The Prime Minister, who flies to Washington tomorrow to discuss an exit strategy from Iraq with George Bush, surprised MPs by suggesting Britain could not take America's support for granted as he announced the Government was backing a submarine-based "son of Trident" system.

"Our co-operation with America is very close. But close as it is, the independent nature of the British deterrent is an additional insurance against circumstances where we are threatened but America is not," said Mr Blair. "These circumstances are also highly unlikely but I am unwilling to say they are non-existent."

With the Dow setting records every week and America creating more jobs than it can fill, why is the dollar falling? There are several reasons. Approximately 70 percent of all foreign-exchange currency is currently held in U.S. dollars. The U.S. then sells Treasury debt into that foreign exchange market. This is a bit complicated, but here's what that means. Each U.S. bill is a receipt for Treasury debt. Once accepted as "money" it has value to its bearer. But, it is debt to its issuer. The system relies on the global flow of U.S. dollars in and out of foreign currency reserves. A smaller foreign exchange holding in U.S. dollars means a smaller pool out of which to sell U.S. debt.

This sets up a financial peril that is little understood by most Americans. It sets up a double threat to the dollar. It not only shrinks the dollar's value, but also raises both the trade deficit and the budget deficit. Now stay with me, here. This may be some of the most important information you will need to try and force Congress to do something and also to take action to defend your own personal financial future.

It has become apparent that there is a new strategy to destroy America. It is a new kind of warfare designed to destroy the value of American currency via a carefully coordinated attack against our dollar by a coalition of our enemies. And, based on the rapid shrinking of the dollar's worth, despite an economic boom, it appears to be working.

Certain countries have begun quietly divesting themselves of U.S. foreign exchange holdings, converting them to euros. In 2004, the Switzerland-based Bank for International Settlement reported that the U.S. dollar-denominated deposits of OPEC countries fell from 75 percent of their total deposits in the third quarter of 2001 to 61.5 percent by the end of 2003.

In the same period, the share of euro-denominated deposits of OPEC countries rose from 12 percent to 20 percent. OPEC member euro-denominated deposits reached 44 billion in June 2004, nearly double the 23.4 billion euros these countries held in the third quarter of 2001.

In the same period of time, the dollar holdings of the OPEC member countries decreased from $145.3 billion to $132.1 billion. In 2005, China negotiated major oil and natural gas rights from Iran.
For years, North Korea's Kim Jong-il has been flooding the global economy with so-called "super-notes" counterfeit U.S. $100 bills so good even Secret Service agents can't tell the difference without conducted sophisticated tests.

The 2005 arrests of major Asian crime figures in several U.S. cities led investigators straight to Pyongyang and from there to Beijing. Experts now believe that a significant percentage of U.S. $100 bills now in circulation are counterfeit.

The strategy is to flood the market with counterfeit dollars to deflate its value. Then to convert U.S. holdings to euros, thus pushing the dollar into a deflationary freefall.
In January 2006, China announced an intention to reduce 75 percent of its foreign exchange reserves currently held in U.S. dollars.

Since China is the world's second-largest holder of U.S. dollar-denominated foreign-exchange reserves, it has the power to create a catastrophe. At the same time, Venezuela and Iran are now demanding that all payments for oil shipments be paid for in euros not dollars.
In addition, both nations are planning regional central banking schemes designed to hold all foreign exchange holdings of participating countries in euros instead of dollars. This explains why enemy operators, spearheaded by members of the Saudi royal family, have flooded hundreds of millions of dollars into Venezuelan held bearer-bonds that are used to buy as many banks as possible throughout the Caribbean and South American areas.

All these factors cannot be coincidence. They reveal a concerted, well-coordinated strategy to destroy America through economics.
I believe oil is being used in this same overall strategy against America. Last October, OPEC agreed to reduce production to keep oil prices up near $60 per barrel. The price was suggested by Hugo Chavez after consultation with his friends in Tehran and Moscow and accepted by OPEC.

With that one brilliant maneuver, Chavez cornered the global oil market. Venezuela has vast deposits of heavy oil in the Orinoco, but heavy oil is expensive to extract and refine at free-market prices. However, at $60 per barrel, the Orinoco reserves give Venezuela the largest proven oil reserves in the world.
Not just larger than the vast reserves of Iran or Saudi Arabia, it is larger than both of them put together. In fact, it is bigger than all the proven oil reserves in the Middle East combined. Venezuela's deposits alone could extend the oil age for another 100 years.

Hugo Chavez is raking in some $200 million a day in oil sales, most of it from the United States. If Chavez demands payment in euros, it will throw the whole U.S. economy into a crisis.
Amazingly, Hugo Chavez has now become the go-to guy for all of OPEC. He's held audience with every oil sheik and dictator in the Middle East, including our "friends" the Saudis and Kuwaitis. With the recent re-election of Chavez, the U.S. is ringed by five of the most virulently anti-American leftist regimes in Latin America.

"Happy Holidays? Have you ever wondered what 'Holidays' refers to? Everyone knows about Christmas but what else are people celebrating in December? Why do we celebrate the way we do? "Find out!" the brochure continues. "Come to Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church ... We'll have an educational program for children (sic) of all ages (and their adults), where we'll explore the traditions of December and their origins, followed by a Pagan ritual to celebrate Yule."

The banner also displays three symbols: a cross, a Star of David and a pentagram a star enclosed in a circle often associated with paganism, witches groups such as Wicca, and even Satanism. As WND has previously reported, the celebration of Christmas is a major cultural battleground in the U.S., dating back to colonial America when Christians in New England outlawed Christmas, saying it was based more on ancient pagan traditions than instruction from the Bible.

Today, followers of ancient paganism strive to remind the public about the heathen origins of traditions that many may never have questioned. CircleSanctuary.org is among the Internet addresses run by nature-worshipping pagans. Wiccan high priestess Selena Fox discusses the state of being pagan and celebrating the lengthening of days during the Northern Hemisphere's darkest time of year.

"Yule, the winter solstice, is a festival of peace and a celebration of waxing solar light. I honor the new sun child by burning a[n] oaken yule log in a sacred fire. I honor the great goddess in her many great mother aspects, and the father god as Santa in his old sky god, father time, and holly king forms. I decorate my home with lights and with holly, ivy, mistletoe, evergreens and other herbs sacred to this season. I ring in the new solar year with bells."

The recommendations came on a day that 10 US troops and at least 75 Iraqis were killed. A bipartisan report has advised the withdrawal of most US combat troops from Iraq by early 2008 in order to stop a "grave and deteriorating" crisis there. The Iraq Study Group also said the US should engage with Iran and Syria over the conflict.

The recommendations came on a day that 10 US troops and at least 75 Iraqis were killed. Bipartisan report has advised the withdrawal of most US combat troops from Iraq by early 2008 in order to stop a "grave and deteriorating" crisis there.

The Iraq Study Group also said the US should engage with Iran and Syria over the conflict. The recommendations came on a day that 10 US troops and at least 75 Iraqis were killed. The report calls for talks between Israel and Syria as part of a US commitment to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace "on all fronts".

George Bush, the US president, is under pressure to end an unpopular war that has killed more than 150,000 Iraqis and more than 2,900 Americans. Bush said he would take the recommendations "very seriously".

The panel, co-chaired by James Baker, a former US secretary of state, said the main mission of US troops in Iraq "should evolve to one of supporting the Iraqi army, which would take over primary responsibility for combat operations".

"There is no magic formula to solve the problems of Iraq," the five Republicans and five Democrats in the group said in the report.
"The US is seeing that they can not get support from key Arab allies unless they fulfill key critical issues that are important to these allies. If Syria agrees to co-operate in Iraq and in Lebanon, the report suggests that Syria will get the occupied Golan Heights back. This is a significant suggestion."

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Nir Rosen of the New American Foundation, said that there was one thing all parties could agree on and that was that the US military cannot win the war in Iraq.

He said: "It has to be won by the Iraqi government and Iraqi politicians, not the US military."

"The report proves that this is the era of Islam and of jihad," said Abu Ayman, a senior leader of Islamic Jihad in the northern West Bank town of Jenin.

The Islamic Jihad terror group is responsible for every suicide bombing in Israel during the past two years.

"[With the Iraq Study Group report], the Americans came to the conclusion that Islam is the new giant of the world and it would be clever to reduce hostilities with this giant. In the Quran the principle of the rotation is clear and according to this principle the end of the Americans and of all non-believers is getting closer," Abu Ayman said.
According to Abu Abdullah, a senior leader of Hamas' so-called military wing, Baker's report is a victory for Islam brought about by "Allah and his angels."
"It is not just a simple victory. It is a great one. The big superpower of the world is defeated by a small group of mujahedeen (fighters). Did you see the mujahedeens' clothes and weapons in comparison with the huge individual military arsenal and supply that was carrying every American soldier?" exclaimed Abu Abdullah, who is considered one of the most important operational members of Hamas' Izzedine al-Qassam Martyrs Brigades, Hamas' declared "resistance" department.

"It is no doubt that Allah and his angels were fighting with them (insurgents) against the Americans. It is a sign to all those who keep saying that America, Israel and the West in general cannot be defeated on the ground so let us negotiate with them," Abu Abdullah said.

Abu Abdullah said following a withdrawal from Iraq, the U.S. will be defeated on its own soil.

We will want all our partners, including the United Kingdom, to tell us what is possible and desirable. And we will figure out if and how it's possible to draw it all together and hopefully at the end of our presidency make a proposal how to take the issue forward. A German Foreign Ministry spokesperson confidently told the Times, We can bring this forward faster than anyone realises. The Times also reports that Berlin has already rejected Nicolas Sarkozy's idea of a mini-treaty. A German diplomat said, It is in our interest to try to preserve the maximum substance of the text. We are happy with it. We are not going to pick out the cherries. The 18 countries who ratified it do not want to look ridiculous. It is also reported that diplomats close to Romano Prodi, the Italian Prime Minister, will work with the Germans on a way to bring back the EU Constitution.

Meanwhile AFP reports that European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso sent a letter last month to his 24 colleagues saying he wants to bring forward a proposal to give the EU Constitution another chance, revealing a change to his previous stance towards the document. He reportedly wrote, "We can find a way out and give Europe a second chance.

"We can have an intifada even when running the Palestinian Authority," Meshaal said, explaining that the ceasefire was not designed to bring peace, but is rather another stage in the war with Israel. "The current calm [cease-fire in Gaza - ed.], just like the escalation [before that], is part of the way we manage the conflict with Israel."

Many Israeli military men and analysts have said that Hamas is using the current truce in Gaza to rearm and regroup towards the next round of fighting.

Hamas Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniye, visiting in Syria, echoed Meshaal's position in a speech at a refugee camp. He said the Palestinians will not give up on "even one grain of sand of Palestine," and that Syrian President Assad promised him that all the Palestinian [terrorist] prisoners incarcerated in Israel would be freed.

Meshaal admitted that the Hamas-Fatah talks for a unity PA government have "encountered difficulties," but said they have not yet hit a dead end. This clashes with announcements by Hamas leaders Haniye and Mahmoud A-Zahar, who said on Monday that the negotiations had failed and were beyond recovery.

Hamas and Fatah elements traded blame and accusations for the failed talks. Fatah leader Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) is expected to announce - possibly today - whether he plans to dissolve the Parliament, thus leading to a clash with Hamas.

Ministers will take up the issue when they meet next week to discuss new output curbs. Most OPEC ministers are leaning towards cutting production beyond the 1.2 million barrels per day they agreed on in October to reduce high inventories. A weak dollar provides another argument for trimming supply and supporting prices.

It's often been said that if Washington, D.C., is America's seat of power, Hollywood is its seat of influence. Indeed, the southern California venue is the epicenter of an ultra-powerful values-broadcasting machine that fascinates, influences and in many ways, shapes Americans' lives, values and direction.

And yet, Hollywood's "beautiful people" the celebrities as well as the movers and shakers behind the scenes share (with few exceptions) a worldview both alien and poisonous to traditional America.

"Did you know that nine out of 10 Hollywood films lose money?" asks Emmy-Award-winning producer-director-cameraman Jody Eldred in this issue of Whistleblower. "Did you know that the vast majority of new television shows are cancelled because no one is watching them? Do you wonder why?"

The obvious answer, says Eldred, is "because they're mostly awful." But why are they awful? "Because," notes Eldred, "the people creating them are completely out of touch with the people they are creating them for! Their worldview is vastly different from the worldview of most Americans.

We have a largely Christian nation, but Hollywood is largely un-Christian, and in many if not most cases, anti-Christian.
They're not just out of touch.
They're against you!"

As we have often said in these columns, we do not expect the $ to decline down a gentle slope, but to move along a plateau, before dropping down a cliff to the next level at which it will plateau before the next fall. Steadily we will see the pressures from excess U.S. $' bring not only a value decline but also a heavy loss of confidence in the $ from outside the U.S. of A.

It appears that we are very close and have possibly begun the first cliff edge fall to the next low. The fall may be steeper and greater than most have imagined

Scotland Yard detectives are now trying to discover if Litvinenko had any secret links with Islamic extremist terror groups, the London Sunday Express is reporting.
Their biggest fear, the paper reports, is that Litvinenko, who died of polonium-210 poisoning in a London hospital, may have been helping al-Qaida or other extremist groups get hold of radioactive material to be used in a devastating "dirty" atom bomb.

Britain's secret intelligence service MI6 had earlier learned that al-Qaida was prepared to pay $3 million a gram for polonium 210, G2 Bulletin reported last week.
Litvinenko's friend Mario Scaramella now says the late spy helped smuggle radioactive material from Russia to Switzerland in 2000. Litvinenko was also known to have sympathies with Chechen rebels, seeking to break away from Moscow and create an independent Muslim state.

Litvinenko's conversion to Islam was announced by his next-door neighbour, moderate Muslim and Chechen dissident Akhmed Zakayev, who revealed: "He was read to from the Koran the day before he died and told his wife that he wanted to be buried in accordance with Muslim tradition."
The hunt began a week ago in Peshawar. The ancient Pakistan city hosts a joint MI6/CIA surveillance operation supported by America's National Security Agency satellite surveillance.

Using the latest cyber-technology, the intelligence officers in Peshawar picked up a short-burst transmission from somewhere in Peshawar's Old Town. It was in response to a call that appeared to have come from beyond the towering Khyber Pass, possibly from Afghanistan.

The call was automatically recorded on one of the computers in the offices the MI6/CIA team share.
Just as automatically, it was dispatched down the line through cyberspace to GCHQ, the British Government Headquarters in the Cotswold town of Cheltenham. Simultaneously it reached America's NSA at Fort Meade, Md.

The words from Peshawar were part of the trillions of words in 500 languages that the GCHQ/NSA super computers are programmed to listen to, shift, reject or retain so they can be analyzed by the thousands of experts both GCHQ and NSA employ.
By late last week, MI6 knew of al-Qaida's offer to purchase Polonium 210.

The China trip means that the ticking time bomb at the bottom of the dollar dam needs to be defused before it blows up, and the value of the dollar is swept away. Both the Republican Administration and the Democratic Congress want China, and the rest of Asia, to end their policies of manipulating their currencies down, by building up massive foreign exchange holdings.

The new Congress is tuned into the fact that China has tariffs of 25 percent on imports such as autos, and is very tired of seeing American labor slaughtered. (In 2007 GM, Ford and Chrysler as well as auto parts suppliers such as Delphi are buying 100,000 workers out of their jobs or just letting them go.)
To make trade fair again, Congress is willing to take the action of imposing tariffs if China and Asia do not revalue.

In turn, China may threaten to dump their dollars, unless the Fed keeps interest rates high. If China starts selling dollars, the dam will break.

Not only does the U.S. owe a net $3 trillion to foreigners, we now pay more in interest overseas than we collect from abroad. Foreigners hold $13 trillion in dollar assets that are at immediate and painful risk to any dollar weakness. Indeed, that volume of liquid assets is just about equal to the total GDP.

A 30 percent drop in the dollar, could cost foreign investors an easy $3 trillion in lost purchasing power, not to mention the loss to U.S. citizens who own over $46 trillion in dollar net worth assets. Our leaders must find a way to lower the U.S. Trade Deficit, or risk the dollar losing its unique position as the World's Reserve Currency.

Remember, if you own dollar assets, a falling dollar can cause havoc to most American and foreign investors. Only those who invest in foreign financial assets or real assets (such as commodities or gold and silver) are likely to be safe and not swept away when the dollar dam breaks.