Believe me, you don't want the state having the power to strip your clothes off. And yet, it's exactly what is happening.

In a five-four ruling this week, the supreme court decided that anyone can be strip-searched upon arrest for any offense, however minor, at any time. This horror show ruling joins two recent horror show laws: the NDAA, which lets anyone be arrested forever at any time, and HR 347, the "trespass bill", which gives you a 10-year sentence for protesting anywhere near someone with secret service protection. These criminalizations of being human follow, of course, the mini-uprising of the Occupy movement.

Is American strip-searching benign? The man who had brought the initial suit, Albert Florence, described having been told to "turn around. Squat and cough. Spread your cheeks." He said he felt humiliated: "It made me feel like less of a man."

In surreal reasoning, justice Anthony Kennedy explained that this ruling is necessary because the 9/11 bomber could have been stopped for speeding. How would strip searching him have prevented the attack? Did justice Kennedy imagine that plans to blow up the twin towers had been concealed in a body cavity? In still more bizarre non-logic, his and the other justices' decision rests on concerns about weapons and contraband in prison systems. But people under arrest - that is, who are not yet convicted - haven't been introduced into a prison population.

Our surveillance state shown considerable determination to intrude on citizens sexually. There's the sexual abuse of prisoners at Bagram - der Spiegel reports that "former inmates report incidents of ... various forms of sexual humiliation. In some cases, an interrogator would place his penis along the face of the detainee while he was being questioned. Other inmates were raped with sticks or threatened with anal sex". There was the stripping of Bradley Manning is solitary confinement. And there's the policy set up after the story of the "underwear bomber" to grope US travelers genitally or else force them to go through a machine - made by a company, Rapiscan, owned by terror profiteer and former DHA czar Michael Chertoff - with images so vivid that it has been called the "pornoscanner".

Lawrence Davidson argues that US Pastor John Hagee and his followers, who believe in the divine creation of the state of Israel, are as delusional as people who once believed in the reality of Zeus and his Olympian clan but could one day act as cheerleaders for the ethnic cleansing and mass murder of Palestinians.

Pastor John Hagee's Christians United for Israel (CUfI) announced the "registration of their millionth member" on 18 March 2012. This organization, founded in 2006, with the goal of "realizing the political potential of tens of millions of evangelical Americans who support Israel", can also be said to have the goal of destroying, in the name of God no less, the legitimate political aspiration of Palestinian statehood. In addition, the CUfI now has as much influence with our Republican Congress as does the leading Jewish Zionist lobby group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Why should the devout Mr Hagee and his one million followers be so enamoured of Israel? Actually, they have no rational reasons to offer. However, they do have a number of non-rational ones. For example, "We support Israel because all other nations were created by an act of man, but Israel was created by an act of God."

While many believed it to be an April Fool's Day joke, Vladimir Putin has confirmed Russia has been testing mind-bending psychotronic guns that can effectively turn people into zombies.

The futuristic weapons - which attack their victims' central nervous system - are being developed by scientists and could be used against Russia's enemies and even its own dissidents by the end of the decade.

Mr Putin has described the guns, which use electromagnetic radiation like that found in microwave ovens, as entirely new instruments for achieving political and strategic goals.

Plans to introduce the super-weapons were announced by Russian defence minister Anatoly Serdyukov.

While the technology has been around for some time, MrTsyganok said the guns were recently tested for crowd control purposes.

"When it was used for dispersing a crowd and it was focused on a man, his body temperature went up immediately as if he was thrown into a hot frying pan," Mr Tsyganok said.

"Still, we know very little about this weapon and even special forces guys can hardly cope with it,'' he said.

It was just over a year ago that NATO began bombing Libya, supposedly to protect the Libyan people from Gaddafi who, NATO claimed, was killing his own people. This was soon proven to be an outright lie. Western powers, the US, France, the UK, and client Arab states, are responsible for the deaths of at least 40,000 Libyan civilians, murdered to 'save them', and take possession of their oil resources.

If you're not outraged, you're not awake.

Things got heated during a Democratic primary debate for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut on Thursday when one candidate told another that he was "whore" over his support of a pro-Israel lobbying group.

"I'm appalled that when I talk about the neoconservatives somehow it's twisted to be some sort of a racist comment," long-shot candidate Lee Whitnum said in response to U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy. "This is documented fact. The neoconservative role in the taking down of Iraq [with an] unnecessary war is fact. It's not opinion."

"I'm dealing with whore here who sells his soul to AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee], who will say anything for the job," Whitnum explained, pointing towards Murphy and then adding that state Rep. William Tong was "ignorant" for defending him.

A British foreign policy think tank has this week released a study claiming that the terror group Al Qaeda is regrouping in Africa creating "an arc of instability" from the Western Sahel to the Eastern Horn.

The Royal United Services Institute, based in Whitehall, London, and closely aligned to official British foreign policy, cites "disturbing new trends" across the continent that "Osama bin Laden's terror network" is seeking influence in Somalia, North Africa and the Western Sahara-Sahel.

"If correct [sic], this assessment would raise the worrying prospect of an arc of regional instability encompassing the whole Sahara-Sahel strip and extending through to East Africa, which the now weakened Al Qaeda-core could well exploit to regroup, reorganise and reinvigorate its terrorist campaign against the West," the report said.

Meanwhile, in other media reports it is claimed that Al Qaeda elements are joining forces with the Tuareg separatists following a military coup in the West Africa country of Mali. The alleged involvement of Al Qaeda in Mali has been cited by former colonial power France in its pledge to crush the coup.

The purported Al Qaeda link in Mali appears incongruous. The Tuareg rebels - a nomadic group inhabiting northern Mali and Niger - were formerly fighting in Libya in support of the Gaddafi government against Western-backed insurgents. The Western-backed Libyan insurgents are known to have comprised Al Qaeda jihadists. Now it is being claimed by France and media reports that Al Qaeda are in league with their former enemies - the Tuareg - in the secession of the northern Mali territory.

What these various reports suggest is that Al Qaeda is being raised as a "spectre" over Africa to justify increased intervention by Western powers in that continent under the guise of "global security".

The April 2012 issue of Harper's Magazine includes "The Warrior Class," a feature by Charles Glass on the rise of private-security contractors since 9/11. The conclusion to the piece describes a series of videos shown to Glass by a source who had worked for the private-security company Blackwater (now Academi, formerly also Xe Services) in Iraq. Clips and photos from the videos are shown below, introduced by Glass's descriptions:

The first [video], identified as "Baghdad, Iraq, May - ­September 2005," showed Blackwater convoys racing through town. Suddenly, the door of a Blackwater SUV opened and a rifle fired at passing traffic. "They opened the door," my companion said. "You should never break the seal."

Vatican City, Italy - Pope Benedict XVI implored the Syrian regime Sunday to heed international demands to end the bloodshed and said he hopes the joy of Easter will comfort Christians who are suffering because of their faith.

Benedict, struggling with hoarseness and looking tired, celebrated Mass on Christianity's most joyous holy day on the flower-adorned steps of St. Peter's Basilica, before a crowd of faithful that swelled to far over 100,000 by the end of the 2-hour-long ceremony.

Only hours earlier the pontiff, who turns 85 on April 16, had led a long nighttime vigil service in the church.

At the end of Sunday's Mass, Benedict moved to the basilica's central balcony to read his Easter message "to the entire world," as he put it, delivering a ringing appeal for peace in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East, and particularly in Africa, citing coup-struck Mali and Nigeria, where Christians and Muslims alike have been hit by terrorist attacks.

"May the risen Christ grant hope to the Middle East and enable all the ethnic, cultural and religious groups in that region to work together to advance the common good and respect for human rights," the pope said.

"Particularly in Syria, may there be an end to bloodshed and an immediate commitment to the path of respect, dialogue and reconciliation, as called for by the international community," Benedict said, making Syria the first of several strife-torn countries he mentioned in his traditional "Urbi et Orbi" (Latin for "to the city and to the world") Easter speech.

By now most people have heard of the death of Trayvon Martin, a black teen who was shot to death by the local Hispanic neighborhood watch coordinator, George Zimmerman. Trayvon was reportedly on his way home from buying skittles and iced tea, wearing a hoodie on February 26, 2012 in Stanford, Florida, when he was shot by George Zimmerman, who claims the shooting was a result of "self-defense". At this point in time there is no way of knowing what really happened on that night because as always, the media has gone into a frenzy to distract and distort the facts of the case.

The murder has elicited comments from everyone from the Reverend Al Sharpton to Spike Lee. Even Geraldo Rivera felt the need to get 'personal' and speak out against the "ghetto gangsta" fashion to which his own son has apparently fallen victim:

"Take that thing off," I snarled at my dashing, dark, handsome then late-teenage son. In those not so long ago days, Cruz styled himself a ghetto gangster, fashion-wise. [...]

No one black, brown or white can honestly tell me that seeing a kid of color with a hood pulled over his head doesn't generate a certain reaction, sometimes scorn, often menace.

When you see that kid coming your way, unless you specifically recognize him you are thinking ghetto or ghetto wannabe high-style or low-brow wise-ass. Pedestrians cross the street to avoid black or brown hoodie wearers coming their way.

Because this is a teachable moment let me speak plainly.

Whatever Reverends Sharpton and Jackson say in Florida Friday, after listening to the 911 tapes and hearing the witness' testimonials, I believe Trayvon Martin would be alive today but for his hoodie.

Stars of theatre and literature split over invitation to Israeli company to stage Merchant of Venice in London

Author Howard Jacobson has weighed into a debate over whether Israel's national theatre company, Habima, should be banned from performing at the Globe in London as part of next month's Cultural Olympiad event, saying art should never be censored.

Habima was invited to perform The Merchant of Venice in Hebrew as part of an ambitious programme to stage 37 Shakespeare plays, each in a different language, during the six-week festival. Yet a letter signed by 37 leading actors, directors, producers and writers - including Emma Thompson, Mike Leigh and Mark Rylance - published in the Guardian last week, called for the invitation to be withdrawn because Habima had performed in Israeli settlements.

The letter, also signed by Miriam Margolyes, Richard Wilson and Jonathan Miller, said: "We ask the Globe to withdraw the invitation so that the festival is not complicit with human rights violations and the illegal colonisation of occupied land. By inviting Habima, the Globe is associating itself with policies of exclusion preached by the Israeli state and endorsed by its national theatre company."