Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
More than 100 rabbis of various denominations will sign a message welcoming Benedict XVI to the Holy Land and encouraging dialogue between Jews and Christians.
Addressing the Pontiff, the message affirms: "In this spirit, we -- rabbis and Jewish leaders -- warmly welcome you and your mission of peace to Israel. With one voice, we are united in our commitment to interreligious dialogue, to opening more paths to increased understanding, and to continually recognize and strengthen the important relationship between Catholics and Jews worldwide."
The first of May is a festive day in many countries and cultures. In western Germany there is a unique May Day tradition for young men to express their love for a girl.
German society values peace more than anything, as opinion polls show.
But Germany's opposition to the Iraq war did not fundamentally change the course of German foreign policy, which does not take much in account the views of German society.
Germany [Kindom of the North] is leading in trying to destabilize the Sudanese government [Kingdom of the South] in order to get access to Sudan's energy resources.
Germany rejected militarism after 1945 through "westernizing" itself. But the German role in NATO is bringing militarism back into the core of that nation's politics and economics.
The US is expected to make requests to European allies to accommodate detainees from the controversial detention facility at Guantanamo Bay within weeks, amid reports that Germany could be willing to help.
Germany is resisting a European Union move to publish details of who receives the EU's generous farm subsidies.
The governments of all 27 member states have agreed to lift the veil of secrecy surrounding the recipients by today.
But officials in Berlin say they need several more weeks to clarify the legal situation, after German courts ruled the move violated farmers' privacy.
The European Union's enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn has accused Britain of having an irrational and backward looking view on the EU's eastwards expansion and foreign workers.
He likened "scepticism" about expansion, especially in "established" countries such Britain, Germany and France, to sentimentality for the 1960s.
Russia has been accused of carrying out the stealth annexation of a third of Georgia after the Kremlin imposed direct control over the borders of 2 rebel regions at the heart of last year's war in the Caucasus.
Moscow's move, which drew swift international condemnation, comes amid fears of a new crisis in East-West relations following the expulsion from Brussels of two Russian diplomats to NATO who were accused of espionage.
Israel Air Force aircraft today bombed 2 smuggling tunnels along Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip, in response to a Qassam fired by militants from coastal territory the previous day, and which hit the western Negev.
The United Nations blames Israel for the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, calling on Tel Aviv to end the fatal blockade.
The United Nations is calling on Israel to freeze all pending demolition orders against Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem in a new report that reflects growing international concern over developments in the contested city.
Barack Obama's meeting in Washington next month with Binyamin Netanyahu could produce some highly un-amiable fireworks.
Unless one or the other shifts position soon, the sound of their impending collision will reverberate noisily and portentously around the Middle East.
Netanyahu's aides fear that Obama will "surprise" the prime minister with unanticipated ideas and demands at the leaders' upcoming meeting.
Is there a threat to Israel from the United States under Barack Obama?
If there is a threat to Israel coming from Obama, it is that, having eschewed the use of force by the US, he will follow through on his Vice President's declaration that the Israelis would be "ill-advised" to attack the Iranian nuclear sites and will prevent them from doing the job themselves.
The big idea behind the Obama administration's long-in-the-making policy for Afghanistan and Pakistan was that the 2 countries are inextricably linked.
The key to stabilizing Afghanistan, the White House concluded 5 weeks ago, is a stable and cooperative Pakistan.
That calculation has been utterly scrambled by the Taliban offensive in western Pakistan, which has forced the US to concentrate on the singular task of preventing further gains in Pakistan by an Islamic militant insurgency that has claimed territory just 60 miles from Islamabad.
A top US commander warns that Islamabad government risks collapsing if the Taliban militants are not defeated within 2 two weeks.
Premier Paranoid Protestant
Preaching Prophecy Poop...
The possibility of a nuclear-armed Taliban in Pakistan is a grave threat to global security, but it also poses an unthinkably dangerous threat to America.
For years, Congress has dithered over the threat posed to the US homeland by a massive EMP pulse.
Bible prophecy recognizes 4 major spheres of political power in the last days. [WAR: This in itself proves there will not be a "one world government"!] There is no mention in Scripture of a 5th superpower resembling America.
[WAR: I believe ol' Hal is right about the US being EMP'ed -- but it won't be by the Taliban.
And the reason that he doesn't see where America is mentioned throughout prophecy ("Israel"; "Jacob"; "Joseph"; "Manasseh"; etc.) is because he's a blind prophet of Baal.]
Apocalypse Now. Run for cover. The turbans are coming.
This is the state of Pakistan today, according to the current hysteria disseminated by the Barack Obama administration and US corporate media.
The Israel lobby has been running into a few problems lately, but it's nothing they don't think they can handle.
Having felled Charles "Chas" Freeman, smitten Gen. Zinni, and sidelined those in the Obama administration who question the nature and utility of America's "special relationship" with Israel, the Lobby's flagship organization, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), is primed to hold their national conference in Washington next week, with Jane "This Conversation Doesn't Exist" Harman slated to address the gathering.
The focus of the conference, and the legislative centerpiece of the event, will be passage of the Iran Diplomatic Enhancement Act, which would ban US companies from providing Iran with refined petroleum products, and seeks to punish European companies — particularly the Swiss, who come in for 2 specific mentions in the text of the bill — for doing so.
This bill is all about provoking the Iranians, effectively sabotaging efforts to engage in a mutual dialogue with Tehran.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt's legacy has been slid back under the microscope recently as his efforts to pull the country out of the Great Depression are scrutinized.
Now a piece of his foreign policy is also being re-evaluated in a soon-to-be published book that upends a widely held view that he was indifferent to the fate of Europe's Jews, and asserts that new evidence shows that the president pushed for an ambitious secret rescue plan before the war began.
The book, an edited collection of official documents, diaries, internal memos and more, contends that Roosevelt hatched a scheme in 1938 to rally the world's democracies and relocate millions of European Jews to undeveloped areas in Latin America and Africa.
Federal prosecutors moved today to dismiss espionage-related charges against 2 former pro-Israel lobbyists accused of disclosing classified defense information, ending a tortuous inside-the-Beltway legal battle rife with national security intrigue.
Oh, okay...
When Stanford University students recently asked Condoleezza Rice about waterboarding and torture, her response was uncannily close to Richard Nixon's infamous claim, "When the president does it, that means it is not illegal."
Rice responded by saying" "The president instructed us that nothing we would do would be outside of our obligations, legal obligations under the Convention Against Torture. I didn't authorize anything. I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency. "By definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture."
The Vatican newspaper said Obama's first 100 days in office have not confirmed the Catholic Church's worst fears about radical policy changes in ethical areas.
The comments came in a front-page article April 29 in L'Osservatore Romano, under the headline, "The 100 days that did not shake the world."
It said he has operated with more caution than predicted in most areas, including economics and international relations.
While Barack Obama has clearly improved Washington's image abroad during his first 100 days in office, the next 100 will almost certainly prove much more challenging for his foreign policy.
Putting aside the possibility that the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression could become much more severe than the White House currently anticipates, or that the swine flu currently spreading out of Mexico explodes into a modern-day version of the 1918 epidemic over the coming months, Obama will face a series of difficult decisions on how to deal with a plethora of actual and potential geo-strategic crises.
A bill that would provide federal money to train law enforcement officers to identify and criminally prosecute speech and thought offensive to homosexuals has been introduced into the US Senate, matching a House-approved bill that critics fear will be used to crack down on biblical teachings.
It also provides money "to improve the education and training of local officials to identify, investigate, prosecute and prevent hate crimes."
Supreme Court Justice David Souter plans to retire, after more than 19 years on the court, once the current term ends in late June.
His departure, however, isn't likely to change the court's liberal-conservative composition, because his successor will almost certainly be moderate to liberal.
The recent rejuvenation of interest in State's rights, nullification, and secession has been a welcome result of the explosion of federal power since the housing and credit bubbles burst last fall.
But why did the Founders insist on state sovereignty?
Rather than a theoretical fabrication at the 1787 Philadelphia Convention or the State ratification conventions, State's rights were explicitly linked to the stability of the United States from the Revolutionary War forward.
That is the key to the State sovereignty movement.
It seems that every cloud really does have a silver lining.
The current recession and the federal government's unpardonable reaction to it have sparked debates on that just last year would have been unthinkable, the most notable recent one being the debate over secession.
Last weekend, the blog Stormin's Morning Java noticed an odd claim on the State Department website.
In a list that intended to brag about how much Hillary Clinton had traveled as the new Secretary of State to foreign countries, Foggy Bottom included a trip to Texas.
Chrysler — the 3rd largest US automaker — filed for bankruptcy in New York Thursday, announcing that it would close its manufacturing facilities until it emerges from a Chapter 11 reorganization.
The move threatens the livelihoods of 54,000 hourly and salaried workers in the US and Canada and hundreds of thousands of retirees and workers at dealerships, parts suppliers and other related companies in Michigan, Ohio, Illinois and other states.
This outcome reveals what has been the aim of the government's auto "bailout" from the start.
From its inception, Obama's auto task force, led by multimillionaire Wall Street investor Steven Rattner, has supported using the bankruptcy courts to break up the 84-year-old company so that its most profitable assets could be separated off and sold to private investors.
A crisis in credit card debt is likely to be one of the next major shocks to the US banking system.
Many large institutions, such as Bank of America and Citigroup, already effectively insolvent but for billions of dollars of bailout money from the federal government, will now see their financial positions deteriorate even further.
The Senate on Thursday rejected an amendment that would have given bankruptcy judges the power to ease a homeowner's monthly payments and prevent foreclosure.
Everyone agrees that Goldman Sachs pretty much runs the government's economic and financial agencies.
As the New York Times explained last October in a must-read 4-page article, the presence of Goldman Sachs alumni in virtually all of the top government financial posts is so great that their team is dubbed "Government Sachs."
China, wary of the troubled US economy, has "canceled America's credit card" by cutting down purchases of debt, a US congressman says.
Data from the Treasury Department shows that investors in China have sharply curtailed their purchases of bonds in January and February.
A DEPRESSION IS UNAVOIDABLE (Video)
Luxembourgish Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker is considering stepping down from his post as head of the 16-nation euro-group, according to a report in a German newspaper.
The rumours have been sparked by the deteriorating relations between Juncker and his French and German counterparts, Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel.
May Day 2009 takes place against the background of a historic crisis of the capitalist system. Everywhere, the impact of the crisis is being felt.
Tens of millions are being thrown out of work around the world, including millions in the heart of world capitalism, the United States.
People find themselves unable to make their credit card payments or afford housing, education, health care and the other basic necessities of life.
Hundreds of millions are being pushed into extreme poverty and hunger.
Across the United States, Europe, and much of the rest of the developed world, the recent wave of state interventionism is meant to lessen the pain of the current global recession and restore ailing economies to health.
For the most part, the governments of developed countries do not intend to manage these economies indefinitely.
However, an opposing intention lies behind similar interventions in the developing world: there the state's heavy hand in the economy is signaling a strategic rejection of free-market doctrine.
The World Health Organization announced Thursday it will would stop using the term "swine flu" to avoid confusion over the danger posed by pigs.
Did Orwell realise that swine flu came to Animal Farm?
Swine flu illnesses in the US will intensify in severity and spread to more states, US health officials said yesterday.
It's the nightmare scenario health workers fear, but are nevertheless preparing for - the day when the next influenza pandemic arrives, and millions worldwide die.
Mexico's economy will be largely closed down for 5 days from Friday, with people urged to stay at home, after the country's president ordered drastic measures.
Offices, restaurants, schools, football stadiums and "non-essential" industries should shut, leaving only essential businesses such as supermarkets, hospitals and pharmacies to stay open, said Felipe Calderon in a televised address on Wednesday night.
Is there a battle for control of the Mexican drugs trade? Will the swine flu allow the CIA to increase its influence in Mexico?
"Plan Mexico" is supposed to be about the US helping Mexico to stamp out narcotics. However, some journalists believe that "Plan Mexico" is designed by the CIA to eliminate its competition in the over $30- billion-a-year drug business.
(And: PLAN MEXICO AND THE CIA)
In this country, hundreds of schools have closed, including Fort Worth's entire school district of about 80,000 students. Texas has 26 confirmed cases.
It took corporate media swine flu hysteria to ram through a martial law bill in Massachusetts.
S18 gives the Governor the power to authorize the deployment and use of force to distribute supplies and materials and local authorities will be allowed to enter private residences for investigation and to quarantine individuals.
The measure also requires a registry for volunteers that would be activated in an emergency and establishes fines of up to $1,000 for not complying with local public health orders.
(Again: DHS: POSSIBLE QUARANTINES)
The swine flu outbreak raises a lot of fears. Here's one you might not have thought of yet: The Pentagon may be taking over more and more of our civil society in this crisis.
Testifying in March, General Victor Renuart, head of NorthCom, said it would provide "assistance in support of civil authorities" during an epidemic.
And, he added, "when requested and approved by the Secretary of Defense or directed by the President, federal military forces will contribute to federal support."
But he boasted: "USNorthCom does not wait for that call to action."
Despite the fact that swine flu has claimed just one victim all week, a kill rate multiple times lower than the common flu, governments of the world are acting as if armageddon is right around the corner.
The World Health Organization calls a virus that has killed a confirmed 12 people in over a week a "threat to humanity" while talk of martial law, mandatory vaccinations and forced quarantines runs rampant.
Much of the hysteria is being fueled by people inundating hospitals and doctor's offices who have mundane illnesses like the common cold, but who just want to "make sure" they don't have swine flu.
Such cases are immediately treated as "suspected swine flu cases" by the media and the panic spreads faster than the actual virus.
(And: IT FEALS LIKE A PHONEY WAR)
The media has gone into full gear with little analysis and review of the evidence. The media reports are twisted. Realities are turned up side down.
Policy statements are not backed by medical and scientific evidence.
It is revealing that the Atlanta-based CDCP is playing a key role in identifying the virus on behalf of several Latin American countries, including Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Costa Rica.
On April 30th, the US government established a CDCP lab in Mexico. In other words, a US government agency is monopolising the conduct of laboratory testing, the data and analysis.
(Don't forget!: CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service)
Congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex) is a committed libertarian who is skeptical of government action of any kind.
He is also one of the few medical doctors in Congress and he may have a point.
Maybe, just maybe, swine flu fears have been blown out of proportion.
[WAR: I do some PT work for Family Dollar, and on Wednesday, HQ put out a memo saying they wanted a special display put out that had anti-flu products, masks, gloves, etc.]
The flu that is moving through humans appears to have a combination of genes from 2 normally separate sets of pigs, those from the Americas and from Eurasia, scientists say.
However, it is unknown how those pigs met, and there is not yet any genetic proof that this particular flu was ever in a pig.
And, despite current fears, some geneticists feel this strain may not be very deadly.
Some conspiracy theories that are spreading just as fast as the virus have already dismissed the hysteria over the virus as a malevolent plot orchestrated by pharmaceutical companies in order to cash in on people's fear.
One in particular believes that the strain has been purposely engineered so companies producing vaccines can cash in.
Like dogs chasing their own tails, scientists go cross-eyed looking at elephants under a microbe-scope to discover new disease causing germs, when germs and microorganisms do not cause disease all by their microscopic selves.
They only take advantage of us when our bodies are in a weakened state burdened by toxins.
Sickness is not caused by bacteria, but bacteria comes with the sickness.
Enlightened understanding is that germs are not the cause of disease any more than flies and maggots cause garbage.
Flies, maggots and rats do not cause garbage but rather feed on garbage. They are there as a result of the garbage. They are scavengers.
That's why I refer to the Germ Theory of medicine as the "rat theory of garbage." That is, if germs cause disease, then rats must cause garbage.
Show me a person who has accumulated waste matter in organs and tissues, low oxygen levels, weakened immune system, nutritional deficiencies and an acidic pH environment and I will show you cancer, bacterial, fungal, viral and parasitic infections.
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The core of my philosophy about being prepared, life style planning, self sufficiency and energy independence can be summed up with in the following 10 core values.
Behind the spate of family homicides is not just the economy, job stress and failing marriages, but a government that approved a cohort of psychoactive drugs with proven homicidal and suicidal side effects.
Blockbuster antidepressants and anti-psychotics that are kept on the market despite the blood baths they can cause so drug companies can get their patent's worth.
The earliest May Day celebrations appeared in pre-Christian. Many pagan celebrations were abandoned or Christianized during the process of conversion in Europe.
The day was a traditional summer holiday in many pre-Christian European pagan cultures. While February 1 was the first day of Spring, May 1 was the first day of summer; hence, the summer solstice on June 25 (now June 21) was Midsummer.
In the Roman Catholic tradition, May is observed as Mary's month, and in these circles May Day is usually a celebration of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
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