The most significant point in President Barack Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday night was a passing and euphemistically worded reference to his program of extra-judicial drone assassinations. "Where necessary, through a range of capabilities, we will continue to take direct action against those terrorists who pose the gravest threat to Americans," he declared.

Every congressman, senator, cabinet member, Supreme Court justice and general in the House chamber knew that with that statement Obama was defending his asserted power to secretly order the assassination of anyone in any part of the world, including American citizens. The president went on to make clear he was intent on making state murder a permanent and completely institutionalized government function.

His administration, he said, had worked "tirelessly to forge a durable legal and policy framework" to guide such operations. He went on to indicate he might be open to suggestions for giving the assassination program a fig leaf of "transparency" and legality, pledging to "engage with Congress to ensure... our targeting, detention and prosecution of terrorists remains consistent with our laws and system of checks and balances..."

Part I: Africa's New Thirty Years' War?

Mali at first glance seems a most unlikely place for the NATO powers, led by a neo-colonialist French government of Socialist President Francois Hollande (and quietly backed to the hilt by the Obama Administration), to launch what is being called by some a new Thirty Years' War Against Terrorism.

Mali, with a population of some 12 million, and a landmass three and a half times the size of Germany, is a land-locked largely Saharan Desert country in the center of western Africa, bordered by Algeria to its north, Mauritania to its west, Senegal, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and Niger to its southern part. People I know who have spent time there before the recent US-led efforts at destabilization called it one of the most peaceful and beautiful places on earth, the home of Timbuktu. Its people are some ninety percent Muslim of varying persuasions. It has a rural subsistence agriculture and adult illiteracy of nearly 50%. Yet this country is suddenly the center of a new global "war on terror."

On January 20 Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron announced his country's curious resolve to dedicate itself to deal with "the terrorism threat" in Mali and north Africa. Cameron declared, "It will require a response that is about years, even decades, rather than months, and it requires a response that...has an absolutely iron resolve..." [1] Britain in its colonial heyday never had a stake in Mali. Until it won independence in 1960, Mali was a French colony.

After deploying several hundred troops to the Central African Republic late last month, the French government has overseen the signing of a peace agreement between President François Bozizé and leaders of the rebel militias that had threatened to overrun the capital, Bangui.

As well as agreeing not to nominate for another term as president after 2016, Bozizé has sacked his government and appointed rebel-nominated Nicolas Tiangaye as prime minister. Tiangaye will soon establish a so-called national unity government ahead of fresh legislative elections next year.

The political realignment underway is being driven by the French government, which aims to reassert control over its former resource-rich colony and counter China's growing economic and diplomatic influence. The operation in the Central African Republic forms part of a wider drive by US and French imperialism to bolster their strategic domination over Africa through direct military interventions. The latest involves a French-led ground offensive in northern Mali and the stationing of US drones and French troops in neighbouring Niger.

Oscar-winning documentary maker Alex Gibney suggests Pope Benedict XVI's departure stems from recent sex scandals.

Oscar-winning film-maker Alex Gibney, whose documentary Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God details a small part of the current wave of accusations surrounding the Catholic church, has suggested that the Pope's resignation stems from the stain of recent sex scandals.

Gibney, whose film is out in the UK on Friday, told the Hollywood Reporter that the departure of Benedict XVI had brought great solace to people who had suffered abuse at the hands of priests. "His papacy will always be saddled with the stain of the sex abuse crisis," he said, adding that the resignation "seems to me inextricably linked to the sex abuse crisis".

Such accountability for high-level government officials is inconceivable in the US, highlighting its culture of impunity

A US State Department official on Monday "expressed concern" about what he called "a 'climate of impunity' over abuses by police and security forces" - in Egypt. The official, Michael Posner, warned that failure to investigate Egyptian state agents responsible for "cruel treatment of those in their custody" - including torture - creates "a lack of meaningful accountability for these actions". Last week, I wrote that "I've become somewhat of a connoisseur of US government statements that are so drowning in obvious, glaring irony that the officials uttering them simply must have been mischievously cackling to themselves when they created them," and this American denunciation of Egypt's "climate of impunity" almost certainly goes to the top of the list.

After all, Michael Posner works for the very same administration that not only refused to prosecute or even investigate US officials who tortured, kidnapped and illegally eavesdropped, but actively shielded them all from all forms of accountability: criminal, civil or investigative. Indeed, Posner works for the very same State Department that actively impeded efforts by countries whose citizens were subjected to those abuses - such as Spain and Germany - to investigate them. Being lectured by the US State Department about a "culture of impunity" is like being lectured by David Cameron about supporting Arab dictators.

To see just how extreme the US "culture of impunity" is, consider the extraordinary 2003 kidnapping by the CIA of the Muslim cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (Abu Omar), from the streets of Milan. Nasr, who in 2001 had been granted asylum by Italy from persecution in Egypt, was abducted by the CIA and then shipped back to Egypt where he was imprisoned for four years without charges and, he says, brutally tortured by America's long-standing ally, the Mubarak regime.

Charred human remains have been found in the burned cabin where police believe fugitive ex-cop Christopher Dorner was holed up after trading gunfire with law enforcement, authorities said.

If the body is identified to be Dorner's, the standoff would end a weeklong manhunt for the ex-LAPD officer and Navy Reserve lieutenant who is believed to be responsible for a string of revenge-fueled shootings following his firing by the Los Angeles Police Department several years ago. Four people have died, allegedly at Dorner's hands.

The last burst of gunfire Tuesday came after the suspect, attempting to flee law enforcement officials, shot to death a San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy and seriously injured another, officials said. He then barricaded himself in a wooden cabin outside Big Bear, not far from ski resorts in the snow-capped San Bernardino Mountains east of Los Angeles, according to police.

Just before 5 p.m., authorities smashed the cabin's windows, pumped in tear gas and called for the suspect to surrender. They got no response. Then, using a demolition vehicle, they tore down the cabin's walls one by one. When they reached the last wall, they heard a gunshot, officials said, and then the cabin burst into flames.

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said he would not consider the manhunt over until a body was identified as Dorner.

New York homeowners from regions most severely impaired by Hurricane Sandy have suffered damage to their homes and expensive repairs - but the city is now inflicting a heavy tax hike upon those residents, claiming their property values have risen.

"Common sense dictates their property values have fallen, if not plummeted in some cases," Councilman Michael Nelson (D-Brooklyn) told the New York Post.

But the city claims that property values for homes in Manhattan Beach, Coney Island, Staten Island and the Rockaways have shot up - even though many of these properties were damaged in the storm and still require repairs. As a result, the city is inflicting higher taxes upon many of these residents to make up for the lost revenue from the storm - including residents whose homes remain so impaired that they have not been able to move back in.

"This is totally insensitive and heartless," Ira Zalcman, president of the Manhattan Beach Community Group, said in the interview with the Post. "We just sustained one of the worst national disasters in our nation's history, and now the city is delusional, claiming our property values went up."

The TSA is retiring 250 of their high-tech "backscatter" screening machines in the coming weeks, easing both healthcare and privacy woes from frequent travelers that don't trust the devices. Are they really going away for good though?

Backscatter makers Rapiscan and the Transportation Security Administration announced the ending of a partnership just last month, and by June 1 the TSA will have removed the space-age body screeners from around 200 airports across the country. In a recent interview with Federal Times, though, TSA spokesperson David Castelveter says that the roughly $40 million worth of machinery could be moved elsewhere to provide airport-style security outside of departure terminals.

"We are working with other government agencies to find homes for them," Castelveter tells reporter Andy Medici. "There is an interest clearly by DoD and the State Department to use them - and other agencies as well."

According to Medici, those machines may soon be coming to federal buildings to be used in routine, day-to-day security screenings for both visitors and employees.

At least 10 Afghan civilians, including women and children, have been killed in an airstrike carried out by US-led forces in eastern Afghanistan.

Local officials said on Wednesday that the attack in eastern Kunar Province claimed the lives of "five children, four women and a man."

A spokesman for the US-led NATO forces said they have launched an investigation into the report.

Afghans have become increasingly outraged at the seemingly endless number of deadly assaults by US-led forces in the country over the past months. The killings have been the main source of friction between Kabul and Washington.

In 2009, the former head of the international law department of Israel's military establishment, Daniel Reisner, said that "International law progresses through violations. We invented the targeted assassination thesis and we had to push it. At first there were protrusions that made it hard to insert easily into the legal molds. Eight years later, it is in the center of the bounds of legitimacy."

In disagreeing with such justification in the New York Times, George Bisharat points also to the Israeli claim that its army's clashes with Palestinian protestors are "armed conflict' justifying weapons of war, rather than the limited police measures that international law authorizes in dealing with protesting residents of illegally occupied Palestinian territory.

Bisharat also cites Israel's definition of people who have not left a designated military strike area after warning as being "voluntary human shields," the killing of whom is warranted, and civilian employees of the Hamas administration in Gaza as "terrorist infrastructure" and therefore legitimate objects of military attack. These acts, hitherto considered war crimes, have subsequently been without effective international condemnation since Israel created "facts on the ground" with respect to their use.

The United States has emulated this strategy for "progress" in dismantling international law. Its military and clandestine operations in recent years have included torture, kidnap, the use of anti-personnel fragmentation weapons, and the mass armored and artillery "shock and awe" assault tactic employed against Baghdad and Fallujah in Iraq, whose purpose is terrorization of civilian populations as well as enemy troops.

Washington's adamant hostility to the creation or recognition of international war crimes courts, widely supported in the international community, has amounted to acknowledgement that American practices would be likely to expose troops and officials to international war crimes indictments, or civil actions similar to Italy's indictment and recent trial in absentia of CIA officers charged with the illegal apprehension and rendition for torture of an Italian resident.