VHeadline.com's Washington D.C. based commentarist Chris Herz writes: Things are really unraveling quickly here in Bushland. And if you doubt me, consider that in 2000 when the present US regime was inaugurated, the Euro only bought .87 dollars. Now it is worth $1.40. Oil was $22/barrel. Now it is near $80. Gold is today over 700 $/ounce. What was it January 20, 2000?

The Federal Reserve's printing presses have been running at warp speed for six years now: Increasing market capitalization from $5.3 trillions in 2000 to over 35 trillions today!

This inflation is running at a real rate of about 18 or 19% per annum here in cuckoo-land; only the ENRON accounting of our governmental authorities concealing this painful reality by deleting from the calculations both foodstuffs and energy costs.

These are really serious matters for Venezuela: The country must race to rid itself of all these dollars gained from the sale of its oil resources quickly, ere the value is eroded by this inflation. In this sense the purchase for dollars of agricultural equipment from Iran, weapons from Russia, the liquidation of dollar-denominated debts crippling the neighbors in Argentina, Bolivia, or Nicaragua make excellent investment sense.

This last is really particularly sweet: The paper goes right back to Washington, from whence it came, and several other countries learn too that they can live without kissing Bush's butt!

But the day is now upon us when the dollar must be dropped completely.

Already British banks are in deep trouble, having financed themselves in the same manner as US banks but being also much more exposed to world realities. The US Secretary of the Treasury, Paulson, is in the UK right now seeing what can be done to keep this crisis from coming home. Great Britain is the largest foreign owner of US securities of all sorts and is seriously exposed to a drastic loss when the dollar tanks.

Truly, the USA is more a menace to its friends today than to its foes.

The longer the world allows itself to be dominated by US paper the deeper the eventual crisis.

Really, why should the PDVSA post prices in dollars at all? This only rents interest-free the most important section of the Venezuelan export economy to the enemy of the nation. And now exposes the nation to the inflation which is Mr. Bush's gift to those who continue to blindly take dollars for their labor or resources.

The dimensions of the crisis are not clearly understood here even by the anti-corporate, anti-war opposition. This writer chose not to attend this weekend's anti-war rally in Washington, giving his attention instead to a conference at George Washington University organized by the Institute for Policy Studies on the trifecta of crises now engaging all of the world: The conjunction between peak oil, global warming, and the reality of world war for resources.

All the major participants were still of the mindset that we should be writing our Congressmen, agitating for a more responsible attitude on all these questions on the part of our officials. As if these foolish men actually possessed the power of choice they once had. Few were even able to begin to understand that US officialdom now have no card whatsoever to play internationally save that of threats of ghastly and unlimited violence.

And if you doubt me, not only does our own Johns Hopkins University, School of Public Health, but also Great Britain's premier polling service say without doubt that the USA have presided over a greater loss of Iraqi lives by far and way than ever did the late Saddam Hussein.

Not since Reichsbank president Hjalmar Schacht came to Hitler in the spring of 1939 with the news that the Nazi state would soon be in bankruptcy has a major power been so pushed to the limit of its financial resources. If you complain now of seemingly irrational and senseless choices on the part of US officials, wait and see what the next few months bring you.

These sick puppies have bet the family farm on the use of horrible and unconstrained violence to preserve their social hegemony and they are not about to admit their criminal error.

Clearly we can see not only in the USA herself, but also in those other countries allied most closely to her the preparations for the abandonment of democracy and legal restraint upon power that their respective elites feel will be necessary to weather the coming emergency: A constant construction of domestic surveillance and police activity directed at the populations of commoners, and only incidentally at potential Muslim terrorists.

Totally outlandish responses to dissent are now becoming commonplace here -- students being Tasered while asking awkward questions of politicians, demonstrators charged with felonies etc.

This shows us all that the true targets of the Department of Homeland Security are not a rag-tag bunch of Islamicists, but rather the anti-war, anti-corporate minorities. US society is totally reorganizing itself for global war.

And the sooner all understand this the sooner we can come together to do the real work necessary to defend humanity against it.