And an obvious place to start would seem to be the cancellation of the G20 meeting of the world's supposedly richest economies, scheduled in London in 3 weeks' time.
    After all, it is now apparent that this circus – estimates of the cost of which seem to range from £20-50 million – is going to achieve nothing.
    The one thing that unites all the governments of the developed nations is that each thinks all or most of the others are incompetent.
    The French blame the failure of Anglo-Saxon capitalism.
    And the Germans seem to blame everybody else for having a delinquent approach to finance and a dependent-relative mentality towards the one true economic power left on earth – the Germans.
 
    The upcoming G20 meeting is critical if the world wishes to avoid the economic turbulence seen in the 1930s, the UK government has warned.
 
    Brown's quest for a global new deal is looking problematical.
    Unhappy comparisons are being drawn with another summit in the capital, the London Economic Conference in June 1933, which failed to lift the world out of the Great Depression.
 
    Transatlantic tensions suggest that there will be no grand bargain at next month's grand summit.
 
    Battered by falling oil prices even as they try to rein in production, the leaders of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries gathered today to decide whether further cuts would be necessary.
    But as the meeting began, there were hints that some countries favored a tougher stance, and that at least a modest easing in production could be announced.
 
    The financial crisis is bad enough; but combined with empires in decline and ethnic disintegration, it is a recipe for disaster.
    Just over 7 years ago, Bush warned of an Axis of Evil. The bad news for Obama, is that he now faces a much larger and potentially more troubling axis - an axis of upheaval.
    What unites them is not so much their wicked intentions as their instability, which the global financial crisis only makes worse every day.
    The axis of upheaval is reminiscent of the decade before the outbreak of WW2, when the Great Depression unleashed a wave of global political crises.
    There is good reason to fear that the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression could have comparable consequences for the international system.
    The problem is that, as in the 1930s, most countries are looking inward, grappling with the domestic consequences of the economic crisis and paying little attention to the wider world crisis.
    Economic volatility, plus ethnic disintegration, plus empires in decline: that combination is about the most lethal in geopolitics. We now have all 3. The age of upheaval starts here.
 
    Welcome to Flyover Country, where we know darned good and well a depression is looming. People are preparing like crazy.
    Mormons, in case you don't know, are big on self-sufficiency. They are counseled to keep at least a year's worth of food and other provisions stored up.
    Whatever your views on the Latter Day Saints, I'll admit this is a spiffy concept.
    If you're lucky enough to still have a job and a home – unlike a whole bunch of less fortunate people – then you're in a position to prepare.
    As I said in one of my earlier columns, we are astoundingly vulnerable in this country because we've lost much of the knowledge and skills of our forefathers, the wisdom mankind has honed since the dawn of civilization.
    Prepare as best you can – so you too don't have to be so depressed when the depression hits...
 
 
 
Bingo! He hits-the-nail-on-the-head...
    It's time to recognize that all political issues are social issues.
    If you care about people not starving, then good economics becomes a social issue.
    If you care about young men not dying in needless foreign wars, then national security and defense are social issues.
    If you care about saving the lives of millions of fellow Americans, then civil defense should be a social issue.
    Please tell me if you can think of any issue – local, state or national – that is not a social issue.
    Barack Obama agrees with me that every issue is a "social issue." He just has a different worldview – a different sense of morality.
    [WAR: Because "all issues are social issues," the Catholic Church's Social Doctrine becomes important to know and understand.
    The pope is about to release his 3rd encyclical, and it deals with these very issues. It is the enticing wine that the church is offering to the nations to drink in order to make the world a better place.]
 
 
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