Sunday

The Daily WAR (13-16)

Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
 
[WAR: On Friday's issue, I accidently put the date of "13-13" instead of the correct "13-14".]
 
 
 
    Increasingly secular Western societies risk drifting into a "desert of godlessness", the Pope has warned in his Good Friday address.
    The Bavarian-born Pontiff, who rarely shies from controversy, used uncompromising language as he attacked efforts to secularise society.
 
    Pope Benedict XVI today urged mankind to fight "a peaceful battle" to "rediscover grounds for hope" despite disasters such as the Abruzzo earthquake, food shortages, financial turmoil, climate change and "the ever-present threat of terrorism."
    Earlier, in his Easter Day message "urbi et orbi" (to the city and the world), the Pope said that the Resurrection was "not a fairytale" and attacked the "emptiness" of materialism and atheism.
(Cartoons: EASTER, SCHMEASTER)
 
    The Vatican has blocked the appointment of Caroline Kennedy as US ambassador, according to reports.
    Vatican sources told Il Giornale that their support for abortion disqualified Kennedy and other Roman Catholics Obama had been seeking to appoint.
 
 
 
 
    The majority of Germans won't be attending church services this Easter weekend, despite the fact that nearly 66% of the population describe themselves as Christians.
    In Germany, people have the choice whether to declare themselves as Christians. If they do, they are then required to pay a church tax, which is deducted directly from their monthly paychecks.
 
    Secret documents found in the private archives of a former West Germany government official reveal that in the late 1970s, the German government was engaged in clandestine negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
    According to the documents, one of the representatives taking part in the talks was the PLO's Ali Hassan Salameh – the mastermind of the 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympic Games.
 
 
    Reacting to Obama's vision of a nuclear-free world, German Foreign Minister Steinmeier has called for American nuclear weapons to be removed from Germany.
    His stance is in opposition to Chancellor Merkel, who wants to keep the bombs to secure Germany's say in NATO.
 
 
 
    There is the assumption, common in the EU establishment, that you can't be "for" the EU and against the Lisbon Treaty. The Irish people may not agree.
 
    The European Union still foxes outsiders with its plethora of presidents.
    "Why are there four glasses of water?" asked a reporter from a German daily. It was a good question.
    A score of journalists had been hustled into a back room at a EU summit in Prague, for a briefing by Obama. The mystery was soon solved, as a case of EU protocol.
    When Obama arrived, 3 Europeans were with him: the Czech prime minister, whose country holds the 6-monthly presidency of the EU; the prime minister of Sweden, who will come next; and the president of the European Commission.
    As the Czech presidency enters its death throes, expect more people to argue that only a full-time president can save Europe.
    Be sceptical. Internal EU disputes will not melt away just because a powerful figure chairs leaders' meetings.
 
    America's public call for Turkish entry into the European Union may backfire. The obstacles to Turkish membership are numerous and as large as Turkey itself.
    Public opinion in many EU countries is less than welcoming. President Sarkozy has loudly and repeatedly made clear that he is against Turkish membership; so, less vociferously, has the Chancellor Merkel.
 
 
 
    We must admit that this society has rather dark religious aspects. Foreigners landing in Israel might ask themselves what country they're in: Iran, Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia?
    In any case, it's not the liberal, secular and enlightened society it purports to be.
 
    In anticipation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Washington next month, the Obama administration has been briefing Congress on its position regarding establishing a Palestinian state, according to informed Israeli diplomatic sources.
 
    Israeli Transport Minister Yisrael Katz calls for the assassination of the chief of Lebanon's Hezbollah movement Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah.
    "Nasrallah deserves death and I hope that those who know what to do with him will act and give him what he deserves."
 
    Midway through a week of mayhem in Iraq, Defense Secretary Robert Gates raised eyebrows when he said the recent resurgence of violence in Baghdad was "a last gasp" of Islamic extremists.
    It was an echo of former VP Dick Cheney, who in 2005 said the insurgency was "in the last throes." The following 2 years were the deadliest period of the war.
 
    Islamist opposition leader Hassan al-Turabi said on Saturday that he is unwilling to stand as a presidential candidate against Omar al-Bashir, who is defying an international warrant for his arrest.
 
    A fresh spate of killing now threatens the broad peace that Southern Sudan's province of Jonglei has been enjoying — and could even upset the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, signed in 2005 between Sudan's mainly Arab government in Khartoum and rebels in the black African south who had waged a war of independence for most of the previous 3 decades.
    There have been killings elsewhere in the south too. Some fear the north-south accord is near to collapse.
 
 
 
    Iran now controls the entire cycle for producing nuclear fuel with the opening of a new facility to produce uranium fuel pellets, the Iranian president said Saturday.
    "Today, with the grace of God, Iran is a country controlling the entire nuclear fuel cycle," Ahmadinejad said on state television.
 
    President Ahmadinejad spoke with Spiegel about what he expects fromBarack Obama, why America's new Afghanistan strategy is wrong and why Iran should have a spot on the UN Security Council.
 
    For Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, "a combination of ignorance and arrogance" under the Bush administration squandered countless diplomatic opportunities, allowing Iran to forge ahead with its nuclear program.
    "We got Darth Vader [Cheney] and company saying Iran was in the axis of evil and we have to change this regime."
 
    The European Union's Germany, France and United Kingdom, in association with the US, China and Russia, (the so-called E3+3) have reportedly recently offered Iran "a range of economic and political incentives" to "return to negotiations," this time without US insistence on "preconditions." What negotiations?
 
    When Dennis Ross, a hawkish, pro-Israel adviser to Barack Obama's presidential campaign, was elevated in February to the post of special adviser on "the Gulf and Southwest Asia" (i.e., Iran), his critics hoped that his influence would be marginal.
    But diplomats and Middle East watchers hoping Ross would be sidelined are wrong.
    He is building an empire at the State Department: hiring staff and, with his legendary flair for bureaucratic wrangling, cementing liaisons with a wide range of US officials.
    It's paradoxical that Obama, who made opening a dialogue with Iran into a crucial plank in his campaign, would hand the Iran file to Ross.
    Widely viewed as a cog in the machine of Israel's Washington lobby, Ross was not likely to be welcomed in Tehran -- and he wasn't.
 
 
 
    Over the past 25 years, an incredible decline in unity has become evident in everything, from rioting at soccer games to the "alien nation" characterized by high numbers of immigrants in some areas.
 
    On his visit to Turkey last week, Obama made important progress toward recalibrating America's relations with the Islamic world.
    Aides say Obama is still planning a bigger speech to the Muslim world.
 
    An official in the office of Kentucky's elections chief has referred to state Attorney General Jack Conway for investigation the issue of Barack Obama's eligibility to be president.
    In a letter to Conway, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Leslie Fugate noted the issue of "President Barack Obama's eligibility to be on the ballot in Kentucky."
    "Because our office does not have investigative powers … we are referring the matter to your office."
 
    Barack Obama won the White House in November with the help of a majority of Catholic voters -- but it didn't mean that Catholics, who in recent years had mostly sided with the GOP because of social issues, had any illusions about Obama's stance on such sensitive matters.
    Right now, Obama is surfing impressively high approval ratings. But he can't afford to alienate those liberal and moderate Catholics who could defend him when times get tough.
 
    America's religious Right has conceded that the election of Obama has sealed its defeat in the cultural war with permissiveness and secularism.
    Leading evangelicals have admitted that their association with George W. Bush has not only hurt the cause of social conservatives but contributed to the failure of the key objectives of their 30-year struggle.
 
    The torrent of ideas flowing out of the White House is raising hackles across the US.
    The political invective is turning ugly after the promise of hope and change.
    The meaning of "Obamaism" – yes, he already has his own "ism" – is being hotly debated. Is it style or substance?
 
    In wide-ranging remarks, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg defended the use of foreign law by American judges.
    "I frankly don't understand all the brouhaha lately from Congress and even from some of my colleagues about referring to foreign law."
 
 
 
 
    One in 9 homes in the US is vacant, an unprecedented number weighing on the nation's real estate market, industry experts say.
    "We overproduced by 1 million new units," said an economist at Harvard University. "Now we have to work our way through the stock." As for the 14 million empty houses, condominiums and apartments, and the 9.4 million units that are for sale, he said it will take 2 more years for the supply to line up with demand.
 
    Measuring unemployment is an art that can result in widely varied rates.
    Not surprisingly, the US Government uses a method that excludes millions of Americans seeking employment.
    In the US, 35% of healthy Americans ages 16-64 are unemployed, but what does that word mean?
    Millions of women are unemployed as they choose to stay home to raise families.
    Nevertheless, 25% of healthy American men ages 16-64 are unemployed, yet the US Government reports an unemployment rate of just 8.1%.
 
    The Federal government is still AAA, but every municipal debt issuer is now suspect and shaky according to Moody's.
 
    Politicians, economists, finance ministers -- the economic crisis took almost everyone by surprise.
    A year-later review of prognoses from last spring reveals many experts and political leaders who underestimated the problem, as well as some who didn't.
    Spiegel Online presents a gallery of conventional wisdom.
 
    There are still plenty of shadows looming over the stockmarket.
 
    Germany's Finance Minister says that measures governments have taken so far to calm financial markets could have serious repercussions once the ongoing crisis was over.
 
    Put bluntly, Ireland is being forced to roll back the welfare state and tighten fiscal policy in the midst of a savage economic contraction in order to uphold the deflation orthodoxies of Europe's monetary union.
    Ireland has been betrayed twice in this saga.
    Once by New Labour, which led Dublin to believe that Britain would join EMU at the same time – covering Ireland's dangerously exposed flank of Sterling trade.
    It was betrayed again by the European Central Bank, which opened the monetary floodgates early this decade to nurse Germany through a slump.
    Fast-growing Ireland and the Club Med over-heaters were sacrificed to help Germany. They were left to cope with credit bubbles as best they could.
    If the ECB continues to serve as the instrument of German tastes, keeping German inflation near zero, then Club Med and Ireland must necessarily deflate into Hell with all their debts.
 
    The hyperactive Fed finds its cherished independence is on the line.
    Federal Reserve has ventured ever further into the political realm, propping up failing companies, lending to industries other than banks and financing the federal budget through purchases of Treasury bonds.
    Now the politicians are threatening to respond in kind.
    By law, the Fed is independent. The president and Congress can do no more than name its seven governors, including the chairman.
    That Congress may not audit the Fed or approve its budget provides an added element of security. But that may now be at risk.
 
    Finance turned into the monster that ate the world economy.
    Much of the seeming success of the financial industry has now been revealed as an illusion.
    Worse yet, the collapse of the financial house of cards has wreaked havoc with the rest of the economy, with world trade and industrial output actually falling faster than they did in the Great Depression.
 
    Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) are often referred to as the IMF's currency. Although that is useful shorthand, the SDR is not, in fact, a currency, but rather the IMF's unit of account.
 
    China's central bank said Saturday that its foreign exchange reserves rose 16% year-on-year to $1.9537 trillion by the end of March.
    China's reserves, already the world's largest, increased by $7.7 billion in the first quarter - $146.2 billion less than the same period last year.
    Analysts believe China holds up to 70% of its foreign reserves in US dollar-denominated assets, including Treasury securities.
 
 
 
    Recession. Food shortages. Natural disasters. Terrorism. What would happen to us if some cataclysmic event caused society to break down?
 
    It's the centerpiece of virtually every modern UFO theory and a symbol for everything the government doesn't tell us.
    But now that the CIA has started to declassify top secret programs developed at Area 51, former military officers and engineers are beginning to shed some light on the enigmatic airfield and give the UFOlogists some new information to consider.
 
    Pilgrims have been walking the wrong Way of the Cross for almost 1,000 years, a prominent archaeological expert on Jerusalem has claimed.
 
    Ethiopian Orthodox Christians celebrate Easter anywhere from 1-2 weeks after the western Church (sometimes, they occur at the same time, due to the vagaries of the Eastern Orthodox calendar, which Ethiopians follows.)
 
    The Revised Julian calendar or, less formally, New Calendar, is a calendar scheme, originated in 1923, which effectively discontinued the 340 years of divergence between the naming of dates sanctioned by those Eastern Orthodox churches adopting it and the Gregorian calendar scheme that has come to predominate worldwide.
    It was rejected by the Orthodox churches of Jerusalem, Russia, Serbia (including later on the resurrected, though uncanonical Macedonian Orthodox Church), Georgia, and the Greek Old Calendarists.
 
 
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