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Date Posted: 08:47:11 11/21/07 Wed
Author: part 2
Subject: Re: November 21, 2007
In reply to: part 1 's message, "November 21, 2007" on 08:44:59 11/21/07 Wed

ECONOMICS AND FINANCE

Bankers Now Talking About Losses in Trillions

Nov. 20 (LPAC)--With the last days' announcements of big bank
losses in the financial crisis, the vast, estimated $5-700
trillion bubble of financial derivatives contracts held by the
banks, along with "leveraged losses" on credit assets, are the
new locus of the losses--as LPAC and EIR have warned--and thus a
multi-trillion-dollar crash appears on the near horizon.
In the most notable case, the giant reinsurance company
Swiss Re acknowledged that it had sustained a $1 billion loss,
coming from just two derivatives contracts known as "credit
swaps." Swiss Re refused to name the counterparty, undoubtedly
another bank, for whom these two derivatives contracts were
written, though Goldman Sachs is suspected.
On Nov. 16, Goldman Sachs' chief U.S. economist, Jan
Hatzius, had issued a chilling estimate of the fall in the
banking system. He had forecast that direct U.S. bank losses in
the next year or so would be $400 billion (a very similar
estimate had just been made by Deutschebank's chief economist).
Just assuming that half of these losses are in highly leveraged
assets (where there was a 10:1 ratio of borrowed dollars in the
money used to buy the assets), Hatzius forecast that the total
drop in the ability of the banks to lend, will be $2 trillion.
For comparison, in 2006, the total lending of U.S. banks to
households and non-financial corporations was $3.24 trillion,
according to the Federal Reserve.
In dramatic understatement, Hatzius called the result ``a
substantial recession.'' [pbg]

Goldman Sachs Plays Assassin in the Bank Collapse Game

Nov. 20, 2007--Goldman Sachs, which has bet on the collapse of
the mortgage-based bubble, provoked another market collapse
yesterday, by announcing that there will be a further $43 billion
of write-downs by three of the biggest banks, by the end of 2008.
Goldman's figures are a linear forecast and therefore
conservative, but they concentrate on a few players: Citigroup,
Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley, whose shares collapsed
yesterday after this announcement. "Goldman forecasts a $22
billion write-down for Citigroup, split between $11 billion in
the fourth quarter of 2007 and the rest in 2008. This brought
Citi's shares down 5.1% by midday yesterday, taking its loss for
the year to more than 42%. Goldman also expects write-downs of
$13 billion for Merrill Lynch and $8 billion at Morgan Stanley,
shared over the final quarter of 2007 and 2008," reported the
Financial Crimes.
Goldman's judgment on Citigroup looks like the Bravo's
Stiletto-stab at acting CEO, former Treasury Secretary Robert
Rubin: "This firm lacks leadership at the present time and has a
disproportionate amount of exposure to sub-prime mortgages and
collateral debt obligations." Citigroup is (was) the largest bank
in the world in terms of assets, but those assets are now
shrinking at an accelerated pace, together with its equity
capital.
Goldman Sachs is playing the same game as the jewel thief on
board the Titanic, whose booty was later found among the wreckage
resting under the sea. Goldman is reporting as assets, gains from
derivatives bets which will be never paid, against counterparties
which Goldman itself is helping to sink. [ccc]

Nation's Largest Homebuilders Now Rated as "Junk"

Nov. 20 (LPAC)--The number of housing permits issued nationwide
fell 17% in October, to a level not seen since 1991. Permits for
single-family homes fell 6.6%, to an annual pace of 1.18 million
(below analysts' expectations of 1.2 million) from 1.26 million
in September. Compared with last year, permits were down over
25%. Overall, permits for all types of homes are at the lowest
seasonally-adjusted monthly level since July 1993. While housing
"starts" edged up in September, this figure is much more
volatile, and was still down 16.4% from 2006 level.
Just yesterday, the National Association of Home Builders
released a survey which showed that its members' confidence
maintained the lowest level on record, for the second month in a
row. And it also follows a report earlier Tuesday that D.R.
Horton, the nation's No. 3 home builder by revenue, reported a
35% drop in sales, resulting in a loss in the third quarter.
Coverage by CNNMoney notes that, of the nation's largest
home builders, only luxury home builder Toll Brothers, No. 6 in
terms of revenue, has yet to report a quarterly loss, even though
its stock price has fallen by almost 50% in the last months. The
five larger builders all reported much larger-than-forecast
losses in their most recent financial periods. Home builders
nationwide are reporting that the sales pace deteriorated
significantly during October compared with recent months, and
that they are experiencing a sharp rise in cancellations.
CNN added that, last month, credit-rating agency Moody's
downgraded the debt of three of the top four home builders: No. 1
Lennar, No. 2 Centex, and No. 4 Pulte Homes, to junk bond status.
[mpb]

Case Study: Sarasota Bankruptcies Tell of Spreading Collapse

Nov. 20 (LPAC)--An article in the Sarasota (Florida) Herald
Tribune illustrates the spreading financial collapse, by tracking
the varied nature of the companies now filing for bankruptcy. "It
[went] right down the line from realtors, to mortgage brokers, to
home builders, to any company that supplies these businesses,"
said a local bankruptcy attorney. But now, says another, "It's
spreading. With all the people being laid off, they don't have
the earnings they used to have, so they're not spending as much."
Now retailers, "who have seemingly nothing to do with real
estate," are beginning to file, and that trend is likely to
increase in the year ahead.
The relatively-isolated Sarasota community has now watched
as bankruptcies have ballooned 160% in the last 12 months, going
from 619 filings during 2006, to 1,612 filings throughout 2007.
Added to the long list of (now former) home builders and
suppliers, are a local patio furniture maker, an appliance
wholesaler, and a decorative masonry manufacturer/installer,
plumbers, woodworkers-- the list goes on. And, where companies
seeking bankruptcy protection in 2006 claimed $60.7 million in
liabilities, the companies filing in 2007 claimed $235.7 million
-- a nearly four-fold increase!
The Sarasota experience is being repeated in thousands of
communities nationwide. If one includes the added cost of the
loss of skilled workers, and aiding the (now) displaced, the
larger dimensions of the collapse come into focus. Unless action
is taken at the federal level to confront both the housing and
the banking collapse, a social nightmare is in the works. [mpb]

Do You Have Any Idea What Hell Deporting One Million Mexicans
from the U.S. Will Create?

Nov. 20 (LPAC)--There is a "tsunami" underway of Mexicans being
deported from the United States, which we believe will reach one
million in 2007 alone, by the end of the year, members of the
Advisory Council of the Mexican Government's Institute for
Mexicans Abroad (IME), warned in a Nov. 16 press conference.
Council members made that stunning projection after a
two-day closed-door meeting on the immigrant crisis, held at the
Foreign Relations Ministry. IME Advisory Council members are
leading Mexicans, Mexican-Americans and Mexican-Canadians.
Around 170 anti-immigrant laws have been passed in the U.S.
in the last few months alone, whipping up "hatred" against
Mexicans, whether they are legal or undocumented, council member
Hugo Loyo said. Members warned that the increasing anti-immigrant
raids of workplaces and homes across the United States is
creating a "truly critical" situation for Mexico, which must find
jobs, housing, food, education, and health care for hundreds of
thousands of people being dumped just over the border by U.S.
officials, without financial resources or belongings, often far
from any family who could offer support.
Over 10 per cent of the Mexican population has migrated to
the United States--some 13 million Mexicans--at an accelerating
rate since the 1994 North American Free Trade Accord (NAFTA)
crushed Mexico's own industry and agriculture. Come January 2008,
another 2.2 million Mexican farmers will be thrown into
bankruptcy, when all protection on corn and bean imports ends,
under the next phase of NAFTA. Any fool can see, that a vast
explosion is brewing south of the border, if the United States
and Mexico do not cooperate to rebuild their economies.
Cooperation on building an integrated water and rail system
for all North America, connecting regional water management
projects like the giant North American Water and Power Alliance
(NAWAPA) to Mexico's North West Water Plan (PLHINO), is the way
to go, Lyndon LaRouche emphasized again on Nov. 19. How many good
jobs would be created inside Mexico by the PLHINO/NAWAPA program?
How can the agricultural situation in Mexico be transformed by
this project? End the flooding in the south, and the drought in
the north, and create the conditions for flourishing agriculture
in Mexico. Create jobs for the next ten years, building these
integrated water plans, which have already been designed. Link
these projects to the Russian-U.S.-Canadian Bering Strait tunnel
project, with its railways and development corridors, and there
will be plenty worthwhile for people in the U.S., Canada and
Mexico to do. [ggs]

Powerful Labor Strike Wave Sweeps Europe

Nov. 20 (LPAC)--Railway strikers in France were joined by several
million public sector workers and students today, at the same
time that the ongoing railway strike in Germany was temporarily
suspended for talks with the railway management. And in Finland,
the government was forced to back down on nurses' wage demands.
The French public-sector strike involves workers in the
education, postal, telecommunications, hospital, energy, and
air-traffic control sectors, plus defense industry, revenue
administration, social security and other administrative sectors.
The French LYM is continuing its intervention into that mass
ferment, with a new leaflet written by Jacques Cheminade to
uplift the mobilization toward a New Bretton Woods solution
against austerity and economic-financial collapse.
In Germany, rail engineers got crucial backing from the
Federal Labor Court, which yesterday overturned an earlier ruling
by that same court that banned railway strikes on grounds that
they would affect national security. The case is now transferred
to the court in Frankfurt, where a pro-labor ruling is expected.
The German Lym is interventing with a statement authored by BueSo
national party chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche, calling on the
labor unions to make the step towards a broad debate on a
firewall legislation.
In Finland, the weeks-long strike and protest by nurses has
resulted in a partial victory, as the government backed down on
wage demands. The strike peaked over the past few days, as the
government hardliners had recruited a majority in the national
parliament to vote a new law that would authorize the government
to declare the strike illegal. On the union side, the TEHY
hospital union had threatened to cancel contracts for all 13,000
nurses yesterday, to create the ultimate pressure in this
showdown. However, as it turned out, a broad sympathy wave in the
population, and sympathy strikes in other labor unions, developed
just over the past few days, so that apparently the government
decided to grant concessions to the nurses, and quickly bring an
end to this showdown. (rap)

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Indian Space Program Reaches for Geosynchronous Orbit Capacity

Nov. 20 LPAC--Last week the Indian Space Research Organization
(ISRO) reached a significant milestone when it carried out
successfully the test of the indigenously developed cryogenic
engine at the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC) at
Mahendragiri in Tamil Nadu. This liquid-hydrogen upper-stage
rocket, the achievement which was central to the U.S. Apollo Moon
landing program, is needed by India to reach geosynchronous
orbits in space, explained Indian Space Research Organisation
chairman G. Madhavan Nair. "With this successful test, India's
GSLV program has become absolutely self-reliant," Nair told PTI
over the phone from Thiruvanathapuram on Nov. 16.
India began designing the GSLV, a Delta-II class medium
launch vehicle, with an objective of placing 2.5-metric-ton
payloads into geosynchronous orbit, 22,000 miles up. The
development and launch of the GSLV rocket was a priority item in
the Indian national space program aimed at creating a dense
satellite network to meet the country's requirements for
telecommunications, Earth sounding, environmental monitoring and
other systems, as well as India's entrance to the international
market of space. With this test, the indigenous Cryogenic Upper
Stage has been fully qualified on the ground. Nair said the
flight stage is getting ready for use in the next mission of GSLV
(GSLV-D3) next year. "Flight stage is already under preparation
at Mahendragiri. Things are progressing well," he said.
India has so far depended on Russia to provide cryogenic
engines for its GSLV vehicles. LPSC is the lead center for
development of the Cryogenic Upper Stage (CUS). The cryogenic
engine is required to launch the geosynchronous satellites that
are used in communications. This technology has been so far
confined to Russia, Europe, and the US, which have used it to
launch global commercial satellites. [RMA]

UNITED STATES

Washington Post Promotes Bankruptcy to Avoid Foreclosure; Lets
the Nation's Banks Go Hang

Nov. 20 (LPAC)--The Washington Post today strongly promotes
Congressional legislation to let some households threatened with
foreclosure, choose bankruptcy instead, getting their mortgages
restructured by bankruptcy judges. This legislation is sponsored
by Senators Charles Schumer and Dick Durbin, and Representatives
Brad Miller of North Carolina and Linda Sanchez of California.
This action would simply ignore the crisis hitting America's
chartered banks, and Congress' responsiblity for protection of
those depository banks from the massive losses of the mortgage
meltdown. "If your state or local bank goes, you're gone,
mortgage or not," commented Lyndon LaRouche, whose Homeowners and
Bank Protection Act would save both homeowners from millions of
foreclosures, and chartered banks from closing their doors.
Under changes contained in the Miller-Sanchez bill,
bankruptcy judges could lower the interest rate on a primary
home, extend the life of the loan, or forgive part of the
homeowner's debt. Further, the judge could reduce the {principal}
on the loan to the home's "fair market value," which in the
current, relatively depressed real estate market, is generally
less than the amount for which the mortgage-loan was contracted.
The {Washington Post}, citing a report on Moody's Economy.com,
projects that this could reduce by a quarter, the anticipated 2
million foreclosures in the next 18 months.
The {Post} demurely notes that "Lenders say investors pumped
money into the mortgage market knowing each loan they funded was
secured by an asset--the home." The paper doesn't mention the
bubble of securities backed by these assets, held by the major
investment banks. Nowhere is there any indication that the bill
would do anything to keep necessary banks afloat.
And by the way, what of the OTHER 1.5 million homeowners
which the proposed legislation apparently won't help?
Congress should stop piece-meal diddling, and pass the
comprehensive legislation in LaRouche's proposed Homeowners and
Bank Protection Act of 2007. (grc)

House Committee Chairmen Respond to Bush Veto Threat on
Defense Supplemental Bill

Nov. 20 (LPAC)--House Appropriations Committee Chairman David
Obey (D-WI) and John Murtha (D-PA), chairman of that committee's
Defense subcommittee, held a press conference today responding to
President Bush's threat to veto the $50 billion supplemental
funding bill for the war in Iraq that the House last week passed
and Senate Republicans blocked.
The White House is now threatening to furlough up to 150,000
Army and Marine Corps civilian workers at military bases around
the country, and it is claiming in a Defense Department memo,
that the Army will have to cease important functions if Bush
doesn't immediately get all the money he is demanding.
In remarks today referring to the Pentagon memo, Rep. Murtha
charged that "This is a political document. They're scaring
people. They're scaring the families of the troops with this
document. That's the thing that's so despicable about what
they're doing."
"The bill responsibly ensures that our trooops are fully
trained and equipped before they are sent to Iraq," Murtha also
said; "it extends the Army field manual to all personnel, making
torture not only unacceptable but unlawful; and transitions our
forces from a combat role to specifically supporting
counterterrorism operations in the region." Murtha portrayed the
controversy as Bush wanting to support the war, and Democrats
wanting to support the troops, and cited several instances over
the past year, in which Congress had provided more funding than
the Administration had requested for training, equipment, family
support, and post-combat medical care. The most dramatic of these
funding programs is Congressional provision of $900 million for
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury,
including a program to detect and treat these injuries, while
"the Administration asked for only $7 million for traumatic brain
injury and did little to address the problems associated with
PTSD." (grc)

Candidate-in-Waiting Bloomberg Intensifies His War on the Poor

Nov. 20 (LPAC)--New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an unannounced
but active Presidential candidate, is pressing ahead with savage
policies against that city's most vulnerable citizens.
In the midst of a national housing crisis, the number of
homeless families in New York City shelters is now at a record
9,500. Yet on October 12, the Bloomberg Administration announced
that those who are awaiting "certification" that they are
officially homeless would no longer be admitted to stay in a
shelter for one night on an emergency basis.
The result has been desperate families trying to stay warm
on the street, including pregnant women, and children trying to
do their homework over a heat grate, covered with blankets and
towels.
The City Council's General Welfare Committee, chaired by
Brooklyn Democrat William De Blasio, held a hearing on the
homeless policy in response to the Bloomberg announcement.
Department of Homeless Services Commissioner Robert Hess said
that those being turned away from shelters are not really
homeless, because they have living relatives or others who
"could" put them up. The city determines this by a large-scale
inquisition program: Investigators check family circumstances and
the status of relatives, not to ascertain how best to help the
homeless, but to try to disqualify them from help.
This accords with Bloomberg's promise in 2004, that he would
reduce the number of homeless people by two-thirds. Clearly, if
many of them are declared not-homeless, or die, their number will
have been reduced.
The Washington Post reported today that in 2006, 51.8% of
all families that were deemed ineligible and were barred from
entering shelters, were subsequently found eligible, on appeal.
But in the meanwhile, the city had saved money; and many did not
appeal. As Bloomberg assured the globalist financiers' Manhattan
Institute on November 1, 2007, he appreciates and is carrying out
their welfare and policing policies, as did his predecessor, Rudy
Giuliani.
Today the General Welfare Committee held a hearing on the
hunger crisis. A spokesman for Councilman De Blasio told EIR that
New York has lost 12 million pounds of food for the poor since
2004 as a result of reduced Federal aid. Yet, despite increasing
hunger as Winter approaches, Mayor Bloomberg is adamant that he
will continue to require fingerprinting for recipients of Federal
food stamps. This Kafkaesque practice ends up blocking food aid
to many needy people, but the Council was told that it is needed
to combat "food fraud."
De Blasio's spokesman said that 1.1 million people get food
stamps in New York City, and there have been 31 documented cases
of "food fraud." [ahc]

Cheney and Bush Made Me Lie, Says Former White House Spokesman

Nov. 20 (LPAC)--In a forthcoming book, former White House Press
Secretary Scott McClellan admits that he lied to the press after
being given false information by President Bush, Dick Cheney, and
other top White House officials.
After it was reported, in late September 2003, that the CIA
had referred the matter of the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's CIA
identity to the Justice Department, McClellan repeatedly declared
to reporters that no one in the White House, and in particular
neither Karl Rove or Scooter Libby, had been involved in the
Plame leak. Further, McClellan pledged that if anyone had been
involved in the leak, President Bush would fire them. Of course,
it later turned out that the entire campaign to smear Plame's
husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, had been orchestrated out
of Vice President Dick Cheney's office.
Now, in a book to be published in April, 2008, McClellan
writes:
"The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to
speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the
failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood
at the White House briefing room podium in front of the glare of
the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly
exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl
Rove and Scooter Libby.
"There was one problem. It was not true.
"I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five
of the highest ranking officials in the administration were
involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the Vice President, the
President's chief of staff, and the President himself."
This excerpt from McClellan's book has just been posted on
the publisher's website. [ews]

Private Military Companies in Iraq `Have Been Shooting a Lot of
People'

Nov. 20 (LPAC)--The {Washington Post} reported today that a
Federal grand jury in Washington, D.C. has begun an investigation
of shooting incidents by private security contractors in Iraq.
One incident reportedly under investigation is the September
16, 2007 shootings by Blackwater personnel at a Baghdad traffic
circle, in which 17 Iraqi civilians were killed. The {Post}
reports that FBI investigators have concluded that 14 of the 17
deaths in that incident were unjustified under State Department
rules on use of force.
An anonymous source cited by the {Post} confirmed that the
investigation goes beyond Blackwater, quoting him that private
security companies in Iraq "have been shooting a lot of people."
(grc)

CBS News Warns of Dangers of `My Space' for Teens

November 20 (LPAC)--CBS News with Katie Couric has focused a
three-part series on The Lives of Teens. In the second part of
the series, aired this evening, the program focused on a
Baltimore girl who had become addicted to My Space, and placed
sexually provocative pictures of herself on her site. At one
point, she disappeared for two days, wanting to run away from
home, but then returned. The family ended up banning her from
using the computer.
The show noted the popularity of My Space among teenagers,
but also noted that among the perhaps tens of thousands of young
people who use My Space to ``socialize,'' there are also 3,200
known sexual predators who regularly use the site.
The third and final part of the series will be aired
tomorrow evening on the 6:30 P.M. CBS News. [WCJ]

EUROPE

Historic Shift on the Spanish Civil War by the Catholic Church

Nov. 20, 2007 (LPAC)--For the first time, the Roman Catholic
Church has officially admitted "mistakes" made during the Spanish
Civil war, referring to its support given to Generalissimo
Francisco Franco's fascist insurgency.
"We too, must ask forgiveness for the mistakes made in that
decade," said Bishop Ricardo Blazquez, chairman of the Spanish
Bishops' Conference, during a speech in Madrid yesterday. "In
many cases, we will have reason to thank God for what was done
and for the persons who acted; and probably in other moments,
without proudly elevating ourselves to judges of the others, we
must ask forgiveness and find orientation again," Blazquez said,
according to the Italian daily La Stampa.
This historical "mea culpa" of the Catholic Church, in line
with the critical review, undertaken by Pope John Paul II, of the
history of the Church under the oligarchical Inquisition, is not
only good for Spain, but for the whole world, and it comes three
weeks after the beatification of almost 500 priests killed before
and during the Spanish Civil War, mostly by anarchists--an action
that had prompted slanders against the Pope as a "reactionary" in
the world media. [ccc]

SOUTHWEST ASIA

The IDF Wants Peace Talks with Syria

Nov. 20 (LPAC)--Israeli commentator Amir Oren, writing in today's
Ha'aretz, comments that an Annapolis peace summit that focuses
only on the Israeli-Palestinian track is doomed to failure, and
that it is the Israeli Defense Force who want, instead, a peace
agreement with Syria. This is the only way, the IDF estimates, to
create the conditions for reaching a peace agreement with the
Palestinians.
Stating that the IDF feels itself to be under a "constant
siege -- which one can survive with a mixture of ease and
suffocation, but which it is better to break out of, into a
different life -- the IDF favors accelerating peace talks with
Syria...."
Oren points out that Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi is
especially in favor of opening such peace talks: "Ashkenazi, who
was GOC Northern Command toward the end of Israel's presence in
Lebanon, is known to support an agreement with Syria at the
specified price, which in his view is steep, but worth paying in
exchange for Israel's national security. As chief of staff,
Ashkenazi returned to an army that was afraid of sliding, whether
deliberately or accidentally, into war with Syria."
Oren goes further, saying that, "After 60 years of fighting,
the IDF's top brass does not delude itself that military
successes are an end in themselves. Without diplomatic follow-up
-- `leverage' is the fashionable term -- military operations,
regardless of whether they succeed or fail, will continue
forever. Just as Anwar Sadat leveraged the Yom Kippur War to
achieve peace with Jerusalem (and Washington), the General Staff
believes that this is an opportune time to leverage the IDF's
power to achieve peace with Bashar Assad."
Lyndon LaRouche has emphasized that focussing on the
Israeli-Syria track at Annapolis is the only way to create the
environment in which the Palestinian-Israeli issue can be
successfully addressed. [dea]

U.S. and Iran Will Meet Again for Talks on Iraq

Nov. 20 (LPAC)--Direct talks between the United States and Iran,
on the situation in Iraq, will enter a new (fourth) round,
Iranian Foreign Minister Manucher Mottaki announced today. "The
Swiss Embassy in Iran," he said, "passed on the message from the
U.S. government for a new round of talks on Iraq to my colleagues
at the Foreign Ministry. Iran has agreed to this request within
the framework of its policy of helping the Iraqi people."
This was confirmed by State Department spokesman Sean
McCormack, who said that the U.S. has communicated to the Iranian
government that "we are agreeable" to holding another meeting for
direct talks. McCormack said that the request for such a meeting
came from the Iraqi government.
Referring to the channel between U.S. Ambassador to Iraq
Ryan Crocker and his Iranian counterpart, the State Department
spokesman added that "we are open to using this channel as a way
of talking directly about important issues concerning security in
Iraq." No date has yet been set for the meeting. [ews]

SOUTH AND EAST ASIA

Even Vatican Can't Trust Israel

Nov.20 LPAC--If it feels any better, Palestinians must note that
the Vatican finds it difficult to trust Israel. Papal Nuncio to
Washington, Mgr Pietro Sambi, former Vatican nuncio to Israel
(till 2005), said in an interview with terrasanta.net that Israel
has reneged on economic and fiscal commitments in its bilateral
relations with Vatican. "Everyone can see how much faith can be
placed in Israel's promises," Sambi said, reflecting on the
commitments made by Israel in an agreement signed in 1993.
The Holy See, he noted, decided to establish diplomatic
relations with Israel as an act of faith, accepting that the
demanding promises to settle the more concrete aspects of the
life of Catholic communities and the Church would be left for
later.
"The Fundamental Agreement was signed on 30 December 1993,"
Monsignor Sambi said. "In addition to establishing diplomatic
relations, it also entailed a Legal Personality Agreement signed
in 1997 but never implemented by Israel, as well as an economic
agreement on three issues: Church property unjustly seized or
placed under unjust easement; equal compensation for services
provided to the Israeli population, both Jewish and Palestinian,
equivalent to those offered by state institutions; and tax
status." [RMA]

U.S. Ambassador Plays a `Mullah Card' in Destabilization of
Pakistan

Nov. 20 (LPAC)--Indicating once again that the Cheney-led
neo-cons of Washington are solely interested in enhancing unrest
in Pakistan, the U.S. Ambassador to Islamabad, Anne Patterson,
met Maulana Fazlur Rehman, chief of Jamiat-Ulema-Islami (JUI-F)
and an often-used British asset in Pakistan. U.S. Embassy
spokesman Elizabeth Colton told AFP that Patterson and Rehman
discussed a number of issues, including the importance of lifting
the emergency. Needless to say, Maulana Fazlur has publicly
stated that he wants to see the state of emergency lifted before
free and fair elections are held.
But Maulana Fazlur Rahman is known for his contribution to
developing the core members of the Taliban movement through his
multitude of madrassahs, or Islamic seminaries. His is one of the
most influential and resourceful organizations in Pakistan
working for what is described as a "pure, Islamic state."
When U.S. and allied forces began bombing Taliban
strongholds in Afghanistan in 2001, Fazlur Rahman led large
anti-U.S., anti-Musharraf, and pro-Taliban rallies in Pakistan's
major cities. The Maulana fiercely criticized Presidents Bush and
Musharraf, and threatened to launch a jihad--a holy war--against
the United States if the bombings continued.
But, that was then. Now, Washington's neo-cons want more
chaos in Pakistan in order to direct the U.S. troops in that
country to seize control of Pakistan's nuclear button. For that
reason, it makes perfect sense to bring Maulana Fazlur into the
fold and unleash him and his fanatics against the Pakistani Army.
That the plan was brewing before, and not a plan developed
after Nov. 3 when President Musharraf proclaimed a state of
emergency in Pakistan, is evident from the fact that in Sept
2007, U.S. Undersecretary of State for South Asia Richard Boucher
met Ghafoor Haideri, a close aide of Maulana Fazlur Rehman, in
Islamabad. Previously the Americans, unlike the British, had kept
Maulana Fazlur at bay since the Iraq evasion because of his
threat that no American would be safe if Iraq were invaded. [RMA]

*** END OF BRIEFING ***

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