Tuesday

The Daily WAR (01-23)

Reading between the lines, and thinking outside the box . . .
 
 
 
    Here is a translation of Benedict XVI's remarks to the reporters that accompanied him on his return flight from the Holy Land to Rome on Friday.
 
    Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI gave Sunday to those gathered in St. Peter's Square for the praying of the midday Regina Caeli.
 
    Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the Holy Land was a balancing act, one in which he stumbled but did not fall.
    No matter where he goes, he is unable to disconnect from history.
    Now Benedict must decide whether to beatify Pius XII, the pope of the Hitler era.
 
    According to a Vatican spokesman, Benedict XVI accomplished the mission he had proposed in the Holy Land: to make peace resound in the religious, social and political spheres.
    "Thirty speeches, one single message, that tirelessly repeated this one theme, with innumerable variations: peace between the Israelis and Palestinians; peace between Jews, Muslims and Christians; peace in the Church, between confessions and rites; peace in society and in the family; peace between God, man and creation; peace in hearts, in the Middle East and in the world. … Peace, peace, peace."
 
    Carla Bruni has issued a scathing attack on Pope Benedict XVI saying that she has allowed her Catholic faith to lapse because of his approach to contraception in Africa.
 
    Packing venue after venue during Benedict XVI's visit last year, Americans showed an eagerness and enthusiasm to hear his Gospel message that many did not expect.
    They exhibited a hunger -- for the truth and for moral leadership.
    And -- despite a trend in the media to be very critical in their coverage of Benedict XVI -- more than a year later, by wide margins, Americans in general -- and American Catholics in particular -- have a positive view of the pope and a strong desire to hear him speak on the most pressing issues of the day.
 
    Despite the large number of errors regarding Catholicism that can be found in the movie "Angels and Demons," the interest in the movie demonstrates an even greater interest in the Church, says Opus Dei priest John Wauck.
 
 
 
 
    A convention this month to pick the president for the next 5 years poses a political risk to Chancellor Merkel, with the numbers finely balanced for and against her nominee, current Presdident Koehler.
 
    After the US, the country with the biggest banking problem is probably Germany.
    Last week the German cabinet adopted a bank rescue plan worth looking at in detail.
    If you want to know how long the European crisis will last, this might give you the answer.
 
    Berlin is getting ready for a Western policy change toward Iran.
    The German Foreign Ministry's special envoy for Afghanistan announced his imminent visit to Teheran to discuss Iran's contribution to the counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan.
    German businesses are pushing for this cooperation to counterbalance, with new exports, the losses they are suffering through the crisis.
    In exchange, Teheran is offering access to its natural gas reserves.
 
 
 
    AP has reported fresh protests at the Bilderberg meeting near Athens in Greece, this time from right wing Greek nationalists.
 
No NWO...
    Veteran investigative journalist Jim Tucker has uncovered Bilderberg's 2009 agenda, which includes the plan for a global department of health, a global treasury and a shortened depression rather than a longer economic downturn.
    Tucker concluded by noting that Bilderberg members seemed grim faced at this year's meeting and that geopolitically, "Things are going bad for them, Americans are responding, Europeans are responding, and their program is being blocked.
 
    Italy's Eni and Russian state-owned firm Gazprom signed agreements on the South Stream gas pipeline project, just days ahead an EU-Russia summit later this week where Europe will attempt to speak with a single voice on foreign energy relations.
 
    A senior adviser to Dmitri Medvedev, the Russian president, has made a thinly-veiled attack on Vladimir Putin saying Russia will remain a 2nd-class power until it stops concentrating power in the hands of a hard-line elite.
 
 
 
    A Knesset inquiry following a WND exposé earlier this month has halted construction of the country's security barrier along a controversial route that would effectively have blocked off Jewish property and an important Jewish neighborhood from the rest of Jerusalem.
 
    The rooms at Beit Nativ, the Jerusalem building that houses the Shalem Center, have been gradually emptying in recent months, with fellows at the neoconservative research institute taking their leave one by one.
    But rather than signaling a slump, the depletion is actually a sign of the think tank's unprecedented success, because instead of writing scholarly books and articles, the Shalem fellows are now sitting in government offices, helping turn abstract research into concrete policy.
    There is no think tank today with as much influence on the Israeli government as the Shalem Center, which has extensive resources, despite being a small institute.
 
    Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, arrived in Washington and was immediately set on a collision course with Barack Obama over peacemaking in the Middle East.
    As he left Jerusalem for his talks at the White House on Monday, Netanyahu's Right-wing Likud party said that he would not commit Israel to a 2-state solution with the Palestinians that risked the creation of a "Hamastan."
 
    Barack Obama is to deliver a blunt warning to Benjamin Netanyahu that the era of the blank US cheque is over.
    Obama will tell him that from now on Israel must earn its privileged relationship with America, and will make clear that he will not allow his foreign policy objectives to be dictated by the Jewish state's interests.
 
    Israel stood firm against demands from Barack Obama to cease the construction of Jewish settlements and embrace the "2-state solution" to achieving peace in the Middle East.
 
    If there are no peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians for an independent Palestinian state, war next year is inevitable. So King Abdullah II of Jordan has told the London Times.
    Whether the king's timetable is correct, endless cold war, erupting into hot wars, seems the fate of Israel if "Bibi" Netanyahu holds to his pledge never to allow a Palestinian state on the West Bank.
 
    Jewish settler leaders today shrugged off Obama's call for Israel to halt settlement building in the occupied West Bank, saying Palestinians needed to "halt terror first."
 
    Christians are the "backbone" of grassroots US support for the Jewish state and could be crucial in lobbying lawmakers against supporting White House policies that may be detrimental to Israel, according to a Mideast reporter and author.
 
    The Shia minority in Saudi Arabia has declared independence from the Kingdom, pushing for the creation of a country called the "The Republic of Eastern Arabia".
    The Shia minority makes up 10% of the kingdom's population of 22.6 million and has long complained of discrimination.
    They are barred from key positions in the military and government and are not given an equal share of the country's wealth.
 
    A single American Special Forces group was behind at least 3 of Afghanistan's worst civilian casualty incidents, The Independent has learnt, raising fundamental questions about their ongoing role in the conflict.
    The US Marines Corps' Special Operations Command (MarSOC) was created 3 years ago on the express orders of Donald Rumsfeld, despite opposition from within the Marine Corps and the wider Special Forces community.
    An article in the Marine Corps Times described the MarSOC troops as "cowboys" who brought shame on the corps.
 
    2,000+ years of Afghanistan conquest, from Alexander the Great to Barack.
 
    Barely born, AFPAK, the acronym for Afghanistan and Pakistan as a single theater of operations, has already been displaced.
    Pakistan is now the most dangerous of the theaters, or PAKAF. The heart of Islamic extremism lies in Pakistan.
 
    Iran is putting to the test its border patrolling techniques in a weeklong maneuver in southeastern parts of the country bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan.
    The Iranian show of armed muscle is aimed at demonstrating the country's border patrolling capabilities as bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan's security crises spiral out of control.
 
    Relations between the United States and India may be degenerating due to a shift in US policy by the Obama administration toward Pakistan and China, an approach that reflects a shift from the Bush administration era that could affect India's standing in South Asia, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.
 
    Ethiopian troops have crossed the border into war-ravaged Somalia and appear to be stationing themselves in a town at a strategic crossroads, witnesses said today.
 
    The US African Command (AFRICOM) is building their new African megabase in the tiny Horn of African country of Djibouti.
    This latest expansion of US imperial might, this time on African soil, is turning into a fiasco for the Pentagon and State Department.
 
 
 
    It is highly likely that President Ahmadinejad will be re-elected on June 12. Opinion polls this month have put him more than 36 points ahead of his nearest rival.
    On May 11, the supreme leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khamenei implied that Ahmadinejad had his backing too when he declared that: "we should elect the one who lives in a simple and modest way ... who is pained by the pain of his people."
 
    Israel would be " completely insane" if it were to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, Mohamed El-Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in an interview published by German magazine Der Spiegel Saturday.
    "It would be completely insane to attack Iran. That would turn the region into one big fireball, and the Iranians would immediately start building the bomb – and they could count on the support of the entire Islamic world."
 
    The Israeli point man on Iran affairs, Uri Lubrani, has been forced into early retirement amid incessant power struggles between Mossad and the Israeli Defense Ministry.
    Senior defense officials told The Jerusalem Post that Defense Minister Barak decided to shut down Lubrani's office after coming under excruciating pressure from the notorious Mossad spy agency.
 
    Obama hopes to tempt Netanyahu into making concessions to the Palestinians by holding out the prospect of a "grand alliance" of moderate Arab states against a nuclear Iran.
 
    Netanyahu's focus was on a time limit for negotiations with Iran, with the threat of military action if no agreement is reached, while Obama defended his diplomatic approach and again refused to commit to an "artificial deadline" for negotiations.
    "I don't think [Netanyahu] got exactly what he was looking for," said Goodman, who expects Israel to "become more aggressive in its rhetoric" due to a growing sense it "will have to go it alone."
    "They're willing to risk the relationship between Israel and the US. If there's only a 10% chance [an attack] will succeed, then I think at that point there's another strategic calculation.
    "But if they do think they do have a chance of actually hurting Iran's nuclear infrastructure through an attack, then I don't see any reason why they wouldn't go even if the US opposes it."
 
 
 
    Would you like to see more awareness of the serious questions about Barack Obama's eligibility to serve as president of the United States?
    Are you frustrated by the lack of media coverage of this constitutional issue?
    How would you like to join in a campaign to generate public debate and discussion?
    WND, the only news agency in the world that has relentlessly pounded the eligibility questions, is ready to up the ante – with your help.
 
    The past week has provided a definitive demonstration of the subservience of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party to the military-intelligence apparatus of American imperialism.
    Day by day, the White House and the Democratic-controlled Congress delivered decisions along the lines demanded by the Pentagon and CIA, in many instances directly repudiating the campaign promises made to win popular support during the 2008 election.
 
    With Obama's policy shifts of the past week, he has found a new cheering section: Republican Congressmen.
    Senator Lindsey Graham (R - SC) in particular cheered the moves, lauding what he called "intelligent, well-reasoned decisions about trying to clean up the old system but not throwing it out."
    The moves of the past week were nothing short of monumental.
 
 
    The vice president, well-known for his verbal gaffes, confirms at a dinner the existence and location of a secret hidden bunker that Cheney is believed to have used after the 9/11 attacks.
 
    There are no more "undisclosed locations" for Dick Cheney these days.
    The former vice-president preferred the shadows during his 8 years in the White House, but now you can't escape the man.
    Every time you turn on the television, there he is, defending the Bush-era interrogations of terror suspects and excoriating Obama for outlawing them.
    It's an extraordinary, ongoing national media tour.
 
    Former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld used 'biblical images' to deliver reports on the war in Iraq to President Bush.
    With the former president known for his devout evangelical beliefs, Bible passages were printed on the top secret briefs detailing the progress of the war in 2003, it has emerged.
    The hand-delivered messages, which were leaked to GQ magazine by a source at the Pentagon, were said to portray the US-led invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein as being more like a "crusade" than a modern day war.
    Rumsfeld was not known for having strong religious beliefs and has been described as acting as a modern-day Rasputin by "manipulating Bush's evangelical beliefs."
 
    The violence that has spilled over into the US has been restricted to the players in the drug trade -- trafficker-on-trafficker, DEA agents say.
    But law enforcement officials and analysts who spoke with CNN agree that it is only a matter of time before innocent people on the US side get caught in the cartel crossfire.
    "It's coming. I guarantee, it's coming," said a DEA spokesman in Washington.
    Sinaloa cartel leader Guzman's shoot-to-kill instructions aren't limited to Mexican authorities and cartel rivals; they also include US law enforcement officials, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing sources and intelligence memos.
 
 
 
    Housing construction plunged to a record low in April as a steep drop in apartment building offset a rebound in single-family construction. Permits for new projects also hit a new low.
 
    With the economy showing early signs of stabilizing, it's time to start wondering: What is the 'new normal' economy going to look like?
 
    With overall global economic growth slowing to a near standstill this year, 2009 will be the most challenging year for economies since WW2, according to an International Monetary Fund report.
 
    Bundesbank president Axel Weber opposes a US-style stress test for banks, due to the "heterogeneity of banks' portfolios", according to an interview with FT Deutschland.
    He said such comparisons between European banks were potentially misleading.
    (We suspect that Weber is afraid that such a public comparison would make it transparent that Germany's banking system is effectively insolvent.)
    He also said it would be dangerous to pronounce a pre-mature end to the crisis.
 
    The crisis is still raging, and the Europeans are already wondering about their exit strategy.
    FT Deutschland writes that the stability and growth pact is likely to lead to major disputes in the euro area about the exit strategy.
 
    The US dollar is not Russia's basic reserve currency anymore.
    The euro-based share of reserve assets of Russia's Central Bank increased to the level of 47.5% as of January and exceeded the investments in dollar assets, which made up 41.5%, The Vedomosti newspaper wrote.
 
    Brazil and China will work towards using their own currencies in trade transactions rather than the US dollar, according to Brazil's central bank and aides to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil's president.
 
    If Washington is counting on Japan to act as last-resort buyer of US dollar bonds, it may have to think again.
    Masaharu Nakagawa, finance chief of the Democratic Party of Japan, told the BBC that his country should not purchase any more US debt unless issued in yen as "Samurai" bonds, akin to "Carter bonds" in 1978.
    Nakagawa later played down the comments, calling them private thoughts, but the genie is out of the bottle.
    The tremors from Japan follow near-weekly fulminations from Beijing, which suspects that Washington is engineering a stealth default on America's debt by the trickery of quantitative easing.
 
    Prepare for war, the death of capitalism and bankruptcy of the US Government (not necessarily in that order).
    A vintage performance from the author of "The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report". This morning – living up to his reputation for bearishness - Marc Faber forecast a litany of unpleasant events ahead.
 
    Nigeria's main militant group said Sunday it destroyed 2 oil pipelines in the southern Niger Delta, the latest attack amid the worst outbreak of violence to hit the region in months.
 
    Oil prices edged above $60 a barrel today amid renewed hopes of a recovery in the US economy.
    Oil prices had risen sharply on Monday amid fears that attacks on oil facilities in Nigeria could lead to shortages in oil supply.
 
 
 
 
    Swine flu and the possibility of a vaccine topped the agenda Monday as the World Health Organization opened its annual meeting amid concern that the virus continues to spread - and kill - around the globe.
    WHO's spokesman said in-country transmission rates were a key factor in whether the global body decides to increase its pandemic alert level.
    Right now, the world is at phase 5 - out of a possible 6 - meaning a global outbreak is "imminent."
 
    The new influenza strain circulating around most of the US is putting a worrying number of young adults and children into the hospital and hitting more schools than usual, US health officials said on Monday.
    CDC officials say around 100,000 people are likely infected with the new flu strain in the US.
 
    The US Navy canceled the deployment of the USS Dubuque after a sailor was diagnosed with the swine flu.
    How will the military respond if the new A/H1N1 flu reaches pandemic proportions?
 
 
 
    The Arctic and Antarctica are the last vast untapped reservoirs of mineral resources on the planet.
    If the expansion of Australia's territory is formalized, this will disrupt the operation of international legal mechanisms, which have already been seriously affected by the proclamation of Kosovo's independence.
    Worse still, this will open the door to a large-scale re-division of the world.
    The South Pole precedent could be applied in the North Pole, which will turn the struggle for the Arctic resources into a global war, inevitably involving Russia.
 
    In years gone by we would have had regular exposure to bacteria found in muddy water, and these bacteria would also have been found on unwashed fruit and vegetables.
    "Throughout evolution, all animals and humans will have consumed large numbers of these bacteria daily. Now we drink sanitised water and scrubbed fruit and veg, so we have no contact with them."
 
    An Albuquerque archeologist and his team have returned with artifacts from a dig site near the Dead Sea which they believe reveals the lost city of Sodom.
 
    For some evangelicals, marginalization has hardened belief in the imminence of The End.
 
    Pentecostalism has Islam and the Catholic Church on the run in many parts of the world.
    It is growing like crazy in Latin America, where it has shattered the Roman Catholic Church's monopoly of religion.
    It is not just spreading in Asia and Latin America: in large swaths of Africa Pentecostalism is expanding faster than Islam.
 
    Bart Ehrman -- a best-selling author and a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill -- is a biblical sleuth whose investigations make some people very angry.
    Like the fictional Robert Langdon character played by actor Tom Hanks in The Da Vinci Code, he delves into the past to challenge some of Christianity's central claims.
    In his latest book, "Jesus, Interrupted," he concludes that doctrines such as the divinity of Jesus and heaven and hell are not based on anything Jesus or his earlier followers said.
    [WAR: Well, that's true about Yahshua not being divine. To believe that he was divine -- a bi-polar god-man that was "fully God and fully man" -- is to have the spirit of antichrist that John warned us about.]
 
 
WAR groups: GOOGLE / YAHOO!
WAR for military: YAHOO! WARriors
WAR fund: PayPal (payable to thedailywarrior@gmail.com)
          The Daily World Affairs Report / PO Box 1059 / Pearce, AZ 85625
 
 
 
 
 
Posted by at