The Vatican aligned itself with anti-capitalism protesters around the world on Monday when it condemned “the idolatry of the market” and called for a radical shake-up of the global financial system.

By demanding that the worst excesses of global capitalism be reined in, the Holy See echoed the message of protesters encamped outside St Paul’s Cathedral in London, the indignados of Spain and the Occupy Wall Street movement in the US.

In a forthright statement, the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace called for an end to rampant speculation, the redistribution of wealth, greater ethics and the establishment of a “central world bank” to which national banks would have to cede power.

Such an authority would have “universal jurisdiction” over governments’ economic strategies.

Existing financial situations such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund were outdated and no longer able to deal with the scale of the global financial crisis, which had exposed “selfishness, greed and the hoarding of goods on a grand scale”.

The global financial system was riddled with injustice and failure to address that would lead to “growing hostility and even violence”, which would undermine democracy.

Wealthy countries should not be allowed to wield “excessive power” over poorer nations, the Vatican said.

Cardinal Peter Turkson, the head of the pontifical council, said banks needed to question whether they were “serving the interests of humanity” in the way they operated.

The proposal was short on specific detail, beyond calling for a new tax on international financial transactions.

The Vatican hardly has an exemplary record on financial transparency and propriety.

Last year the Vatican Bank, known officially as the Institute for Religious Works, had €23m (£20m) of its assets frozen by Italian authorities as part of an investigation into suspected money-laundering.

After years of resisting calls for greater openness, the scandal forced the bank to adopt international norms on transparency.

The Holy See’s murky financial past has included, most notoriously, its involvement in the bankruptcy of Italy’s biggest private bank, the Banco Ambrosiano, in the early 1980s.

Its president, Roberto Calvi, who was nicknamed “God’s Banker”, was found hanged beneath Blackfriars Bridge, with investigators unable to rule whether he had committed suicide or had been murdered.

Thomas J Reese, a Vatican analyst at Georgetown University in the US, said the “radical” proposals put forward on Monday aligned the Holy See with the Occupy Wall Street movement and meant that the Vatican’s views on the economic crisis were “to the Left of every politician in the United States”.

He said the proposals reflected many of the encyclicals and addresses issued by Benedict XVI on the global economy during the last six years of his papacy.

The Vatican called on Monday for the establishment of a “global public authority” and a “central world bank” to rule over financial institutions that have become outdated and often ineffective in dealing fairly with crises.

A major document from the Vatican’s Justice and Peace department should be music to the ears of the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrators and similar movements around the world who have protested against the economic downturn.

The 18-page document, “Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority,” was at times very specific, calling, for example, for taxation measures on financial transactions.

“The economic and financial crisis which the world is going through calls everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural and moral values at the basis of social coexistence,” it said.

It condemned what it called “the idolatry of the market” as well as a “neo-liberal thinking” that it said looked exclusively at technical solutions to economic problems.

“In fact, the crisis has revealed behaviors like selfishness, collective greed and hoarding of goods on a great scale,” it said, adding that world economics needed an “ethic of solidarity” among rich and poor nations.

“If no solutions are found to the various forms of injustice, the negative effects that will follow on the social, political and economic level will be destined to create a climate of growing hostility and even violence, and ultimately undermine the very foundations of democratic institutions, even the ones considered most solid,” it said.

It called for the establishment of “a supranational authority” with worldwide scope and “universal jurisdiction” to guide economic policies and decisions.

Such an authority should start with the United Nations as its reference point but later become independent and be endowed with the power to see to it that developed countries were not allowed to wield “excessive power over the weaker countries.”

Effective Structures

In a section explaining why the Vatican felt the reform of the global economy was necessary, the document said:

“In economic and financial matters, the most significant difficulties come from the lack of an effective set of structures that can guarantee, in addition to a system of governance, a system of government for the economy and international finance.”

It said the International Monetary Fund (IMF) no longer had the power or ability to stabilize world finance by regulating overall money supply and it was no longer able to watch “over the amount of credit risk taken on by the system.”

The world needed a “minimum shared body of rules to manage the global financial market” and “some form of global monetary management.”

“In fact, one can see an emerging requirement for a body that will carry out the functions of a kind of ‘central world bank’ that regulates the flow and system of monetary exchanges similar to the national central banks,” it said.

The document, which was being presented at a news conference later on Monday, acknowledged that such change would take years to put into place and was bound to encounter resistance.

“Of course, this transformation will be made at the cost of a gradual, balanced transfer of a part of each nation’s powers to a world authority and to regional authorities, but this is necessary at a time when the dynamism of human society and the economy and the progress of technology are transcending borders, which are in fact already very eroded in a globalizes world.”

Now we can all rest assured. Iran’s nuclear weapons program has “stumbled badly” and is “beset by poorly performing equipment, shortages of parts and other woes,” the Washington Post proclaimed on Tuesday.

An alleged joint U.S.-Israeli cyber attack known as Stuxnet and other problems have taken “a mounting toll” on Iran’s nuclear centrifuge program that could “hurt Iran’s ability to break out quickly” into the ranks of the world’s nuclear powers,” the Post concluded.

In other words, it’s “peace in our time” when it comes to Iran. Obama’s policy of pressure and incentives (the old “carrots and sticks” approach) is working. We can all go home, pop open a good bottle, and relax.

In case you were wondering about his “administration” sources, the author of this good news story, Joby Warrick, jetted off to Libya with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as his story appeared on the front page of Post’s printed edition on Tuesday. Pravda has spoken.

To give his fairy tale the “audacity of hope,” Warrick cited two just-released reports by David Albright, who briefly worked as an on-site inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Citing fragmentary evidence gathered by IAEA inspectors in Iran, Albright extrapolated graphs for the production of low-enriched uranium (LEU) at Iran’s primary enrichment plant at Natanz, which many analysts believe was hit by the Stuxnet virus in the fall of 2009.

While overall production of LEU appeared to have remained stable, there appears to have been an abrupt drop over the summer. Albright attributes this to problems Iran is having with acquiring centrifuge production materials, and to the lingering impact of Stuxnet. “Without question, they have been set back,” he told the Post.

But at the same time, the IAEA data shows that Iran has actually increased significantly the number of centrifuges that are actively spinning. So if their setbacks are temporary, they quite feasibly could dramatically increase their production in the very near future. That is just the opposite of what the Washington Post​ wants you to believe.

Albright has a history of downplaying the progress of Iran’s nuclear program, and tried to get Rep. Sylvester Reyes (D, Tx) to call back a report by the Republican staff of the House intelligence committee in 2007 once he took over as committee chairman.

The report warned that the IAEA and the U.S. intelligence community were downplaying the seriousness of Iran’s nuclear weapons efforts, in particular, its successful procurement of centrifuge gear from Pakistani nuclear weapons guru A. Q. Khan, as I described on this website at the time.

The HPSCI report criticized then IAEA Secretary General Mohamad ElBaradei for firing chief inspector Christophe Charlier, a U.S. nuclear weapons expert, for raising concerns about Iranian deception. Albright defended ElBaradei for firing the Charlier and called on HPSCI to recall the report.

In a parallel report, released on Monday, Albright claimed that Iran appears to have abandoned using imported maraging steel to make the bellows of its new, more efficient uranium enrichment centrifuge design. Instead, they are using carbon fiber, a material Iran claims to be manufacturing locally.

There are several possible explanations for the shift. Albright says the most likely is that U.S. and international “sanctions may have forced Iran into choosing a less desirable technical centrifuge design.”

In fact, according to design information Iran provided the IAEA, Iran always intended to use carbon fiber for the bellows and rotors of its newer, more efficient IR-2 centrifuges, and is not resorting to a cheap substitute because of sanctions.

A fellow left-leaning analyst writing the “arms control wonk” website pointed out four years ago that Iran’s IR-2 (also known as P-2) centrifuges would be using carbon fiber, not maraging steel.

Despite this evidence, Albright concluded, “Constraints on Iran’s advanced centrifuge program have resulted directly from the effectiveness of targeted sanctions against critical goods necessary for the manufacture of centrifuge components.” That certainly warranted a front-page story in Tuesday’s Washington Post, since it gave the key to the “Peace in Our Time” theme that ran throughout.

But Warrick went even further by tying the apparent (and I believe, unsubstantiated) setbacks in Iran’s nuclear programs to the apparent stumble-bunnie plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, DC.

‘“We’re used to seeing them do bad things, but this plot was so bizarre, it could be a sign of desperation, a reflection of the fact that they’re feeling under siege,” said [an Obama administration] official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so he could discuss the matter candidly,” Warrick reported.

In other words, this attempted act of terror was not an act of war; it was the act of a desperate man that can be safely ignored.

To further enhance the impression that we have nothing to worry about, Warrick then hauled out a real whopper:

“U.S. officials have said that the alleged assassination plot originated from elements within Iran’s elite Quds Force, a covert paramilitary group. But it is not clear whether the nation’s top leaders knew about or approved the plan,” he wrote (emphasis mine).

Now the indictment states clearly that Gen. Qassem Suleymani, the head of the Quds Force, approved the plot. The Quds Force is the overseas expeditionary wing of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, the IRGC, and takes its orders directly from Supreme leader ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Gen. Suleymani is a close confidant of Khamenei. What more “top” leader could possible have approved such a plot?

The Obama White House believes that Khamenei feels trapped, and they are trying to give him some wiggle room. They argue that he is fighting for his political life against Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani, both of whom would like to unseat him, and that he doesn’t have a direct line to Washington so he can arrange a Kumbaya moment with our president.

So what we are getting is excuses for the Iranian regime’s murderous impulses. Next perhaps will be, “the devil made him do it.”

The IAEA has already told us that Iran has cold-tested the components of a workable nuclear weapons design. Forget this nonsense about some illusory “setback” to their program. All clandestine nuclear weapons programs, including our own in the 1940s, have had their setbacks. Our biggest worry should be the upcoming nuclear weapons test Iran is planning to conduct with North Korea, especially if they focus on a smaller yield but potent EMP warhead.

Peace in our time? Sure, we’ve seen that film before, and we ought to know how it ends.

Stay tuned.

Obama admits that he is a Muslim. Obama bowing before a Muslim king. Obama talking about his Muslim family. Obama quoting from the Koran. Obama defending Islam. Obama visiting a Mosque. And many more clips of Obama and his Muslim connections. Legal Disclaimer: The writers, producers, and editors of this video are not claiming or implying that Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim, or that Obama said he was a Muslim, rather they are only examining the evidence surrounding the rumor that Barack Hussein Obama might be a secret Muslim.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin hailed “unprecedented levels of cooperation” with China, including $7 billion in new investment deals, as he kicked off a two-day visit to Beijing Tuesday.

The main item still under negotiation: a potential $1 trillion contract to export Siberian natural gas to China’s industrial heartland, which would see Russia providing a third of China’s energy needs by the end of this decade.

Though the main substance of the burgeoning Russia-China relationship remains trade – Chinese cash and consumer goods for Russian arms, hydrocarbons, and engineering products – the strategic dimension is becoming more important, experts say.

Putin, who’s expected to return to his previous job as Russian president early next year, is making his 16th visit to China since becoming Russia’s top leader almost 12 years ago.

“While Putin remains prime minister, the focus of Russia-China relations will stay on economics,” says Alexander Khramchikhin, an expert with the independent Institute of Political and Military Analysis in Moscow. “The main subject today is gas. The political dimension will wait until Putin’s president again.”

China overtook Germany as Russia’s biggest trading partner last year. Annual turnover in Russia-China commerce may exceed $70 billion in 2011 and reach $200 billion in 2020, up from $59 billion in 2010, Putin told journalists.

Putin’s ‘Eurasian Union’ …

But the crucial political subtext of Putin’s visit is an article he published last week in the Moscow daily Izvestia calling for the creation of a “Eurasian Union,” a confederation of former Soviet states that might eventually rival the European Union or the United States.

“We suggest creating a powerful supra-national union capable of becoming a pole in the modern world, and at the same time an effective bridge between Europe and the dynamic Asia-Pacific Region,” Putin wrote.

That suggests Russia may be moving away from its previous priority of building relations with the European Union, and seeking to build stronger ties with China and the wider Asian region.

“Putin’s proposal of creating a Eurasian Union is the necessary political background for this visit to China,” says Andrei Klimov, deputy chair of the Russian State Duma’s international affairs commission. “And after Putin voiced his ambition to return to the presidency, it must be noted that he’s not just an ordinary head of government or party leader making this trip.”

“I am sure the Chinese are very interested in this [Eurasian Union] idea,” Mr. Klimov adds. “If I were them I’d have a lot of questions about the prospect of such a powerful union appearing near China’s borders.”

Russia and China have long been working together on central Asian security matters through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and have held several joint military exercises under its aegis.

But political dimensions seem certain to grow as Putin, heading into what may be 12 more years as Russia’s supreme leader, looks for ways to develop Russia’s underpopulated and largely untapped Siberian and far eastern regions, which abut some of the world’s most populous and economically active zones in eastern Asia.
… and how it ties into China strategy

“It’s not a coincidence that Putin published his article about a Eurasian Union just a week before visiting China,” says Andrei Ostrovsky, deputy director of the official Institute of Far Eastern Studies in Moscow. “Russia has been developing in a European direction for the past 20 years, while largely ignoring Asia. The difference in development levels between Russia’s Asian areas and those in China is now striking. There is a growing recognition that we need each other. A Chinese role in developing Siberia and the Russian far east could be of huge significance.”

In recent months Moscow has advocated a pipeline that would run through North Korea to South Korea, which together with associated rail links would bring Russian commercial power into the heart of the far east.

After meeting his Chinese counterpart, Premier Wen Jiabao, on Tuesday, Putin said the two had discussed investment projects and global affairs, and had discovered a “mutual desire to find compromise on difficult questions which inevitably arise …. In political, humanitarian spheres we have no problems at all. We have reached unprecedented levels of cooperation,” he said.
Deals to be signed

Among the deals to be signed during Putin’s visit are a $4 billion joint investment fund, a $1.5 billion deal for a Russian aluminium smelter in Taishet, and other cooperation agreements in energy-saving technology, high-speed railways, nanotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and the development of fast-neutron nuclear reactors, according to Russian media reports.

But disagreements over the price of gas are holding up the biggest deal, which would commit China to growing dependence on Russian natural gas, worth an estimated $1 trillion over the next decade.

Russia’s state gas monopoly Gazprom wants China to pay prices similar to Europe, which gets almost 30 percent of its energy needs from Russia, but the Chinese are said to want a better deal.

“Those who sell always want to sell at a higher price, while those who buy, want to buy at a lower price,” Putin told journalists in Beijing Tuesday, suggesting a deal was near at hand. “We need to reach a compromise that will satisfy both sides.”

Could more conspiratorial environmentalistas’ interpretations of our times be correct, that is, someone has been putting something in the water and we are all being lobotomized, even without major brain surgery?

You could make the case this week. Much of the world’s leadership, even though presumably suckling their bottled water, exhibits all the manifestations of imbibing something adversely affecting the normal cognitive processes:

President Barack Obama gets on television to boost his proposal for creating jobs by massive government expenditures and tax increases at a time when most Americans think the main problem – after disappeared jobs — is a runaway federal deficit. Never mind he sent a $447 billion spend and tax bill up to the Congress without a co-sponsor in either of the houses, that his own Party’s Senate leadership initially refused to look at it, then introduced something radically different as a Millionaires’ Tax. All that even though the President has repeatedly endorsed his Republican opposition’s claim any tax increase during a recession is job-killer. Of course, neither bill has a — woops! we can’t say that any more — chance of getting through the Republican-dominated House or the splintered Democratic Senate. Hello?

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin [soon scheduled to slip back into the presidency in Moscow’s musical chairs] has dreamed up a restoration of Stalin’s old USSR as a “Eurasian Union”, a regional agglomerative dictatorship. Putin’s vision is a world of such regional blocs, graciously allocating the U.S. the Western Hemisphere. Unable to accomplish fundamental post-Soviet reforms, he has put together helter-skelter economic collaboration with neighbors [including pumping their gas and oil] with Belorussia, Kazakhstan and a loose customs union [Common Economic Space]. He now aims bringing in the current pro-Moscow Ukraine leadership. But his present arrangements already cost Moscow $1.7 billion in tariff sharing revenues last year. Meanwhile, prospective investors in this harebrain scenario are trading every ruble to dollar they can get their hands on and tossing them out of the country — more than a record $49 billion so far this year. Hello?

Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, chairing the Eurogroup finance ministers, says “[E]verything will be done”. He means in an effort to avoid Greek default and without Athens opting out of the 17-member single currency. But the rating agencies just whacked Italy’s credit rating, Spain’s soaring borrowing rate fell only because the already strapped European Central Bank bought its increasingly high risk bonds, and debt-ridden Portugal is failing to meet targets. The decision whether Greece will get the next tranche of its bailout was delayed until mid-November so the European Union, the European Central Bank and the IMF can pull themselves together to decide whether Athens has met conditions for receiving help. Latest official figures say not: the Greek budget deficit will hit 8.5 percent of GDP in 2011 instead of the 7.6 percent it promised creditors. Greek officials now pledge the 2012 deficit will be slashed 6.8 percent of GDP instead of the promised 6.5 percent if a €6.6 billion [$8.83 billion] worth of supplementary austerity and reform measures package is forthcoming by 2013 Without the “current” €8 billion [$10.71 billion] tranche, Athens would bankrupt by this November with major repercussions for Europe and the world. Hello?

Syrian Dictator Bashar al-Assad allegedly told visiting Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu Damascus would strike Israel with missiles if NATO helps his country’s rebels during his rapidly escalating civil war. “If a crazy measure is taken against Damascus, I will need not more than six hours to transfer hundreds of rockets and missiles to the Golan Heights to fire them at Tel Aviv,” Assad warned after Turkish foreign minister conveyed a United States’ polite request to clear out. Assad continued: “All these events will happen in three hours, but in the second three hours, Iran will attack the US warships in the Persian Gulf and the US and European interests will be targeted simultaneously” True, Assad is rumored to have chemical and bacterial warfare stocks. But the Israelis sit on the Golan Heights less than 75 miles, downhill to Damascus. After Assad’s father tangled with the Israelis in 1982 — the largest air-to-air combat of the jet age and one of the shortest — Syria lost 85 Soviet MiGs. Hello?

Yep, must be something in the water, the wine, the arak or wherever.

There is not a single, public Christian church left in Afghanistan, according to the U.S. State Department.

This reflects the state of religious freedom in that country ten years after the United States first invaded it and overthrew its Islamist Taliban regime.

In the intervening decade, U.S. taxpayers have spent $440 billion to support Afghanistan’s new government and more than 1,700 U.S. military personnel have died serving in that country.

The last public Christian church in Afghanistan was razed in March 2010, according to the State Department’s latest International Religious Freedom Report. The report, which was released last month and covers the period of July 1, 2010 through December 31, 2010, also states that “there were no Christian schools in the country.”

“There is no longer a public Christian church; the courts have not upheld the church’s claim to its 99-year lease, and the landowner destroyed the building in March [2010],” reads the State Department report on religious freedom. “[Private] chapels and churches for the international community of various faiths are located on several military bases, PRTs [Provincial Reconstruction Teams], and at the Italian embassy. Some citizens who converted to Christianity as refugees have returned.”

In recent times, freedom of religion has declined in Afghanistan, according to the State Department.

“The government’s level of respect for religious freedom in law and in practice declined during the reporting period, particularly for Christian groups and individuals,” reads the State Department report.

“Negative societal opinions and suspicion of Christian activities led to targeting of Christian groups and individuals, including Muslim converts to Christianity,” said the report. “The lack of government responsiveness and protection for these groups and individuals contributed to the deterioration of religious freedom.”

Most Christians in the country refuse to “state their beliefs or gather openly to worship,” said the State Department.

More than 1,700 U.S. military personnel have died serving in the decade-old Afghanistan war, according to CNSNews.com’s database of all U.S. casualties in Afghanistan. A September audit released jointly by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction and the State Department’s Office of Inspector General, found that the U.S. government will spend at least $1.7 billion to support the civilian effort from 2009-2011.

According to that report, the $1.7 billion excludes additional security costs, which the report says the State Department priced at about $491 million.

A March 2011 report by the Congressional Research Service showed that overall the United States has spent more than $440 billion in the Afghanistan war. Christian aid from the international community has also gone to aid the Afghan government.

Nevertheless, according to the State Department, the lack of non-Muslim religious centers in Afghanistan can be blamed in part on a “strapped government budget,” which is primarily fueled by the U.S. aid.

“There were no explicit restrictions for religious minority groups to establish places of worship and training of clergy to serve their communities,” says the report, “however, very few public places of worship exist for minorities due to a strapped government budget.”

The report acknowledged that Afghanistan’s post-Taliban constitution, which was ratified with the help of U.S. mediation in 2004, can be contradictory when it comes to the free exercise of religion.

While the new constitution states that Islam is the “religion of the state” and that “no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam,” it also proclaims that “followers of other religions are free to exercise their faith and perform their religious rites within the limits of the provisions of the law.”

However, “the right to change one’s religion was not respected either in law or in practice,” according to the State Department.

“Muslims who converted away from Islam risked losing their marriages, rejection from their families and villages, and loss of jobs,” according to the report. “Legal aid for imprisoned converts away from Islam remains difficult due to the personal objection of Afghan lawyers to defend apostates.”

The report does note that “in recent years neither the national nor local authorities have imposed criminal penalties on coverts from Islam.” The report says that “conversion from Islam is considered apostasy and is punishable by death under some interpretations of Islamic rule in the country.”

Also, in recent years, the death punishment for blasphemy “has not been carried out,” according to the State Department.

According to the State Department report, the United States continues to promote religious freedom in Afghanistan–even though the country no longer has even one Christian church.

“The U.S. government regularly discusses religious freedom with government officials as part of its overall policy to promote human rights,” according to the report.

According to the State Department report, more than 99 percent of the population, estimated between 24 and 33 million people, is either Sunni (80 percent) or Shia (19 percent) Muslim. Non-Muslim religious groups, including the estimated 500 to 8,000 strong Christian community in the country, make up less than 1 percent of the population. Other non-Muslim groups in the country are Sikhs, Bahais, and Hindus.