The choice of François Hollande over Nicolas Sarkozy was an extreme case of the lesser of two evils. Seldom has a winning candidate inspired so little enthusiasm. Considering how unpopular Sarkozy was, according to polls, the final vote of 51.6% for Hollande to 48.4% for Sarkozy was surprisingly close. Voting for the bland and inoffensive Hollande was finally the only way to get rid of the agitated Sarkozy, aggressively pretending to be President of France.

There is no more real President of France. The leader who is elected to occupy the Elysée Palace no longer lays down the policy direction to be taken by the nation. That role has been largely taken over by the European Union Commission in Brussels.

With his modest manner, François Hollande is more suitable to be non-President of France. Not that it promises to be an easy job. The financial powers that run the world are pushing him to break the news to the French that they can no longer have the policies they want, but only the policies dictated by "the markets".

The latest plot involves five subjects allegedly planning to bomb a Cleveland area bridge. More on it below.

Entrapment occurs when law enforcement officials or agents induce, influence, or provoke crimes that otherwise wouldn't be committed.

It doesn't apply if subjects willingly act lawlessly. Government aiding, abetting, or facilitating them is considered lawful.

Entrapment involves government operatives initiating the idea. If individuals go along under pressure despite no intent or desire to do so, they committed no crime. To convict, prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that subjects weren't entrapped. Otherwise, judicial fairness requires exoneration.

That's not how things turn out today. Innocence or guilt doesn't matter. Once charged, prosecutorial misconduct and right-wing courts convict. Juries are pressured and intimidated to go along even in cases with no plot, no crime, or intent to commit one.

Attorney Eric Holder defends the practice. He calls stings a vital tool. He stops short of admitting entrapment. He must because it's illegal. It's nonetheless repeatedly used to convict innocent people. As a result, hundreds rot unjustly in America's gulag.

Gerald Celente calls cops enforcers for crime bosses. So are FBI agents. They serve wealth and power. Corporate crooks are rewarded. Ordinary people are targeted. Familiar story lines repeat. They sound more like film plots than real ones.

The Algerian lawyer hired by the family of the shooter who killed seven people in France in March said Monday she would launch proceedings next week against the elite police unit that killed him.

"I am ready to travel to France Thursday or Saturday to start the complaint procedure against the RAID (elite unit) next Monday," Zahia Mokhtari told AFP.

Mohamed Merah, a self-confessed al-Qaeda follower, was killed in a police siege in Toulouse after shooting dead seven people, including three Jewish children, in a spree that shocked France.

His family in Algeria says the French forces did not do enough to attempt to take him alive and Mokhtari claims she has video evidence.

She said she would be assisted in the French court procedure by Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, who is the lawyer of Illich Ramirez Sanchez -- best known as Carlos the Jackal -- and even married the Venezuelan revolutionary in 2001.

"Isabelle Coutant-Peyre will help me with the complaint procedure because of her knowledge of the French justice system," the Algerian lawyer said.

Washington has pressured the Philippines, whose government it owns, into conducting joint military exercises in the South China Sea. Washington's excuse is that China has territorial disputes with the Philippines, Indonesia, and other countries concerning island and sea rights in the South China Sea. Washington asserts that China's territorial disputes with the like of Indonesia and the Philippines are a matter of United States' national interests.

Washington has not made it clear what Washington's stake is in the disputes. The reason Washington cannot identify why China's disputes with the Philippines and Indonesia are threats to the United States is that there is no reason. Nevertheless, the undefined "threat" has become the reason Washington needs more naval bases in the Philippines and South Korea.

What this is all about is provoking a long-term cold war conflict with China that will keep profits and power flowing into Washington's military-security complex. Large profits flow to armaments companies. A portion of the profits reflow into campaign contributions to "the people's representatives" in DC and to presidential candidates who openly sell out their country to private interests.

Washington is going to construct new naval bases in the Philippines and on the environmentally protected Jeju Island belonging to South Korea. Washington will waste tax revenues, or print more money, in order to build the unnecessary fleets to occupy these bases. Washington is acquiring bases in Australia for US Marines to protect Australia from China, despite the lack of Chinese threats against Australia. Bush and Obama are the leading models of the "people's president" who sell out the people, at home and abroad, to private interests.

Why is Washington ramping up a new cold war?

Washington claims the shield is meant to protect against Iran, but Moscow knows its about undermining Russia's military deterrence

Russia's top military officer has threatened to carry out a pre-emptive strike if Washington goes ahead with its plan to build a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe.

The Obama administration has been pushing for a deal to build missile defense facilities in Eastern Europe through the NATO alliance, over the strong objections of the Russians. Washington claims its purpose would be to protect from any Iranian missile threat. But Moscow believes it would undermine their nuclear deterrent.

Chief of General Staff Nikolai Makarov on Thursday at a international conference attended by U.S. and NATO officials said, "A decision to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken if the situation worsens."

The CIA and overseas intelligence partners disrupted an American intelligence al-Qaeda plot to blow up civilian aircraft using an advanced explosive device designed by the terrorist network's affiliate in Yemen, U.S. officials said Monday.

President Obama was made aware of the threat in April, U.S. officials said, and the plot was stopped before any aircraft or passengers could be put in danger. Obama "was assured that the device did not pose a threat to the public," said Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council.

U.S. officials said the FBI is examining the device - modeled on the "underwear bomb" used in an attempt to bring down a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day 2009 - to determine whether airport security systems would have detected it.

U.S. officials said the CIA and other agencies tracked the plot that they created for about a month before moving to seize the device in recent days in the Middle East outside Yemen, where the bomb was built.

The CIA foiled a plot by al-Qaida's affiliate in Yemen to bomb a U.S.-bound airliner this month, senior U.S. officials told NBC News.

Officials said the plot involved a bomb that improved on the one that had been sewn into the underpants of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who failed in a plot to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day 2009. That device did not detonate.

This bomb had a more refined detonation mechanism and was "totally non-metallic," which officials told NBC News would have made it more difficult to detect by traditional screening processes.


A U.S. counterterrorism official told NBC News there were "refinements on reliability" in particular that made this bomb more sophisticated and more likely to explode.

The Obama Administration drafted a "highly lawyered" memo to shield the president from blame if the mission to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden failed, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey told Sean Hannity of Fox News Friday.

According to Mukasey, the memo would have pinned the blame on Navy Admiral William McRaven, who was commander of Joint Special Operations Command at the time of the raid.

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- The five men accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks used their weekend war court appearances to stage "peaceful resistance to an unjust system" being used for political reasons, defense lawyers said Sunday - a day after the 9/11accused turned the judge's plans to hold a simple arraignment into a 13-hour marathon of prayer and protest.

"The system is a rigged game to prevent us from doing our jobs," argued criminal defense attorney David Nevin, accusing the prison camp commander of making it impossible to learn from alleged mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed how the CIA waterboarded him 183 times and used other since-outlawed techniques to break him.

Mohammed, his nephew and three other men allegedly trained, advised and financed the 19 hijackers who crashed airliners into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, killing 2,976 people. All could get the death penalty, if convicted.

François Hollande's election threw down the gauntlet to Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, who has railroaded the eurozone into agreeing a new "fiskalpakt" treaty enshrining Germany's austerity doctrine.

The economic doctrine of austerity, to cut the burden of state spending to free up the economy, has ruled supreme with the support all of Europe's leaders, the European Union and financial markets.

But political leaders were on Sunday night conceding the consensus had been shattered beyond repair.

With Europe's economies plunging further into recession and as unemployment in the eurozone breaks record levels, voters demands for a new approach had finally become to great to ignore.

The popular backlash to EU imposed austerity to the centrist New Democracy and Socialist parties in Greece threatens the existence of the euro itself.