Pre-emptive nuclear strikes against non-nuclear adversaries, for purposes which include the following:
(Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations, Page III-2):
* For rapid and favorable war termination on US terms.
* To ensure success of US and multinational operations.
* To demonstrate US intent and capability to use nuclear weapons to deter adversary use of WMD.
* Against an adversary intending to use WMD against US, multinational, or alliance forces.
The Nuclear Posture Review document states that:
*US nuclear forces will now be used to dissuade adversaries from undertaking military programs or operations that could threaten U.S. interests or those of allies and friends.
* Nuclear weapons could be employed against targets able to withstand non-nuclear attack.

America monopolizes the oil trade. Oil is denominated in dollars and sold on either the NYMEX or London’s International Petroleum Exchange (IPE), both owned by Americans. This forces the central banks around the world to maintain huge stockpiles of dollars even though the greenback is currently underwritten by $8 trillion of debt and even though the Bush administration has said that it will perpetuate the deficit-producing tax cuts.

America’s currency monopoly is the perfect pyramid-scheme. As long as nations are forced to buy oil in dollars, the United States can continue its profligate spending with impunity. (The dollar now accounts for 68% of global currency reserves up from 51% just a decade ago) The only threat to this strategy is the prospect of competition from an independent oil exchange; forcing the faltering dollar to go nose-to-nose with a more stable (debt-free) currency such as the euro. That would compel central banks to diversify their holdings, sending billions of dollars back to America and ensuring a devastating cycle of hyper-inflation.

About those cartoons.  They may not have been "cool" but that's just too damn bad.  Muslims do not have some special right that protects their religion from being "insulted."  The fact that they have to go around calling for the murder of westerners and destroying property, does not lend any credit to the notion that these groups of people are peaceful.  They need to grow up.

Iran's largest selling newspaper has announced it is holding a contest on cartoons of the Holocaust in response to the publishing in European papers of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

"It will be an international cartoon contest about the Holocaust," Farid Mortazavi, the graphics editor for Hamshahri newspaper, which is published by Tehran's conservative-run municipality, said on Monday.

He said the plan was to turn the tables on the assertion that newspapers can print offensive material in the name of freedom of expression.

"The Western papers printed these sacrilegious cartoons on the pretext of freedom of expression, so let's see if they mean what they say and also print these Holocaust cartoons," he asserted.

Iran's fiercely anti-Israeli regime is supportive of so-called Holocaust revisionist historians, who maintain the systematic slaughter by the Nazis of mainland Europe's Jews as well as other groups during World War II has been either invented or exaggerated.

Some officials, citing evidence from highly classified satellite feeds and electronic eavesdropping, believe the Iranian regime is playing host to much of Al Qaeda's remaining brain trust and allowing the senior operatives freedom to communicate and help plan the terrorist network's operations.

And they suggest that recently elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be forging an alliance with Al Qaeda operatives as a way to expand Iran's influence or, at a minimum, that he is looking the other way as Al Qaeda leaders in his country collaborate with their counterparts elsewhere.

The Bush administration is planning to use nuclear weapons against Iran, to prevent it acquiring its own atomic warheads, claims an investigative writer with high-level Pentagon and intelligence contacts.

President George W Bush is said to be so alarmed by the threat of Iran's hard-line leader, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, that privately he refers to him as "the new Hitler", says Seymour Hersh, who broke the story of the Abu Ghraib Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal.

Tehran, Iran, Apr. 09 – Iran said on Sunday that it shot down an unmanned spy plane from Iraq in the south of the country.

“This plane had lifted off from Iraq and was busy filming the border regions”, the semi-official daily Jomhouri Islami wrote.

The plane’s structural markings and systems have given officials “information”, the report added, without elaborating.

There have been reports that the United States has been secretly sending unmanned surveillance planes into Iran to gather intelligence about the country’s nuclear sites.

Asked if options included planning for a nuclear strike, Bush replied: "All options are on the table. We want to solve this issue diplomatically and we're working hard to do so."

Iran eyes badges for Jews
Law would require non-Muslim insignia

Chris Wattie
National Post

Friday, May 19, 2006

Human rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims.

"This is reminiscent of the Holocaust," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. "Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis."

Iranian expatriates living in Canada yesterday confirmed reports that the Iranian parliament, called the Islamic Majlis, passed a law this week setting a dress code for all Iranians, requiring them to wear almost identical "standard Islamic garments."

The law, which must still be approved by Iran's "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenehi before being put into effect, also establishes special insignia to be worn by non-Muslims.

Iran's roughly 25,000 Jews would have to sew a yellow strip of cloth on the front of their clothes, while Christians would wear red badges and Zoroastrians would be forced to wear blue cloth.

"There's no reason to believe they won't pass this," said Rabbi Hier. "It will certainly pass unless there's some sort of international outcry over this."

Bernie Farber, the chief executive of the Canadian Jewish Congress, said he was "stunned" by the measure. "We thought this had gone the way of the dodo bird, but clearly in Iran everything old and bad is new again," he said. "It's state-sponsored religious discrimination."

Ali Behroozian, an Iranian exile living in Toronto, said the law could come into force as early as next year.

It would make religious minorities immediately identifiable and allow Muslims to avoid contact with non-Muslims.

Mr. Behroozian said it will make life even more difficult for Iran's small pockets of Jewish, Christian and other religious minorities -- the country is overwhelmingly Shi'ite Muslim. "They have all been persecuted for a while, but these new dress rules are going to make things worse for them," he said.

The new law was drafted two years ago, but was stuck in the Iranian parliament until recently when it was revived at the behest of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

A spokesman for the Iranian Embassy in Ottawa refused to comment on the measures. "This is nothing to do with anything here," said a press secretary who identified himself as Mr. Gharmani.

"We are not here to answer such questions."

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre has written to Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, protesting the Iranian law and calling on the international community to bring pressure on Iran to drop the measure.

"The world should not ignore this," said Rabbi Hier. "The world ignored Hitler for many years -- he was dismissed as a demagogue, they said he'd never come to power -- and we were all wrong."

Mr. Farber said Canada and other nations should take action to isolate Mr. Ahmadinejad in light of the new law, which he called "chilling," and his previous string of anti-Semitic statements.

"There are some very frightening parallels here," he said. "It's time to start considering how we're going to deal with this person."

Mr. Ahmadinejad has repeatedly described the Holocaust as a myth and earlier this year announced Iran would host a conference to re-examine the history of the Nazis' "Final Solution."

He has caused international outrage by publicly calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map."

Iran does not yet have nuclear weapons, but Tehran believed by Western nations to be developing its own nuclear military capability, in defiance of international protocols and peace treaties.

The United States, France and Israel accuse Iran of using a civilian nuclear program to secretly build a weapon. Iran denies this, saying its program is confined to generating electricity.

The West has less than a year to block Iran's ambition to develop nuclear weapons before it touches off "hyper-proliferation" throughout the Middle East, says Israel's military intelligence chief.

"The most important step for Iran is the first one — independent research and development capacity," said Maj.-Gen. Aharon Ze'evi. "They have already begun to enrich uranium, starting in January or February 2006. After that, it isn't important whether the first bomb is built in 2010 or 2015. The damage is done."

Iran's defense minister on Thursday vowed that his country would "use nuclear defense as a potential" if "threatened by any power."