The beaver is a proud and noble animal

A national security expert revealed to The London Times that the Pentagon has “drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians military capability in three days.”

According to the paper, one Washington source said the “temperature was rising” to launch an Iranian attack inside the Bush administration. This information comes on the heels of reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency last week that cited “significant cooperation” with Iran over its nuclear program, including the slowing of uranium enrichment.

Israel, a close ally of the United States, has warned it will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, making its own preparations for airstrikes. If the United States back downs, it is said to be “ready to attack.”

Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2369001.ece

The Times reports as such:

Pope Benedict XVI is working on a doctrinal pronouncement that will condemn tax evasion as socially unjust, according to Vatican sources. In his second encyclical the most authoritative statement a pope can issue the pontiff will denounce the use of tax havens and offshore bank accounts by wealthy individuals, since this reduces tax revenues for the benefit of society as a whole.

It will focus on humanitys social and economic problems in an era of globalisation. Pope Benedict intends to argue for a world trade and economic system regulated in such a way as to avoid further injustice and discrimination, Ignazio Ingrao, a Vatican watcher, said yesterday.

Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article2237625.ece

Now, the sentiment is nice, but I'm pissed off at the hypocrisy of the whole thing. So this goes out to the guy with the big pointy hat: the vatican is probably one of the wealthiest organizations in the world and possesses art treasures that are worth untold fortunes. And you're being pissy with other people's riches???

Um, yeah. Makes perfect sense.

In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission.

According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is “an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation.” But beyond the irony lies China's true motive: to cut off the influence of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual and political leader, and to quell the region's Buddhist religious establishment more than 50 years after China invaded the small Himalayan country.

By barring any Buddhist monk living outside China from seeking reincarnation, the law effectively gives Chinese authorities the power to choose the next Dalai Lama, whose soul, by tradition, is reborn as a new human to continue the work of relieving suffering.

At 72, the Dalai Lama, who has lived in India since 1959, is beginning to plan his succession, saying that he refuses to be reborn in Tibet so long as it's under Chinese control. Assuming he's able to master the feat of controlling his rebirth, as Dalai Lamas supposedly have for the last 600 years, the situation is shaping up in which there could be two Dalai Lamas: one picked by the Chinese government, the other by Buddhist monks. “It will be a very hot issue,” says Paul Harrison, a Buddhism scholar at Stanford. “The Dalai Lama has been the prime symbol of unity and national identity in Tibet, and so it's quite likely the battle for his incarnation will be a lot more important than the others.”

So where in the world will the next Dalai Lama be born? Harrison and other Buddhism scholars agree that it will likely be from within the 130,000 Tibetan exiles spread throughout India, Europe and North America. With an estimated 8,000 Tibetans living in the United States, could the next Dalai Lama be American-born? “You'll have to ask him,” says Harrison. If so, he'll likely be welcomed into a culture that has increasingly embraced reincarnation over the years. According to a 2005 Gallup poll, 20 percent of all U.S. adults believe in reincarnation. Recent surveys by the Barna Group, a Christian research nonprofit, have found that a quarter of U.S. Christians, including 10 percent of all born-again Christians, embrace it as their favored end-of-life view. A non-Tibetan Dalai Lama, experts say, is probably out of the question.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20227400/site/newsweek/