Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
As Obama continues to focus on his political base and push through policies that are anathema to the pro-life movement, he is having difficulty finding a suitable candidate to represent his administration at the Vatican.
According to Massimo Franco -- author of "Parallel Empires," a recently published book on US-Vatican relations -- the Obama administration has put forward 3 candidates for consideration but each of them have been deemed insufficiently pro-life by the Vatican.
One of the few conditions the Vatican places on diplomats accredited to the Holy See is that they hold pro-life views in line with Church teaching.
Here is the message published by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue on the occasion of the Buddhist feast of Vesak -- in which the major events of the life of Gautama Buddha are celebrated.
Somali pirates have hijacked a 20,000-tonne German container ship in the Indian Ocean, a merchant mariners' charity reports.
Tony Blair has emerged as the leading candidate to become the first permanent president of the European Union after Gordon Brown gave his grudging blessing to the plan.
The former prime minister has stepped up his campaign for the job, which he wants to use to build a bridge between Europe and the new Obama administration.
His return to the global stage would be a shock to his critics over the Iraq war and dismay many in Europe.
The week will be a short one for the EU, as all institutions will be closed from Thursday until the following Monday inclusive for the Easter break.
Look upon patterns of war in Europe as a recurring sine wave.
They peak in the first half of every century, then things settle down for the second half of the century, then things heat up again.
It sounds simplistic, but it's been the pattern of war and peace across the European continent now for 600 years.
This recurring sine wave-type pattern of the rise and fall of violence in Europe augurs ill for the first decades of the 21st century.
It suggests that the kind of major wars between nation-states or alliances of nation-states that that have torn the continent apart in the past could still recur in the future.
France's full reintegration in NATO will strengthen the alliance, Obama said on Friday in Strasbourg.
President Sarkozy carefully orchestrated France's full return to NATO's fold to coincide with NATO's 60th anniversary summit.
Gaffe-prone Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi has held up the start of a key NATO summit - by talking for too long on his mobile phone.
(And: BERLUSCONI IN HIS OWN WORDS)
NATO leaders appointed Danish Prime Minister Rasmussen as NATO's new secretary-general Saturday after overcoming Turkish objections to a leader who angered Muslims around the world by supporting the right to caricature the Prophet Muhammad.
(And: EU-TURKEY RELATIONS IMPACTED)
Buildings were set on fire and running battles were fought between protesters and riot police in the streets of Strasbourg, where world leaders have gathered for a NATO summit.
Barack Obama has arrived in the Czech Republic on the latest stage of his inaugural visit to Europe.
Obama set out his vision and strategy for ridding the world of nuclear weapons today, vowing to involve all states with atomic weapons in the process of reducing arsenals.
Delivering a speech given fresh urgency by North Korea's rocket launch hours earlier, Obama made it clear the US would still go ahead with plans to build a missile defence shield in Europe.
The glittering Christ the Savior Cathedral, a pale-white marble structure decorated with bronze statuary and swaths of gold leaf, is more than just Moscow's grandest and most opulent place of worship.
Built in the 1990s as a replica of a church dynamited by Communists in 1931, the cathedral symbolizes the Moscow Patriarchate's rising political influence — which may be greater today than at any time since the 17th century.
It also serves as global headquarters of vast and expanding business operations that experts say are worth several billion dollars.
Will Netanyahu and the neocons live happily ever after?
After their humiliating defeat in the 2008 presidential and congressional elections, the vanquished neoconservative legions won a major political victory in one of the provinces of the American empire when the parliamentary election in Israel brought to power a veteran neocon activist.
He is calling on Washington to forget about changing US policy in the Middle East and prepare for a military confrontation with Iran.
The era of panic has begun: Avigdor Lieberman is foreign minister.
All the flaws, failures, successes and the peace the Netanyahu government might forge hinge on that obstacle named Lieberman.
His coarse pinky will set the universe in motion, shatter hopes and inflict a catastrophe.
Alas, the finger resting on the red button belongs to Ivan the Terrible.
Fraud police on Friday questioned Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli foreign minister, for the 2nd day running on suspicion of bribery and asked banks in Cyprus to investigate allegations that he was involved in money laundering.
A senior Palestinian Authority official says Israel has ordered the destruction of dozens of Palestinian homes in occupied East Jerusalem.
The sign in big, red Hebrew letters reads "Welcome to Mevasseret Adumim, the Harbinger of the Hills."
There are no houses, cars or people in Mevasseret Adumim: it is a town laid out, waiting to be built.
That is because international pressure has so far prevented construction from going ahead.
The area is the last piece of open land linking Arab East Jerusalem to the West Bank and critics said that to develop it would bury the very notion of a 2-state solution to the Middle East crisis.
According to reports in the Israeli media, the area has been earmarked for development under a secret accord between Prime Minister Netanyahu and the ultra-nationalist Foreign Minister Lieberman.
A leading Palestinian political analyst said: "Failure to respond in an effective manner could lead to the collapse of the nationalist camp [the Fatah-led branch of Palestinian politics]. My guess is, confronted with this development, the nationalist camp would probably support violence. Given the current tends I think of this as a potential trigger to major clashes."
Having accomplished little, the summit adjourned one day early.
Overshadowing the gathering of Arab leaders and the League's stated agenda of 'reconciliation' between the decidedly pro-American, anti-Iranian camp of nations (Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia) and those more willing to recognize Iran as an important regional power (namely Syria and Qatar), was the presence of Sudan President Bashir.
Not only did the Arab heads of state fail to heal their deep rifts, they did not tackle the thorny issue of relations with Iran or even begin to address the ramifications an increasingly likely Israeli attack will have on the region.
Instead, egos, petty disputes, red-carpet welcomes and diplomatic snubs held sway.
Once again, ordinary citizens of the Middle East this week were reminded why the Arab League has become an utterly irrelevant, feckless institution.
The decision dashed Obama's hopes of European support for his military surge in Afghanistan and amounted to the minimum possible commitment of extra troops by European leaders.
Nine countries agreed to send up to 5,000 extra troops, but only during the Afghan elections this summer – far short of the permanent commitment that Washington and London had hoped for.
The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, refused to send any more troops at all.
(And: NATO: NO COMBAT TROOPS)
North Korea has defied international warnings and gone ahead with a controversial rocket launch.
State media said a satellite had been put into orbit and was transmitting data and revolutionary songs.
But there has been no independent confirmation so far.
(But: LAUNCH "FAILS")
US officials are considering whether to accept Iran's pursuit of uranium enrichment.
And on Friday, Obama summarised the US message to Iran as: "Don't develop a nuclear weapon" – a form of words that would not rule out a deal accepting Iranian enrichment.
Obama vows not to shelve the controversial US missile plans until an "Iranian missile threat" is eliminated.
A team of nine scientists have unearthed startling data from dust gathered in the days and weeks after the World Trade Center towers collapsed.
They discovered that scattered throughout the dust samples were red and gray chips of "active thermitic material", or an un-reacted pyrotechnic explosive.
A lawyer investigating the eligibility of Barack Obama to be president under the US Constitution's requirement that the office be occupied only by a "natural born" citizen is asking the US Supreme Court to cooperate with an FBI investigation into alleged cyber crimes connected to her work.
While her effort was pending at the court, its references suddenly were scrubbed from the public website just 2 days before a conference among justices on the case was to be heard.
She filed a complaint with the FBI, which promised a review, but they noted that in that situation, technically the Supreme Court was the "victim" of having its website hacked, and officials there would need to cooperate for the effort to move forward.
It's official. If you question Barack Obama, you're a racist.
If you think he should be held to the same standard as previous presidents and his opponent with regard to establishing constitutional eligibility to serve, you're a racist.
Rabbi Capers Funnye is the chief rabbi of the Beth Shalom B'nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation in Chicago, one of the largest black synagogues in America. And Obama married his cousin, Michelle.
But a black rabbi? Many American Jews regard the very concept as an oxymoron, or even, given the heterodoxies of much Black Jewish theology, some sort of heresy.
Funnye has been trying for years to demonstrate that he and his fellow Black Jews belong in the Jewish mainstream. Mostly he has been ignored.
During a summer job in Chicago (1970s), some friends introduced Funnye to Rabbi Robert Devine, the spiritual leader of the House of Israel Congregation.
Devine preached that Africans were the true descendants of the biblical Hebrews, and that Jesus, the Messiah, was a black man.
Reading the Center for American Progress' new report supporting Obama's escalation of the US war against Afghanistan is a very powerful reminder of how much neoliberals and neocons are alike.
The United States is still the same country it was a year ago, give or take about 6 million jobs.
But its international branding campaign, as led by Barack Obama, is so different that the rest of the world might be forgiven if it has to do a double take.
Most of the hallmarks of the foreign policy of George W. Bush are gone.
The old conservative idea of "American exceptionalism," which placed the US on a plane above the rest of the world as a unique beacon of democracy and financial might, has been rejected.
At almost every stop, Obama has made clear that the US is but one actor in a global community.
(And: THE OBAMA EFFECT)
Wiki says...
In international relations theory, the term "new world order" refers to a new period of history evidencing a dramatic change in world political thought and the balance of power.
However, in conspiracy theory, the term "New World Order" refers to the advent of a cryptocratic or totalitarian world government.
[WAR: There cannot, and will not, be a NWO "world government." It is utterly impossible to achieve due to an overwhelming number of factors -- the chief one being when the Messiah "said to them: 'Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.'" (Luke 21:10)]
Barack Obama has declared that America has "failed to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world" and has "shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive" towards its allies.
His speech in Strasbourg went further than any US president in history in criticising his own country's action while standing on foreign soil.
But he sought to use the comments, which amount to a mea culpa for recent American foreign policy, as leverage to alter European views of America and secure more troops for the war in Afghanistan.
"In America, there is a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive."
Obama's unprecedented critique of past American behaviour towards Europe aroused predictable ire among his conservative foes and praise from liberals in the US.
A pair of bills introduced in the Senate would grant the White House sweeping new powers to access private online data, regulate the cybersecurity industry and even shut down Internet traffic during a declared "cyber emergency."
Lately I've been consuming as much conservative media as possible to get a better sense of the mind and mood of the right.
My read: They're apocalyptic. They feel isolated, angry, betrayed and besieged. And some of their "leaders" seem to be trying to mold them into militias.
But, it's not all just harmless talk. For some, their disaffection has hardened into something more dark and dangerous. They're talking about a revolution.
On March 31st, the Obama administration did something very concrete to correct any impression that diplomatic lobbying for liberty was too big a luxury in a world with other woes on its mind.
In a bid to redeem a body which sceptics had called irredeemable, it announced its intention to seek 1 of the 47 seats on the UN Human Rights Council.
In one area America is going from strength to strength: the incarceration of its population.
It has less than 5% of the world's people but almost 25% of its prisoners. It imprisons 756 people per 100,000 residents, a rate nearly 5 times the world average. About 1 in every 31 adults is either in prison or on parole.
The financial crisis has altered the terms of political debate.
Many people saw the G20 summit as the beginning of a new political era. So is it true? In 3 important ways the banking crisis has added to the case for the Left.
Silver lining on the dark economic cloud...
Salem Communications, a Christian publishing and radio giant that owns nearly 100 radio stations nationwide and calls itself the #1 Internet provider of Christian content, has been branded a "bottom rung" company by Moody's Investors Service for struggling under the weight of $320 million in debt.
(And: THE END OF XIAN AMERICA)
Perhaps more than any industrialized nation, Australia is contending with the increasingly dangerous effects of hotter, dryer, and more unpredictable weather patterns -- changes that many of the country's leading scientists and politicians now attribute to shifting weather patterns.
Unemployment zoomed to 8.5% last month, the highest in a quarter-century, as employers axed 663,000 more workers and pushed the nation's jobless ranks past 13 million.
The hard times were only expected to get harder -- a painful 10% jobless rate before long.
The current rate would be even higher -- 15.6% -- if it included laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have had to settle for part-time work because they can't do any better.
(And: The current downturn has in many respects exceeded every recession since WW2 and is approaching the severity of the Great Depression. It is already the longest downturn of the post-war period, and has seen a larger number of job losses than any downturn since that of 1929-32.)
(And: GIRDING FOR A DEPRESSION)
The surge in the stock market shows that the American ruling elite is confident that the Obama administration will do everything in its power to protect the interests of the banks and finance capital.
In an explosive interview on PBS' Bill Moyers Journal, William K. Black, a professor of economics and law with the University of Missouri, alleged that American banks and credit agencies conspired to create a system in which so-called "liars loans" could receive AAA ratings and zero oversight, amounting to a massive "fraud" at the epicenter of US finance.
But worse still, said Black, Timothy Geithner is currently engaged in a cover-up to keep the truth of America's financial insolvency from its citizens.
"They don't want to change the bankers, because if we do, if we put honest people in, who didn't cause the problem, their first job would be to find the scope of the problem. And that would destroy the cover up. You've got to keep the information away from the public or everything will collapse."
The international act of posturing was pointless; because despite having caused the problem, the political class had none of the requisite skills to sort it out.
The piece of theatre that concluded in London on Thursday was one of the great confidence tricks of our lifetimes.
It won't make a blind bit of difference to the world's economy.
(Cartoon: UK-US SUPERMEN?)
The European Commission and its president played a crucial but behind-the-scenes role in G20 agreement.
Bolivian President Morales has slammed the G20 summit's decision to inject $750 billion to the International Monetary Fund.
He said that countries at the root of the crisis cannot solve the problem, or in his words: "the wolf cannot keep the flock."
"It's like giving money to the wolves, or to entrust the care of the flock: the wolf is not going to keep the sheep, it will devour them. As long as we do not touch the structural points of capitalism, it will be difficult to resolve the financial crisis. If we want to solve economic problems, we must first end the free market, then the speculative capitalism."
G-20 proposals will exacerbate the global economic crisis.
The president of the European Commission warned yesterday that millions more Europeans were still going to lose their jobs in the economic crisis in spite of optimism arising from the G20 summit.
Could the world's currency of choice have the face of Mao Tse-tung on it, not George Washington? Quixotic or not, the Chinese are preparing for that day.
In a series of what might be called baby steps, Chinese officials recently have moved to globalize the yuan and promote its influence overseas, with Shanghai designated as command central.
Since last December, China has signed deals with 6 countries for currency swaps that would inject Chinese money into foreign banking systems.
That would allow foreign companies to pay for goods they import from China in yuan, bypassing the dollar.
Going for the bankers is tempting for politicians — and dangerous for everybody else.
The rich are certainly not the only targets in the current populist backlash. Frightened by the downturn, people are furious with politicians, central bankers and immigrants.
But a rising wave of anger is directed against the new "malefactors of great wealth."
The worldwide depression has both common and different causes, affected by the interconnections between economies and specific socio-economic structures.
At the most general-global level the rising rate of profits and the over-accumulation of capital leading to the financial-real estate-speculative frenzy and crash affected most countries either directly or indirectly.
At the same time, while all regional economies suffered the consequences of the onset of the depression, regions were situated in the world economy differently and subsequently the effects varied substantially.
[CFR Opinion Roundup][Newseum][Global Incident Map][Earthweek][Day-Night Map][Tonight's Sky][Moon phase]
How poverty passes from generation to generation is now becoming clearer. The answer lies in the effect of stress on 2 particular parts of the brain.
Why freedom of speech must include the right to "defame" religions.
At first glance, the resolution on "religious defamation" adopted by the UN's Human Rights Council on March 26th, mainly at the behest of Islamic countries, reads like another piece of harmless verbiage churned out by a toothless international bureaucracy.
But a closer look at the resolution's language, and the context in which it was adopted, makes clear that bigger issues are at stake.
It's not just Protestants; a substantial number of Catholics are guilty of the same cavalier attitude toward war, which is ipso facto just if waged by the US government.
They will spend their time tracking down whatever slivers of evidence they can find in support of their leaders' war propaganda.
As a Catholic myself I have been mortified to think that a neoconservative death cult is what is being projected to the non-Christian world as Christianity.
Strawberries sold in Israel are infested with tiny insects that cannot be removed with water or pesticide, and are therefore forbidden according to halacha, The Torah and Land Institute has announced after a series of laboratory tests.
Oh my!...
For the first time in 2,000 years, the ancient synagogue atop the Judean desert fortress of Masada will ring out at dawn with the rare blessing of the sun.
The blessing, recited only once in every 28 years, will be uttered by Jews around the world at the first appearance of the sun on the morning that precedes the Passover seder.
Jewish, schmewish...
Jewish Law stipulates that a special blessing is to be recited when we see the sun at the same place, on the same day of the week, and the same time of day as when it was created.
The first chapter in Genesis, which tells the story of Creation, tells us that the sun was created on a Wednesday.
Precisely one solar year, or 365.25 days later, the sun was in the same place – but not on the same day of the week, nor at the same time of day; it was rather but rather a quarter of a day later.
The "quarter-day" problem is solved every 4 years, and the "same day of the week" issue is resolved every 7 years – and both problems are solved simultaneously only once every 28 (4x7) years.
The special blessing ("Blessed are You … Who fashions the work of Creation") commemorates the vast greatness of G-d's Creation.
[WAR: Well this is a new one on me! And you can't get more pagan than a blessing of the Sun!
Besides, the Sun was not "created" on a Wednesday. According to the correct reading of Genesis (without the traditions of men), the Sun was revealed on what would've been Sabbath ("Saturday") afternoon -- at the exact same time of day/week that Yahshua was resurrected!
A day is from dawn to dark (1:5), and since there was no dawn, this was not a "day" -- just a period of brief light before night. The next morning started the 1st day ("Sunday") and the process of re-creating the Earth (after the destruction by the angelic rebellion) for mankind to inhabit.
So believe it or not, even the pagans have mistakenly thought that the Sun was created on the 1st day. So the joke is on them!!]
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