The Iranian oil bourse opens March 20 -- this is the strategic key. The Cheneyacs want war to stop the bourse from deflating the sick US dollar. The crumbling of European resistance has given new strength to Condi's nuclear lynch mob against Iran, with that country about to be hauled before the UN Security Council. At that point, a wider Middle East war will be immediately in sight.

The Mohammed cartoons are a transparent provocation by NATO intelligence through a Danish right wing newspaper of limited circulation. This classic US-UK provocation has had an enormous effect. Islamic circles need to realize that this is a cynical ploy designed to lead to an attack on Iran and thence to general war, and treat it that way.

We had the latest British terror bombing in Achwaz, Iran last week (Jan. 24), killing several people. The trial of British-backed terrorists in Iran starts in about 2 weeks. The situation of the British invaders in southern Iraq is becoming critical. Afghanistan is about to boil over. The US and North Korea are trading nuclear war threats across the 38th parallel. Russia has accused the British of flagrant spying, and there is every reason to believe this charge. Venezuela has expelled a US military attache as an obvious agent provocateur; now the US expels top Venezuelan diplomat. Now the fake provocation of an alleged IED bomb near a school in Gaiithersburg, Maryland in the Washington DC suburbs, impacting the personnel of the Bush administration and the federal government in general; many top officials live within a few miles of this school.

There was real hysteria in the corridors of the US government this afternoon. A new Sudden Response terror drill is taking place at Charleston. South Carolina. Will this drill go live in the way other drills went live in London last July 7? The latest leaked Downing Street memorandum reveals Bush as proposing to send US U-2 spy planes disguised in UN colors to be shot down over Iraq to secure a pretext for the illegal aggression there. This reveals Bush in the Operation Northwoods tradition, ready to commit acts of war in the form of impeachable offenses.

Detroit is a burned-out auto city, expendable in the eyes of the finance oligarchs. Turin, Italy, home of FIAT, is another expendable burned out ex-industrial city. An action in Turin would push the Europeans to join the US in the attack on Iran. The sinking of the Egptian ferry in the Red Sea may well fit into this pattern, but this is not clear. The Patriot Act has not been renewed. Top neocons face indictment and jail sentences.This is the classic moment when the neocons and their rogue network backers go back to Leo Straus