WASHINGTON — Cardinal James Francis Stafford, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary of the Holy See, delivered a lecture on Thursday saying that the future under President-elect Obama will echo Jesus’ agony in Gethsemane. Criticizing Obama as ‘aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic,’ he went on to speak about a decline in respect for human life and the need for Catholics to return to the values of marriage and human dignity. Delivered at the Catholic University of America, the cardinal’s lecture was titled ‘Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II: Being True in Body and Soul,’ the student university paper The Tower reports. Hosted by the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, his words focused upon Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae, whose fortieth anniversary is marked this year. Commenting on the results of the recent presidential election, Cardinal Stafford said on Election Day ‘America suffered a cultural earthquake.’ The cardinal argued that President-elect Obama had campaigned on an ‘extremist anti-life platform’ and predicted that the near future would be a time of trial. ‘If 1968 was the year of America’s ‘suicide attempt,’ 2008 is the year of America’s exhaustion,’ he said, contrasting the year […]
A federal judge in Washington on Thursday freed five Guantanamo Bay detainees accused by government prosecutors of supporting al Qaeda’s military efforts against the U.S. military and its allies. U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon said the five Algerian terrorism suspects could not be held indefinitely as ‘enemy combatants’ and that the government failed to prove the classified document used as evidence against them was reliable. He directed that the five men be released ‘forthwith’ and urged the government not to appeal. The men have been held for almost seven years. This is the first civilian court ruling for terror suspects who are challenging their detention. One of the men to be released is Lakhdar Boumediene, whose landmark Supreme Court case in June gave detainees the right to challenge their imprisonment in the facility, which was set up in 2002 after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The judge ordered Mr. Boumediene and four other detainees to be released immediately, though he did not reveal the conditions of their release. Officials in Bosnia, meanwhile, have already agreed to allow the detainees to enter that country – which had been their adopted home before they were […]
WASHINGTON — An internal investigation by the CIA found that agency officials engaged in a cover-up to hide agency negligence in the downing of a private airplane over Peru in 2001 as part of mistaken attack on an aircraft suspected of carrying illegal narcotics. Excerpts of an internal CIA report released Thursday accuse agency officials of lying to members of Congress and withholding crucial information from criminal investigators and senior Bush administration officials. The disclosure could lead to the reopening of a probe into whether agency officials committed crimes in the attack on the aircraft, which was transporting American missionaries, and then covering it up. The attack killed Veronica Bowers and her infant daughter and injured three others, including Bowers’ husband and young son. It was carried out by a Peruvian warplane working with CIA surveillance craft. Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, described the revelations as ‘a dark stain’ on the CIA and called for information to be shared with the Justice Department to determine whether reopening the investigation is warranted. ‘To say these deaths did not have to happen is more than an understatement,’ said Hoekstra, […]
SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco Bay Area cities promised to build the electric car capital of the United States, announcing a plan on Thursday to work with start-up Better Place to put battery-powered autos on the road in 2012. Mayors of San Francisco, Silicon Valley capital San Jose, Oakland and other cities in the region said they would offer incentives and standardize infrastructure with Better Place, a start-up that aims to offer electric cars as a service, like a cell phone, at prices similar or below standard cars. The San Francisco Bay Area has the reputation as one of the most liberal and environmentally active parts of the country, and as the economic downturn sweeps through the tech sector it is looking to clean technology for a new source of jobs. ‘I’m a guy driving a hybrid, and I don’t feel particularly good about it,’ San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom told a news conference, adding that all-electric cars would be a ‘game-changer’ for cutting carbon emissions which cause global warming. Nissan Motor Co. Ltd (7201.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Renault (RENA.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) have signed on with other Better Place projects. […]
WASHINGTON — A government report released Thursday paints an alarming picture of an unstable future for international relations defined by waning American influence, a fragmentation of political power and intensifying struggles for increasingly scarce natural resources. The report, ‘Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World,’ was drafted by the National Intelligence Council to better inform U.S. policymakers — starting with the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama — about the factors most likely to shape major international trends and conflicts through the year 2025. ‘Although the United States is likely to remain the single most powerful actor, the United States’ relative strength — even in the military realm — will decline and U.S. leverage will become more constrained,’ says the report, which is the fourth in a series from the Intelligence Council. The report argues that the ‘international system — as constructed following the second World War — will be almost unrecognizable by 2025 owing to the rise of emerging powers, a globalizing economy, an historic transfer of relative wealth and economic power from West to East, and the growing influence of nonstate actors.’ It argues that the world is in the midst of an unprecedented […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
