Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
The attacks upon the Roman Catholic Church, during the last 2 weeks of March, following the Pope's comments about the dangers of condom use in Africa in the attempt to prevent AIDS have been an extraordinary lesson in applied ignorance and the survival of prejudice.
The Vatican has rejected at least 3 possible candidates proposed by Obama to serve as US ambassador to the Holy See, say reliable sources in Rome.
None of the candidates informally proposed so far is acceptable to the Pope because of their support for abortion rights.
Even the informal dismissal by the Vatican of the first names whispered in confidence within the Obama inner circle is a sign that choppy waters may lie ahead in official US-Vatican relations.
History still matters!...
Germany did not have the intention nor had she raised the demands of annihilating Poland.
The British Government have - an occurrence unique in history - given the Polish State full powers for all actions against Germany which that State might conceivably intend to undertake.
The British Government assured the Polish Government of their military support in all circumstances, should Germany defend herself against any provocation or attack.
Thereupon the Polish terror against the Germans living in the territories which had been torn from Germany immediately assumed unbearable proportions.
The British Government rejected the proposal of Mussolini, which might still have been able to save the peace of Europe, in spite of the fact that the German Government had declared their willingness to agree to it.
The British Government, therefore, bear the responsibility for all the unhappiness and misery which have now overtaken and are about to overtake many peoples.
The German Government and the German people have assured the English people countless times how much they desire an understanding, indeed close friendship, with them.
If the British Government hitherto always refused these offers and now answer with an open threat of war, it is not the fault of the German people and their Government, but exclusively the fault of the British Cabinet or of those men who for years have been preaching the destruction and extermination of the German people.
The German people and their Government do not, like Great Britain, intend to dominate the world, but they are determined to defend their own liberty, their independence and above all their life.
After an embezzlement scandal and continued in-fighting at Germany's extreme right NPD political party, questions have been raised about its future, particularly in a major election year.
A German firm is seeking a long-term purchase of Iran's natural gas, the head of National Iranian Oil Company Dispatching Center said. "Bayerngas is to open an office in Tehran."
Austrian Chancellor Faymann discusses the impact of the economic crisis on his country, whose financial sector is deeply exposed to high-risk loans in Eastern Europe.
In this Spiegel interview, he says the foreign media has been unfair and that hard facts "paint a very positive picture."
Liberals in the European parliament criticised national politicians on Tuesday, saying they regularly try to hide the important legislative role the EU-level chamber plays.
The Russian foreign minister, speaking at the Assembly of Council for foreign and defense policy, has offered Moscow as venue for the holding of global security conference.
Russia's NATO envoy claimed on Tuesday that plans by the alliance to hold military exercises in the former Soviet republic were an attempt at interference in Georgia's internal affairs.
It will not be easy for Obama to let go of Georgia, which is the US beachhead in the pursuit of its war in Afghanistan, according to analyst Rick Rozoff.
The momentum for this plan began long before Obama, long before the ill-fated war against Ossetia last summer, and continues apace.
It is a plan laid down by Zbegniew Brzezinski in his 1997 Foreign Affairs article, pursued enthusiastically by Bush/Cheney, and Obama is unlikely to disagree, considering Brzezinski is his close patron and adviser.
The US needs Russia, but could lose it along with Georgia as its grab for control over Central Asia and the Muslim world lurches forward, forcing it instead into a humiliating retreat from this cauldron.
The recent visit of Obama to Turkey
For Washington, Turkey today has become a geopolitical "pivot state" which is in the position to tilt the Eurasian power equation towards Washington or significantly away from it depending on how Turkey develops its ties with Moscow and its role regarding key energy pipelines.
Spain's foreign minister said Tuesday that Europe would not accept the evasion by Israel of previous commitments made in peace negotiations.
Binyamin Netanyahu is the narrowly elected prime minister of that tiny country, Israel, which lives off the military largesse of the United States.
And now motormouth is declaring that "Israel will bomb Iran if the US doesn't." How much chutzpah is that?
(And: NETANYAHU'S FALSE PROMISES)
The Israeli army has gone on high alert along the border with the Sinai peninsula as Egyptian forces hunt for suspected members of the Lebanese Hezbollah militia.
The action by Mubarak's forces has been swift and lethal, with crucial information about the terrorist cells relayed to Egyptian security officials by the Mossad.
Once again, the Jewish intelligence agency has used its spies to help defend a Muslim president.
Spurred by fears of Iranian meddling and an intensifying struggle for regional dominance, Egypt has cracked down on a covert cell within its borders that it says is run by the Iranian-sponsored group Hezbollah.
The episode has highlighted rising tensions between forces aligned with Iran and those allied with the US and Israel.
Egyptian officials believe that Iran is using Hezbollah as a proxy to destabilize a regional rival and major US ally, part of its wider push to establish itself as the dominant player in the region.
Hours after Obama promised to halt the rise of piracy off the Horn of Africa, Somali gunmen gave their response, hijacking 2 more vessels and opening fire on a 3rd yesterday.
It also emerged that they had seized 2 Egyptian fishing boats a day earlier, making a total of 4 vessels and more than 60 crew captured in little more than 24 hours of plunder.
Iran's state television says the country has discovered a new offshore oil field in the Persian Gulf that contains more than 1 billion barrels of crude.
Last week, Iran said it discovered 7 other oil fields containing about 1 billion barrels of recoverable oil.
President Ahmadinejad says Iran has prepared proposals aimed at resolving his country's nuclear dispute with the West.
"We have prepared a package that can be the basis to resolve Iran's nuclear problem. It will be offered to the West soon. This new package will ensure peace and justice for the world. It respects rights of all nations."
President Ahmadinejad said Tuesday that Iran planned to launch a "more sophisticated" satellite into orbit.
Iran's official news agency quoted him as saying the launch would take place despite concerns over the earlier launch of Iran's first domestically made satellite in February.
Once an ardent advocate of the Greater Israel scheme, Israel's President Peres accuses Iran of pursuing a colonialist agenda.
"Sooner or later, the world will realize that Iran wishes to take over the Middle East, and that it has colonial ambitions."
Iran demanded on Tuesday that the UN Security Council respond firmly to what it described as Israel's "unlawful and insolent threats" to launch an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.
"These outrageous threats of resorting to criminal and terrorist acts against a sovereign country and a member of the United Nations not only display the aggressive and warmongering nature of the Zionist regime, but also constitute blatant violations of international law."
Gulf Cooperation Council members (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Oman) are getting ready for what many now assume will be retaliation from Iran following Israeli bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities later this year.
Up and down the Persian Gulf, Patriot missile batteries have been quietly deployed around key oil installations.
There is also a steady traffic in and out of Washington of high-ranking GCC military and defense officials, including army, air force and navy chiefs.
The neocons, as they are nicknamed, have reached new heights of absurdity.
Perle and Frum together wrote a book apocalyptically titled An End to Evil, in which they forecast a "holocaust" of the U.S. population unless we went to war, pronto, against the Axis of Evil.
Other neocons said we were already in "World War IV" and warned that the suicidal madmen ruling Iran were about to acquire nuclear weapons and take over the whole bloody world, unless we stopped them at once.
Our next war will presumably be dubbed World War V.
Spanish prosecutors will seek criminal charges against Alberto Gonzales and 5 high-ranking Bush administration officials for sanctioning torture at Guantánamo.
The results of the "authoritarian approach" adopted by the Obama administration to require states to spend economic recovery funds in specific ways "remains to be seen," according to an analyst for the the American Legislative Exchange Council.
He praised Texas Gov. Rick Perry for signing onto state sovereignty legislation.
Must see video!...
I am here today to express my unwavering support for efforts all across our country, but, most of all, here in Texas, to reaffirm the states' rights affirmed through the 10th Amendment to the US Constitution.
(And: TEXT OF RESOLUTION)
Barak Obama's incredibly imperialist wielding of executive power.
In this feature, we will show how a small group of behavioral economists is shaping policy in the Obama Administration, and we will show how that group of behaviorists is merely the latest incarnation of a long-standing British Empire campaign to destroy the United States, and to undo the American Revolution.
(And: OBAMA'S "NARCISSUS SYNDROME")
Democracy and majority rule give an aura of legitimacy to acts that would otherwise be deemed tyranny.
Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to gather to tell Washington that spending is out of control and the citizens, those who pay the taxes with which the political machinery in Washington is greased, aren't going to take it any more.
(And: DHS TO TAPE T-PARTIERS?)
The tea parties are AstroTurf -- fake grassroots. But there is a real movement growing against corporate greed and government malfeasance.
How the tea parties could change American politics
Today American taxpayers in more than 300 locations in all 50 states will hold rallies -- dubbed "tea parties" -- to protest higher taxes and out-of-control government spending.
There is no political party behind these rallies, no grand right-wing conspiracy, not even a 501(c) group like MoveOn.org.
So who's behind the Tax Day tea parties? Ordinary folks who are using the power of the Internet to organize.
A familiar accusation leveled at US government officials came from a surprising source: Mexican President Felipe Calderon.
"It is impossible to pass tons of drugs or cocaine to US without some grade of complicity of some American authorities. We need to discover and eradicate that corruption in order to fix this problem.
"There is traffic in Mexico because there is corruption in Mexico. And that is true. But with the same argument, if there is traffic in United States, it is because there is some corruption in United States."
US consumer prices fell unexpectedly in March and recorded their first annual drop since 1955, government data showed today, as slumping demand pushed down energy and food costs.
In what was billed as a major economic policy speech, Obama on Tuesday defended his administration's multitrillion-dollar taxpayer bailout of Wall Street, claiming it was moving the economy toward recovery.
At the same time, he outlined a policy of budget austerity that will hinge on containing health care costs and exacting funding cuts from basic social programs.
The speech was characterized by evasions and lies.
Wall Street has been given the green light to lie -- with the full blessing of the Obama administration and Congress. "Toxic assets"? Gone, just like that.
In yet another example of collusion and cover-up, federal regulators have told the nation's largest banks to "keep quiet" about their performance in the Obama administration's "stress tests."
WALL STREET'S LARGEST CROOKS (video)
Wall Street's biggest scumbag investment firm at it again.
Poland on Tuesday said it planned to ask the IMF for a $20-billion credit line to bolster reserves and fend off currency attacks as it bucks the recession.
The number of officially registered jobless in Russia has reached 2.2 million (8.5%), President Medvedev said at a meeting with experts at the Institute of Modern Development.
Fears that unemployment and falling living standards could trigger social unrest in the country is the worst nightmare for the Kremlin at a time of global crisis.
We are now witnessing the beginning of the end of the international economic order based on the Bretton Woods financial institutions as well as the international security order sustained by American military superiority.
The G20 summit signaled the beginning of a new Great Game between the United States and China.
This new Great Game has started with a money game, but it will eventually develop into a full-pledged political game.
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