But the weak dollar is going to hit them hard, as they (especially the young and the retired) travel and a weak dollar is immediately noticeable. So, expect howls from previous Obama supporters.

As you can see, Iranians refuse to shut up. They continue their protest day and night and it is not limited to Tehran. As Stalinist show trials in which protesters, such as Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani, confessed their sins, failed to do the trick. and encouraged by such signals as the Obama administration's decision to cut off funding for Iranian Human-Rights Documentation, Ahmadinejad and company are making yet another effort to scare Iranians into compliance - a death sentence.

Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani"was transferred on Monday from Evin prison ward 209 to Revolutionary Court number 15, presided over by judge Salabati, and the execution verdict was communicated to him." Hanging!

The crime? . . ."propaganda activities against the Islamic establishment and taking part in rallies with the aim of undermining national security."

The sentence can be and undoubtedly will be appealed. The question remains: will Iranians be cowed to stop protesting?

France stands by the Iranian people:

We were extremely shocked to learn of the death sentence handed down on Mohammad Reza Ali-Zamani in Iran. The announcement of this decision tarnishes still further the image of the Iranian regime.

Like the whole international community, France observed the scale of the popular protest in the wake of the announcement of the results of the 12 June election.

The mobilization of a large section of Iranian society is continuing despite the crackdown.

We salute the courage of all the Iranian citizens who, despite the successive waves of repression and violence, are demonstrating peacefully in defence of their basic rights.

Will the Obama administration follow suit? We have learned not to expect it to lead when it comes to the subjects of authoritarian regimes. As even Indians are realizing, this"liberal" administration is much too enamored with the law and order of autocracies.

Let's hope so.

Israel names Russians helping Iran build nuclear bomb. Netanyahu handed the list to Putin. Good boy!

Hamas repeats threat to capture more"Shalits" This are our enemies. No, they deserve no respect!

UN Report Says Iran Has Data to Make a Nuclear Bomb. Reality strikes again.

The secret diary of the Saudi princess who would be stoned to death if she returned home Woopi would say:"It is not stoned stoned."

Islamic Bonds Receive a Boost This is the consequence of dollar printing.

The stakes in Afghanistan go well beyond Afghanistan Unfortunately, he is right.

Please, do not forget to Buy Israel. Here is the latest from the anti-Israeli boycott front.

ElBaradei says nuclear Israel number one threat to Mideast BBC failed to report this.

This is good news. As far as I am concerned numbers alone cannot do the trick. The limited time totally unconnected to development on the ground has always struck me as representative of inadequate commitment to victory. No one went to fight Germany for a six month or twelve month stint. They went for the duration. That not only increased their interest in a swift victory but also insured that the hard earned lessons will be exploited.

That is the reason I am so thrilled to read the following. It means that army strategists finally get it and, moreover, begin to act on their understanding. WSJ reports:

Military and defense officials said in interviews that the new Afghanistan units reflected a belief in the importance of developing cadres of officers who can do repeat tours to the country.

That's a change from moving officers from assignment to assignment based on overall institutional needs, which means troops can do deployments in Afghanistan and then not look at the conflict again for several years.

The Afghan Hands initiative is meant to immerse dozens of officers from each of the military's services in Afghanistan for three to five years. Troops selected for the program will do a year in Afghanistan before moving to the Pentagon's new Afghanistan office or to jobs at Central Command that are focused on the war.

I must admit this is a surprise. Americans really get it. Now, if we only had a government as clear sighted as the people, the chances of avoiding war would have increased significantly:

A majority of Americans are skeptical that diplomacy with Iran will succeed and say the U.S. should use military action if necessary to prevent the Iranian government from developing a nuclear weapon.

A Pew Research Center for the People & the Press survey released today found 61 percent of Americans would support a military strike. Twenty-four percent said it is more important to avoid conflict even if that means Iran will end up building nuclear arms.

The survey by the Washington-based group found 63 percent support direct U.S. negotiations with Iran to push the country to abandon its nuclear program. Still, 64 percent said such efforts won’t succeed. The poll was conducted last week, when Iran held talks with the U.S. and other United Nations powers and agreed to widen discussions on the nuclear dispute. . . .

In the Pew survey, while 78 percent said they would approve of tougher economic sanctions on Iran, 56 percent said they didn’t expect the measures would persuade Iran to drop its nuclear program. The poll was conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 4 among 1,500 adults, with an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

More prove that the American people are right: It's Official! Iran Publicly Says it Fooled U.S. and Europeans in Geneva, Offered Nothing In other words, the Obama administration legitimized the Ahmadinejad regime for nothing!

Greenspan on THIS WEEK: The stimulus did not stimulate. It it was not even spent (it was designed for spending before election 2010). Now, We are in trouble!

The job report was pretty awful, no matter how you looked at it. Indeed, not only, of course, did the unemployment rate go up, but I was particularly concerned about the number of Americans who have been unemployed for six months or longer. And that went up...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Five million Americans.

GREENSPAN: But that went up sharply in September. And remember, the reason that is a problem, obviously, other than the obvious personal difficulties that families have in such a context, is that the economy loses skills. And people who are out of work for very protracted periods of time, lose their skills eventually.

And remember that what makes an economy great is a combination of the capital assets of the economy and the people who run it. And if you erode the human skills that are involved there, there is a real and in one sense an irretrievable loss.

Have Americans been out of work as long before? We do not know

As of September, job searchers could expect to spend 26.2 weeks on the hunt -- the longest average on record since the BLS started keep records back in 1948.

The last time the jobless rate was this high, the average search took 20.8 weeks. Today, people are facing average searches that are six weeks longer. The BLS says the number of people sidelined for 27 weeks or more has risen to 5,438,000 from 4,988,000 in August.

What happened? An expensive useless, unspent stimulus designed with election 2010 in mind, leaves the American people with with higher unemployment even than Europe and in greater debt. It is a small wonder that the business community has turned against the administration. At least that is what Mort Zuckerman said on the Mclaughlin Report.

Proof? Angela Merkel's targeted, small stimulus, the one economists said will be a disaster, has proven itself effective according to Boston Cconsulting Group Survey:

Berlin - The German economic stimulus package is seen as highly effective in combating the effects of the global recession and stabilizing the country’s economy. A recent survey by the Boston Consulting Group found that the measures implemented in Germany were effectively stimulating domestic demand and lacked protectionist tendencies.

With only the sixth-largest stimulus package worldwide, Germany was able to score important points in the three remaining qualitative categories of the survey.

. . . BCG also credited Germany for its promotion of future technologies and education.

Germany would have done better, had the consultants looked at the stimulus success in limiting job loss. Remember, both the US and Germany started the year with a 7.2% unemployment rate. American unemployment is at 9.8 and rising. The German one is at 8.2% and falling to MSM's repeated surprise:

German unemployment fell again in September, helped by the usual seasonal decline that accompanies the end of the summer holiday period, the Federal Labor Office reported Wednesday. . . .

Even after seasonal adjustments, the number of jobless fell by 12,000, resulting in an unemployment rate of 8.2%. Economists polled earlier by Dow Jones Newswires had predicted a rise of 25,000 in seasonally adjusted unemployed and a jobless rate of 8.3%.

The Federal Labor Office also revised down the drop in seasonally adjusted unemployed in August to 6,000 from an initial estimate of only 1,000.

In unadjusted terms, the number of jobless fell more sharply, by over 125,000 to 3.346 million, or 8.0% of the workforce.

Merkel deserves her country's confidence. I wish I could say the same about our haughty president.

The USG acts like a madman when it comes to Iran. That is the essence of Michael Ledeen's WSJ article entitled We've Been Talking to Iran for 30 Years which demonstrates how each US administration tried to negotiate with Iran and each failed. Of course, the definition madness is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.

Michael wants the US to help the opposition forces. Robert Kagan agrees: Forget the Nukes The Most Fruitful Target Is Iran's Weakening Regime. Fat chance. If Bush failed to do it, Obama is certainly unlikely to. Pity - just watch how fearlessly the Iranian students behave. Apparently, the police/guards do not dare enter the campus.

Focusing on nukes unquestionably plays into Ahmadinejad's hands. But that does not mean that we can set them aside. As Matt Kuentzel correctly argues Iran is not entitled to nukes and just as importantly, NPT does not provide the mechanism to stop it from developing nukes:

It is often assumed that the NPT actually blocks access to the bomb. In reality, the opportunities afforded to aspiring nuclear-weapons makers are enormous. Article IV of the treaty enables signatories to produce all components necessary for a bomb under U.N supervision, as long as they do not combine these components into nuclear explosives. The significance of this loophole was explained in April 2007 by Hossein Shariatmadari, a confidante of Iran's"Supreme Leader" Ali Khamenei:"A country that has attained the knowledge and technology of uranium enrichment is only one step away from producing nuclear weapons. This [additional] step is not a scientific or a technical step, but a matter of political decision."

Article X of the NPT further expands this loophole. A signatory state that, following President Obama's wishes," complies with its responsibilities under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty" could accumulate the most important components of a nuclear weapon under cover of the NPT, and then legally withdraw from the treaty by simply citing"extraordinary events."

That's why President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, ignoring the faded Iranian signature on the NPT, denied the mullahs the right to any form of nuclear energy. On October 21, 2003, however, came a"very important turning point," as Hossein Mousavian, a high-ranking Iranian nuclear negotiator, described it. That was the day the foreign ministers of Great Britain, France and Germany—Jack Straw, Dominique de Villepin and Joschka Fischer—traveled to Tehran, despite major reservations on the part of the Bush Administration, to"recognize the right of Iran to enjoy peaceful use of nuclear energy in accordance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty," as the text of a declaration agreed by Iran and the three foreign ministers states.

Again. Fat chance. Moreover, for such sanctions to work not only must Russia and China go along with them BUT our Middle Eastern"allies," the Gulf states and most especially Dubai (of our ports fame) must stop providing them with the means to circumvent the sanctions that have been imposed. Afshin Molavi, a fellow at the New American Foundation, went so far as to describe"Dubai as Iran's"lungs;" without Dubai, Iran cannot breathe."

It even breathes materials needed for nuclear development through the UAR.

AFP reports that Iran was caught trying to get nuclear materials via Canada and Dubai:

Microchips identified as possible"navigational chips" from the United States, Denmark and Japan were marked as headed for the United Arab Emirates, but officials suspect the end destination was Iran, said the Canadian daily.

"With all of the UN sanctions, of course, now no one declares that the goods are going to Iran. They actually declare UAE, Dubai," he said.

The last seizure occurred just last week. . . .

Webb also revealed authorities had recently discovered a new port in the Persian Gulf named Ras al-Khaimah being used to transship goods to Iran.

The port is nominally in the UAE, but is controlled by Iran and is situated just across the Gulf from Bandar Abbas, an Iranian city with a naval base and an airport capable of landing large transport planes, he said.

While making money hand over feast, Dubai is hoping like much of the world that Israel will take the risk and the blame from saving it from Iran. Its' experts even have the chutzpah to say it publicly:

Writing in the pan-Arab newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi, for instance, the editor, Abdel-Beri Atwan, said that with recent developments “the Arab regimes, and the gulf ones in particular, will find themselves part of a new alliance against Iran alongside Israel.”

The head of a prominent research center in Dubai said that it might even be better if the West — or Israel — staged a military strike on Iran, rather than letting it emerge as a nuclear power. That kind of talk from Arabs was nearly unheard of before the revelation of the second enrichment plant, and while still rare, it reflects growing alarm.

“Israel can start the attack but they can’t sustain it; the United States can start it and sustain it,” said Abdulaziz Sager, a Saudi businessman and former diplomat who is chairman of the Gulf Research Center in the United Arab Emirates. “The region can live with a limited retaliation from Iran better than living with a permanent nuclear deterrent. I favor getting the job done now instead of living the rest of my life with a nuclear hegemony in the region that Iran would like to impose.”

Surprise, surprise, the Arabs can live with a retaliation directed primarily at Israel and the US. Who would have thunk?!

In short, time to stop wringing our hands in frustration and start reading the riot act to our Arab"allies" on whose behalf Americans did what they have never done for Israel, shed their blood in two Iraq wars. The Obama administration can do it in as"respectful" a manner as it wishes but it must pressure Dubai and the rest of the Gulf states to stop enabling the Iranian regime circumvent the sanctions already on the book not to mention those that may come. Absent their cooperation, sooner or later the region is doomed to a most destructive war.

WSJ reports that US will focus on existing sanctions:

At Dubai's bustling downtown wharf, Iranian sailors load goods bound for a handful of Iranian ports. During one recent visit, dozens of new Whirlpool Corp. refrigerators stood in neat rows in front of one dhow, chartered for the Iranian port of Bushehr. The captain declined to say who was shipping the cargo to Iran.

Products made by Whirlpool, of Benton Harbor, Mich., are readily available throughout Dubai, one of seven emirates that make up the U.A.E. A Whirlpool spokeswoman declined to comment except to say the company will abide by all sanctions.

The U.A.E. has vowed to enforce U.N. sanctions. But there are no laws here against shipping everyday, American-brand goods across the Persian Gulf to Iran.

How difficult is it to pass appropriate laws in an autocracy like the U.A.E?