Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
In the midst of the financial crisis, which might put a stop to programs for Africa's development, Benedict XVI says he hopes to promote the Church's social doctrine during his trip to the continent, in particular solidarity.
In particular, he addressed the impact of the economic crisis on poor countries and the importance of ethics for the world economic order, an argument he will develop in the next encyclical.
"We were about to publish it, when this crisis was unleashed and we took the text up again to respond more adequately, in the ambit of our competence, in the ambit of the social doctrine of the Church, but with reference to the real elements of the present crisis. Hence I hope that the encyclical will also be an element, a force to overcome the present difficult situation."
Pope Benedict XVI today sought to put behind him the row over condoms and AIDS which overshadowed the first leg of his African trip and basked in a warm welcome in Angola, a former Portuguese colony where 10 million people - over half the population - are Catholic.
The Vatican spokesman commented on Benedict XVI's words regarding the fight against AIDS, clarifying that the Church's priority is education, research and human and spiritual assistance, not condom distribution.
It's payback time for Pope Benedict XVI's most dedicated enemies, who are not militant secularists, hate-crazed Muslims, diehard Protestants or the liberal media.
The people who most dislike the Pope are Catholics, or people who have the nerve to describe themselves as such.
We learned Friday that "Vatican insiders" consider Benedict XVI "a disaster." It's true. They do think that.
He's a disaster for them, and their determination to turn the Catholic Church into a touchy-feely forum in which uncomfortable teachings and traditions are "modernised" to impress non-Catholics.
Benedict XVI is encouraging the participation of all faiths to affirm the unity of reason and religion, to imbue society with genuine values and to build an authentically human culture.
He said this Friday in an address to Muslim leaders of Cameroon.
He acknowledged that the meeting was "is a vivid sign of the desire we share with all people of good will -- in Cameroon, throughout Africa and across the globe -- to seek opportunities to exchange ideas about how religion makes an essential contribution to our understanding of culture and the world, and to the peaceful coexistence of all the members of the human family."
The Pontiff noted that both Christians and Muslims "believe in one, merciful God who on the last day will judge mankind."
"Together," he affirmed, "they bear witness to the fundamental values of family, social responsibility, obedience to God's law and loving concern for the sick and suffering."
Pope Benedict on Saturday urged Catholics in Angola, where a belief in spirits and sorcerers has led many to abandon the Church for self-styled sects, to shun witchcraft and woo back those who have left.
"So many of them are living in fear of spirits, of malign and threatening powers. In their bewilderment they even end up condemning street children and the elderly as alleged sorcerers."
[WAR: The Christian Witch disapproving of the pagan witches.]
Pope Benedict XVI, midway through his first trip to Africa, arrived in oil-rich Angola and admonished those enjoying the nation's newfound wealth not to ignore the justifiable demands of the poor.
Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Mass today with an estimated 1 million Angolans and decried the "clouds of evil" over Africa that have spawned war, tribalism and ethnic rivalry that reduce poor people to slavery.
(And: B16 MASS DRAWS BIG CROWDS)
The Pope has been forced to intervene in a damaging power struggle over who will become the next spiritual head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales.
Pope Benedict XVI will decide next week who should succeed Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor as Archbishop of Westminster.
It is possible that he will shun all 5 candidates vying for the post and impose a Vatican diplomat instead.
Catholic priests are turning into financial, rather than spiritual, advisers.
As Italy, the most indebted country in Europe, faces its worst recession since 1975, the Catholic church is stepping in to help cash-strapped Italians, who receive the lowest levels of unemployment assistance among the 30 members of the OECD.
Church officials will meet in Rome from Monday through Thursday at the Italian Bishops Conference to commit more cash, according to the head of social projects at Caritas, a Catholic charity based in the capital.
To obtain credit, Catholics must first make their case to their parish priest, who presents the appeal to a 3-member council of the local branch of Caritas.
If the charity decides with Banca Etica that there are grounds for a loan, the church acts as a guarantor.
The Vatican might be gearing up for an official call for a boycott of "Angels & Demons," Ron Howard's big-budget follow-up to "The Da Vinci Code."
Avvenire, the Vatican's official newspaper, ran a story in Friday's edition noting that the Church "cannot approve" of such a problematic film.
The Turin daily La Stampa, meanwhile, said the Vatican would soon call for a boycott of the film, though the same article also quoted Archbishop De Paolis, who warned against a "boomerang effect" that could call attention to the film and eventually make it more popular.
The Vatican press office declined comment on the reports when contacted.
Long negotiations with the US-based Claims Conference have led to €60 million more in compensation payments to Holocaust survivors.
(And: GERMANY'S HOLOPAYOFF)
At home, Chancellor Merkel has been hit by a drop in opinion polls and by growing criticism from within her usually disciplined party, the mainly Catholic conservative Christian Democratic Union.
Many traditional supporters say she is taking an excessively socialist approach to tackling the economic crisis, and they were offended by her recent criticism of the pope.
"For conservative Catholics such criticism of the Pope was tantamount to offending God."
Horst Seehofer has been governor of Bavaria for just a little over 4 months, but lately he has become a thorn in Chancellor Merkel's side.
The split within Germany's conservatives has become difficult for voters to ignore.
To make sure the CDU problem doesn't become a CSU one, Seehofer has also added a strong dose of Euro-populism.
His CSU wants to see all major EU issues be subject to a referendum in Germany.
Switzerland is hoping to smooth over relations with Germany after 2 politicians recently exchanged insults. But tempers are fraying and things could be rough for a while.
The leader of the Czech Republic, which holds the rotating European Union presidency, has warned that a "Europe of states" is in danger of turning into a "state of Europe", legislating on almost every aspect of people's lives but lacking in democracy and transparency.
Where Croatia ends and Slovenia begins would indeed seem an arcane regional matter. But it has suddenly taken on geopolitical importance, thanks to a border dispute dating back to the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s that now threatens to stall the eastward push of both the European Union and NATO.
The conflict involves a sea border the size of several football fields and a handful of tiny villages in the northern Istrian Peninsula.
While hard to untangle for any outsider, it is deadly serious for proud Slovenes and Croats in a region long plagued by bloody conflicts over land.
It has laid bare how the simmering force of national identity can threaten a giant trading bloc where the removal of physical borders has not always captured the hearts and minds of those caught in the middle.
The late President Milosevic's secret police chief and organiser of Serb death squads during the genocidal ethnic cleansing of disintegrating Yugoslavia was the top CIA agent in Belgrade, according to the independent Belgrade Radio B92.
The USS Klakring (FFG 42) frigate has entered the Black Sea, and is being closely monitored by Russia, the Russian Navy said .
Like many other soldiers who took part in the Gaza operation, Omer, 20, occasionally took a few moments to pray, but he did not pray to the Lord of Israel.
Omer considers himself pagan, and has sworn allegiance to 3 ancient gods.
During combat, he says they appeared before him, giving him strength during the most arduous moments.
Omer is still in the army, and therefore refused to be interviewed for this story.
Yet he did say he belongs to a religion whose goal is to revive worship of ancient gods.
The publication late last week of eyewitness accounts by Israeli soldiers alleging acute mistreatment of Palestinian civilians in the recent Gaza fighting highlights a debate here about the rules of war.
But it also exposes something else: the clash between secular liberals and religious nationalists for control over the army and society.
Rabbis in the Israeli army told battlefield troops in January's Gaza offensive they were fighting a "religious war" against gentiles, according to one army commander's account published on Friday.
"Their message was very clear: we are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land and now we need to fight to expel the gentiles who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land."
Israeli police prevented Palestinians on Saturday from holding events in East Jerusalem marking the disputed city's designation as a "capital" of Arab culture.
The Arab League named Jerusalem its "capital of Arab culture" for 2009, following on from Damascus last year.
Palestinian President Abbas Saturday called Jerusalem "the key for peace" and said justice and peace would not come to the Middle East without "an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital."
As the United States has learned from its failures at transforming the Middle East, old-fashioned balance-of-power politics are once again driving events in the region.
Afghanistan is on the brink of chaos. That is the stark message from local leaders, the US military and development workers in the troubled country.
The elected government, they warn, can no longer compete with the Taliban.
(And: WHAT ARE US AFGHAN GOALS?)
A Sudanese opposition leader who was recently freed said that the Arab Gulf state of Qatar intervened to secure his release from detention.
Hassan Al-Turabi told the Egyptian Al-Shurooq newspaper said that the Qatari Emir convinced Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir to release him during his visit to Khartoum last month.
Turabi said he was "surprised" when he was let go but afterwards he realized that it was a result of international pressure on Khartoum.
The North Atlantic Council has approved a mandate to resume a NATO deployment to the Gulf of Aden in a move to counter the ongoing threat of piracy.
With the announced approval, NATO's 5-ship operation patrolling the waters off the coast of Somalia will continue.
Indian forces resorted to "unprovoked firing" on Pakistani positions in the disputed Kashmir region, but there were no casualties in the rare clash between the rivals.
The right map can stimulate foresight by providing a spatial view of critical trends in world politics. So in what quarter of the earth today can one best glimpse the future?
The Indian Ocean -- the world's 3rd-largest body of water -- already forms center stage for the challenges of the 21st century.
The greater Indian Ocean region encompasses the entire arc of Islam, from the Sahara Desert to the Indonesian archipelago.
China effectively ended a stand-off with the US that began when its naval vessels harassed an American surveillance ship and attributed the reduction in tension directly to Obama.
"It is time to call an end to it. It might be that the US military wanted to flex its muscles but the Obama Administration managed to bring the situation under control for the good of both countries."
It is an ill wind that blows no one any good. For many in China even the buffeting by the gale that has hit the global economy has a bracing message.
The rise of China over the past 3 decades has been astonishing. But it has lacked the one feature it needed fully to satisfy the ultranationalist fringe: an accompanying decline of the West.
Now capitalism is in a funk in its heartlands.
Europe and Japan, embroiled in the deepest post-war recession, are barely worth consideration as rivals. America, the superpower, has passed its peak.
Although in public China's leaders eschew triumphalism, there is a sense in Beijing that the reassertion of the Middle Kingdom's global ascendancy is at hand.
Already a big idea has spread far beyond China: that geopolitics is now a bipolar affair, with America and China the only 2 that matter.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is nearing a moment of truth.
Fathoming the intentions of the men in turbans who run Iran has long proved one of the hardest of diplomatic tasks.
It is a prickly country, proud of its history and wary of the other great peoples — Arabs, Turks and Russians — who ring it.
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, rebuffed Obama's latest outreach, saying Tehran was still waiting to see concrete changes in US policy.
Khamenei holds the last word on major policy decisions, and how Iran ultimately responds to any concrete US effort to engage the country will depend largely on his say.
In his most direct assessment of Obama and prospects for better ties, Khamenei said there will be no change between their countries unless Obama puts an end to US hostility toward Iran and brings "real changes" in foreign policy.
"They chant the slogan of change but no change is seen in practice. We haven't seen any change."
Obama's unprecedented video message to Iran offering a "new beginning" could provide a clue to understanding the strategy that the new US administration would adopt towards the Islamic Republic.
With his bold message to Iran's leaders, Obama achieved 4 things essential to any rapprochement.
By doing so, Obama made it almost inevitable that one of the defining strategic issues of his presidency will be a painful but necessary redefinition of America's relations with Israel as differences over Iran sharpen.
Will Obama's Middle East policy differ significantly from that of the neoconservatives who were the driving force for the war on Iraq and have fashioned a broader Israelocentric Middle East war agenda?
Obama himself does not appear to be completely aligned with the neocon position as was John McCain.
However, Obama's close advisors tend to be ardently pro-Israel and hawkish, reflecting a neocon orientation, even though none of these individuals are actually neocons.
But the gravest issue facing Obama is Iran, where any American attack is apt to bring about a conflagration in the entire Gulf region, seriously hampering the flow of oil.
Obama would undoubtedly be pushed in this belligerent direction by the neoconservatives outside his administration and the hawks within, as well as by Congress under the sway of the Israel Lobby.
Given Obama's record so far, it seems highly unlikely that he would resist.
American hardline policies such as a naval blockade or the bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities would inevitably spiral into a full-scale war.
An active duty Army officer in Iraq is refusing to recognize Obama as Commander-in-Chief - and hundreds more soldiers are lining up to follow suit, sources reveal in a shocking world exclusive!
Find out why Obama's authority is being questioned in what is rapidly developing into an unprecedented Constitutional crisis.
A California attorney battling on a number of fronts to obtain documentation of Barack Obama's eligibility to be president is asking the FBI and Secret Service to investigate suspected "tampering" at the US Supreme Court.
Specifically, she points to the handling of her own case, Lightfoot v. Bowen, which was submitted to the Supreme Court on an emergency basis. Although it was scheduled for a conference, no hearing ever was held.
Taitz notes that references to the case were erased from the docket of the Supreme Court on Jan. 21, shortly after Obama, the defendant, met with 8 of the 9 justices behind closed doors.
It happened just 2 days before her case was scheduled to be reviewed in conference.
Secondly, Taitz notes that in her conversation with Justice Scalia at a book-signing in Los Angeles several weeks ago, he appeared to have no knowledge of the cases that had been submitted.
"Did somebody from outside break and enter into the computer system of the Supreme Court or was it done by one of the overzealous employees who wanted to keep Obama in the White House?"
Concern is mounting at the president's tactics.
Mexican drug cartels are now as heavily armed as America's enemies during the Iraq war and are extending their bloody conflict into the US, say security experts.
Law enforcement agencies in American cities close to the border with Mexico are "gearing up" for street confrontations with the drug gangs, which are armed with rockets and grenades and have brought death and chaos south of the border.
Even America's most robust big state is suffering.
Times are tough in Texas, and things will get worse before they get better. But compared with what has happened in other states, Texas's wounds are scratches.
This US city has become a front line in a generational battle for jobs, as older workers increasingly compete against applicants in their 20's for positions at supermarkets, McDonald's restaurants and dozens of other places. And older workers seem to be winning.
The "Panic of '08" will be followed by "The Collapse of '09." In 2009, the focus will broaden to include a range of calamities that will leave no sector unscathed.
Foreigners withdrew funds from US assets in record amounts in January, but China continued to add to its stockpile of US government debt.
American banks lost $32.1 billion in the final quarter of 2008, even worse than the $26.2 billion originally reported last month, federal regulators said Friday.
Obama is poised within days to unveil a new trillion-dollar plan aimed at restoring America's crippled banking system to health, as anger over bonuses paid to executives at bailed-out institutions escalates.
However, even before it is officially launched, experts have warned that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's expected plan falls far short of what is needed to ease the financial crisis, with one Nobel prize-winning economist calling it an "awful mess."
(And: THE BIG TAKEOVER)
(Cartoon: AIG BILL)
A clutch of senior London bankers are expected to be on a list of 200 of Merrill Lynch's biggest bonus recipients demanded by the New York Attorney General.
They seem hell-bent on cutting American bankers down to size.
A punishing bonus tax on a large swathe of those working on Wall Street was approved by the House of Representatives on Thursday.
That follows an earlier pay cap on the banking elite.
The anti-protectionism works two ways. It will increase the inbound flow of applicants to foreign-owned banks unaffected by the legislation, and give the employees of those same institutions fewer places to flee.
Inside Manhattan, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and Nomura must be among those rubbing their hands with glee. As yet, these ambitious firms have dodged the restraints of state ownership.
But London might be an even greater beneficiary of Washington's outrage.
It is depressingly obvious that Gordon Brown is now feeling what Tony Blair used to call the "hand of history".
In 10 days, the Prime Minister will host the G20 Summit. Yet, even before the first photo-op, the G20 summit's agenda is unravelling.
After a brief respite, the euro is gaining strongly against the currencies of its main trading partners, further threatening the Continent's wilting economy.
That is adding to pressure on the European Central Bank to enact radical steps similar to those that are weakening the dollar, the pound and the Swiss franc.
"If the euro keeps rising, it will be really grim news for the euro economy, which is already in very bad shape."
The Netherlands typifies a European fear that any big fiscal stimulus might just benefit others.
The closing document agreed on by European Union leaders gathered in Brussels reads like a German wish list. Chancellor Merkel was able to convince the EU to focus on financial-market regulation -- and to resist new stimulus programs.
Much of the agenda promoted in vain by Germany in early 2007 -- when Berlin held the rotating presidency of the G-8 -- has now become consensus.
There are 2 reasons why this crisis could also prove to be a turning point that enables us to make the global economic system more balanced and fit for the future.
Our goal must be a market driven and social world economy that is balanced, equitable and sustainable.
In our view it is therefore indispensable that market forces are not only checked through regulations and oversight, but also by a robust global framework of common values that sets clear limits to excessive and irresponsible action.
This lies behind the idea of a Global Charter for Sustainable Economic Activity, aimed at developing a single framework relying on the unfolding of market forces but striving to ensure a stable, socially balanced and sustainable development of the global economy.
They would serve to guide policy makers in designing and implementing the necessary new architecture in the areas of economic, financial and social policy.
Common to these stories is the gradual disappearance of the cluster of principles that went by the name of morality.
Whatever its source - religion, conscience, custom or code - it meant that there are certain things you don't do because they are not done.
You are guided, even if no one is watching, by a sense of what is responsible and right. The big question is: how do we learn to be moral again?
Markets were made to serve us; we were not made to serve markets. Economics needs ethics.
[WAR: "How do we learn to be moral again?" The best worldly answer is to be found in the Catholic Social Doctrine -- and B16's upcoming social encyclical will help guide the way towards moral markets and ethical economics. But this delicious social wine eventually kills the drinker.]
[CFR Opinion Roundup][Newseum][Global Incident Map][Earthweek][Day-Night Map][Tonight's Sky][Moon phase]
Creating a league of democracies, revamping the UN Security Council, revitalizing the nuclear nonproliferation regime -- proposals for revising international institutions are all the rage these days.
And for good reason: no one sitting down to design the perfect global framework for the 21st century would come up with anything like the current one.
The existing architecture is a relic of the preoccupations and power relationships of the middle of the last century -- out of sync with today's world of rising powers and new challenges.
Cambridge-based researchers provide new evidence that the human brain lives "on the edge of chaos," at a critical transition point between randomness and order.
Religious people seem curiously reluctant to meet their maker.
You might expect the religious to accept death as God's will and, while not hurrying towards it, not to seek to prolong their lives using heroic and often traumatic medical procedures.
Atheists, by contrast, have nothing to look forward to after death, so they might be expected to cling to life.
In fact, it is the other way round — at least according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Where have all the sunspots gone? As of March 21st, the Sun has been blank on 85% of the days of 2009.
If this rate of spotlessness continues, 2009 will match 1913 as the blankest year of the past century. We are still in the pits of a deep solar minimum.
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