Puppet Masters
A request by the league for a no-fly zone over Libya, made a week ago, was considered one the main sources of international legitimacy for the bombing raids against Gaddafi's army. All of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) opposed the move, as did the African Union. Thus, the token support of the Arab League was all the more important, and when its secretary general (incidentally also one of the front-runners for the Egyptian presidency), Amr Moussa, said on Sunday that "what is happening in Libya differs from the aim of imposing a no-fly zone, and what we want is the protection of civilians and not the bombardment of more civilians", this undermined severely the moral foundation of the campaign.
True, the legal basis is quite solid, in the form of a remarkably Byzantine United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, which, in the words of Asia Times Online's M K Bhadrakumar "opens up all sorts of dangerous possibilities to stretch the type and scope of military operations".
Still, for an American leader who built much of his foreign policy image in contrast to his predecessor's unilateral interventionism and who received a Nobel Peace Prize practically on a naked promise for "change we can believe in", selective interpretation of legal documents to justify a war with no clear objective or exit strategy is a slippery slope.
About half of China's crude imports last year came from the Middle East and North Africa. China wants to diversify supplies, but Arab countries and Iran hold so much of global reserves that they are sure to remain major suppliers.
Riding high on strong showings in a handful of French polls on the 2012 presidential election, National Front leader Marine Le Pen has had an early start on the campaign trail.
The far right politician, who took over from her father as head of the party in January, sat down with FRANCE 24 journalist Roselyne Fèbvre for an interview covering a wide range of domestic and international issues. Here are some of the highlights.
President Nicolas Sarkozy
"France is collapsing because of a French president who is no longer running anything, who is governing on impulse or emotion, depending on the circumstances. And France's interests and image have suffered for it."

March 21: Libyan soldiers survey the damage to an administrative building hit by a missile late Sunday in the heart of Muammar al-Qaddafi's Bab Al Azizia compound in Tripoli
The British Ministry of Defense confirmed that Qaddafi was not the target, but that the compound was hit because of its military significance. A Pentagon official had previously said Sunday that the coalition "will not be going after Qaddafi."

Sen. Raymond Lavigne, shown to the right in this file photo, has resigned.
The resignation came Monday as the senate was poised, for the first time in its history, to decide whether to strip a senator of his office.
Lavigne was found guilty March 11 in Ontario Superior Court of defrauding the federal government of $10,120.50 in false travel claims and of breach of trust for abusing his office.
Lavigne's sentence hearing takes place May 10. He faces up to 14 years in prison.
Lavigne, 65, has come under fire for spending $315,355 in travel expenses, on top of his $132,300 salary, despite being barred from doing any work in the Senate or its committees.
His colleagues put him on a forced leave of absence after the RCMP charged him in 2007.
The government's failure to produce all documents that had been requested from it or to provide a satisfactory explanation for withholding them impedes the ability of MPs to carry out their duties, the report said, and the government is therefore in contempt.
The 26-page report was tabled late Monday afternoon and 48 hours must go by before the House of Commons can vote on whether to accept the committee's report. The finding is a historic one and it paves the way for the Liberals, or any of the other opposition parties, to move a non-confidence motion on the matter and bring down Prime Minister Stephen Harper's minority government.
The procedure and house affairs committee began meeting early Monday morning to finalize a draft of the report that had been prepared over the weekend following two days of hearings last week. The committee was tasked with deciding whether the government breached the privilege of MPs by not supplying sufficient documentation on the estimated costs of corporate tax cuts, proposed crime legislation and the F-35 fighter jet procurement. Some amendments were made and the final report was made public Monday afternoon.
"This contempt report - a first in the history of Canada and the Commonwealth - is the result of the Harper regime's abuse of power," Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said in a statement. He added that the finding undermines the credibility of the federal budget that is set to be delivered Tuesday, because the government can't be trusted.
Lakewood - This month marks the 57th anniversary of an event that shocked the world, but that few people remember. The largest nuclear bomb ever was exploded on one of the Marshall Islands as a U.S. Military test. Harry Kissleman of Lakewood witnessed it from a ship miles away. It was a day he will never forget.
Kisselman, 79, recently told 9NEWS about his experience. The test, in March of 1954, was called "Operation Castle Bravo." The military and Energy Department planned to explode the hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll, one of the Marshall Islands.
Kisselman was 22 at the time, and was a sailor on a ship that carried scientists and supplies to the site. On the day of the test, his ship was about 100 miles away. He says what he saw was a total shock.
"The sky lit up, just an ungodly purple and pink, mostly pinkish. Real bright. And all you could do, you couldn't even talk to anybody, was just watch it," he said.
Israel's expansion of Jewish "settlements" in east Jerusalem and eviction of Palestinians from their homes there is a form of ethnic cleansing, a United Nations investigator said on Monday.
US academic Richard Falk was speaking to the UN Human Rights Council as it prepared to pass resolutions condemning Israeli behaviour on territory it has occupied since 1967.
The "continued pattern of settlement expansion in East Jerusalem combined with the forcible eviction of long-residing Palestinians are creating an intolerable situation" in the part of the city previously controlled by Jordan, he said.
Here is Dershowitz' fascinating, logical, algorithm for us to consider:
- "The recent disaster in Japan has shown the world the extraordinary dangers posed by nuclear radiation"
- "If Iran were to develop nuclear weapons, the next ship destined to Gaza might contain a nuclear dirty bomb"
- "A dirty bomb detonated in tiny Israel would cause incalculable damage to civilian life."
Comment: Interesting that Atzmon mentions circumcision. Perhaps it may explain how Alan Dershowitz reached his "astonishing conclusion".
From The Way of the Fool:
The first stage, or circuit, is the oral-passive-receptive, and is imprinted by what is perceived to be the mother or first mothering object. It can be conditioned by nourishment or threat, and is mostly concerned with bodily security. Trauma during this phase can cause an unconsciously motivated mechanical retreat from anything threatening to physical safety."Us and them" world -view? Easily threatened by disapproval of any sort because disapproval suggests the idea of extinction or loss of food supply?
In recent times I have given a lot of thought to this particular circuit because of the matter of circumcision. Having come to the tentative idea that the whole Judeo-Christian monotheistic rant was a major control program, I came face to face with the question: how and why has it worked so well for so many thousands of years? More than that, how was it imposed in the first place?
I puzzled over this for weeks. I thought about several things that Friedrich Nietzsche had said that struck me like thunderbolts of truth once I was able to really step back and look at the matter:
Neitzsche wrote:The Jews are the most remarkable nation of world history because, faced with the question of being or not being, they preferred, with a perfectly uncanny conviction, being at any price; the price they had to pay was the radical falsification of all nature, all naturalness, all reality, the entire inner world as well as the outer, They defined themselves counter to all those conditions under which a nation was previously able to live, was permitted to live; they made of themselves an antithesis of natural conditions - they inverted religion, religious worship, morality, history, psychology, one after the other, in an irreparable way into the contradiction of their natural values.[...]The first "circuit" is concerned with what is safe and what is not safe. In our society, money is one of the primary items that is intimately tied to survival and biological security. Money represents survival. In addition to that, people who have been traumatized during the imprinting phase of the first circuit tend to view other people in an abstract way. It is "us and them." They also tend to be very easily threatened by disapproval of any sort because disapproval suggests the idea of extinction or loss of food supply. And, finally, those who have been negatively imprinted at this stage tend to have a chronic muscular armoring that prevents proper, relaxed breathing; they are "up tight."
One of the main characteristics of people who are heavily controlled by this circuit, or are "stuck" in this "oral phase", is that when they sense danger of any sort, whether actual or conceptual, all mental activity comes to a halt. Such people are chronically anxious and dependent - mostly on religion. They are not able to really understand what other people are feeling or what can happen in the future in regard to relationships, given a certain present situation. They only understand what is happening "now", and they can only feel what THEY feel. They cannot accurately grasp what others feel because they relate to others only as sensory objects."
In this case, no wonder that the following description of schizoid personality from Political Ponerologyby Andrew Lobaczewski fits Zionists' attitude toward the rest of the World like a glove.
Literature provides us with descriptions of several varieties of this anomaly, whose existence can be attributed either to changes in the genetic factor or to differences in other individual characteristics of a non-pathological nature. Let us thus sketch these sub-species' common features.
Carriers of this anomaly are hypersensitive and distrustful, while, at the same time, pay little attention to the feelings of others. They tend to assume extreme positions, and are eager to retaliate for minor offenses. Sometimes they are eccentric and odd. Their poor sense of psychological situation and reality leads them to superimpose erroneous, pejorative interpretations upon other people's intentions.
They easily become involved in activities which are ostensibly moral, but which actually inflict damage upon themselves and others. Their impoverished psychological worldview makes them typically pessimistic regarding human nature. We frequently find expressions of their characteristic attitudes in their statements and writings: "Human nature is so bad that order in human society can only be maintained by a strong power created by highly qualified individuals in the name of some higher idea." Let us call this typical expression the "schizoid declaration".[...]
The quantitative frequency of this anomaly varies among races and nations: low among Blacks, the highest among Jews. Estimates of this frequency range from negligible up to 3 %. In Poland it may be estimated as 0.7 % of population. My observations suggest this anomaly is autosomally hereditary.
A schizoid's ponerological activity should be evaluated in two aspects. On the small scale, such people cause their families trouble, easily turn into tools of intrigue in the hands of clever and unscrupulous individuals, and generally do a poor job of raising children. Their tendency to see human reality in the doctrinaire and simplistic manner they consider "proper" - i.e. "black or white" - transforms their frequently good intentions into bad results. However, their ponerogenic role can have macrosocial implications if their attitude toward human reality and their tendency to invent great doctrines are put to paper and duplicated in large editions.
Which is which?

Calling it "basically no more than five rectangular strips of paper," Fed chairman Ben Bernanke illustrates how much "$200" is actually worth.
Von NotHaus promised a "spectacular trial" when, in 2007, he was interviewed by our Joseph Goldstein.* At the time von NotHaus was expecting to be indicted, as he eventually was, in connection with his minting of coins. His boast to our Mr. Goldstein was that he would "put this country's monetary system on trial." In the event, the trial of von NotHaus, which took place at Statesville, North Carolina, was over in but eight days. The jury deliberated but two hours before bringing in its verdict of guilty. It will stand for many as a lesson in the difficulties of illuminating the illogic of our monetary system.
Comment: Even if some of what Le Pen says is true (although she uses authoritharian-right wing rhetoric), she - like the rest of the psychopathic political elite - is just another Puppet of the Puppet Masters. Political parties, political fights, political agendas, it's all one big game designed to distract people from real issues and give them the illusion of choice. As was once pointed out here, change won't come from politics, because they're ALL one at the top and you can bet regular people's well being are not part of their agenda.
Of course, here at SOTT, we do think that change is coming - and it's Mama Earth who's gonna do it. Some are really not going to be happy about it...