Puppet Masters
NATO is a collective security pact wherein member states pledge that an attack upon one is an attack against all. Therefore, should the Soviet Union have attacked any European Member State, the United States military shield would be activated. The Soviet Response was the Warsaw Pact that maintained a "cordon sanitaire" around the Russian Heartland should NATO ever attack. Thus, the world was broken into blocs which gave rise to the "Cold War."
Avowed "Cold Warriors" of today still view the world in these terms and, unfortunately, cannot move past Communist China and an amputated Soviet Empire as enemy states of the U.S. whose moves any where on the planet are to be contested. The collapse of the Soviet Union provided an accelerated opportunity to exert U.S. hegemony in an area of previous Russian influence. Africa and the Eurasian landmass containing former Soviet satellite states and Afghanistan and Pakistan along with the many other "stans" of the region, have always factored prominently in the theories of "containment" or "rollback" guiding U.S. policy up to today.
The station is fiercely loyal to Moammar Gadhafi and her interview was spliced with what appeared to be rallies in support of the embattled Libyan leader.
"I think that it's very important that people understand what is happening here. And it's important that people all over the world see the truth. And that is why I am here ... to understand the truth," former Rep. Cynthia McKinney said during a live interview.
She said she was invited to Libya by the "nongovernmental organization for fact-finding," adding that she intends to bring more people to the country soon so that "they too can understand."
NATO warplanes have been pounding military targets since March after the U.N. Security Council approved a resolution to protect civilians by any means necessary as Gadhafi's forces try to quash a nearly three-month revolt against the leader's roughly 42 years of rule.
Gadhafi's government has repeatedly urged the international community to send fact-finding teams to Libya to report what's happening on the ground.
An air strike by NATO-led troops in southern Afghanistan killed at least nine civilians, NATO and Afghan officials said on Sunday, and many of the victims were children.
It was one of the deadliest foreign assaults on civilians in Afghanistan in months.
The mistaken killing of civilians by foreign forces, usually during air strikes or night-time raids, is a major source of friction between President Hamid Karzai and his Western backers.
It has complicated efforts to win support from ordinary Afghans for an increasingly unpopular war.
The commander of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in southwestern Afghanistan apologized for the deaths of nine civilians, saying troops had unwittingly targeted a home because insurgents were using it as a base.
"Unfortunately, the compound the insurgents purposefully occupied was later discovered to house innocent civilians," Major General John Toolan said in a statement.
"While I know there is no price on human life we will ensure that we make amends with the families in accordance with Afghan culture," he added.
The governor of Helmand province, where the air strike was called in, said the bomb killed 14 civilians, two of them women and the remainder children. Bereaved relatives brought the bodies of young children to the provincial capital to protest.
ISAF did not give the ages of the civilians it said died.
Already, another minister has been accused of sexual harrassment and forced to resign, perhaps the first time we can remember of a sex scandal adversely affecting a French politician's career.
But an even more stunning situation is the media firestorm surrounding Luc Ferry, a philosopher and former government heavyweight.
On a live evening talk-show, when asked about whether politician sex scandals are hush-hushed, Luc Ferry said that, as government minister, he was told of another, former government minister who was caught in Morocco in an orgy with "little boys," and that the affair was hushed up. He was told, Ferry says, by "authorities at the highest level of the State, including the prime minister."

One of the Israeli (pirate) navy’s Dolphin submarines off the Israeli coast in 2008.
Israel has finalized the purchase of a sixth submarine from Germany, with payment to be spread over several years, an Israeli official said on Thursday.
The proposed expansion of the diesel-powered Dolphin submarine fleet, considered Israel's vanguard against foes like Iran, had been held up by wrangling with Berlin over the $500 million to $700 million price tag.
Senate Bill 575, by Democratic Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, would add sites such as hotel and motel lobbies and banquet rooms, warehouse facilities, employee break rooms and small and owner-operated businesses to the list of smoke-free zones.
The measure originally targeted cigar and tobacco retailers and lounges. But DeSaulnier decided to cut that provision from the bill this week after facing stiff opposition from shop owners and stogie lovers, including an international trade association based in Georgia, which argued such a ban would unfairly hurt their business and undermine their ability to serve their customers who come to the sites to smoke.

Ex-minister Luc Ferry is now being questioned by French police about his claim that another former minister organized orgies "with little boys" in Morocco.
Former Education Minister Luc Ferry will likely be questioned after alleging during a television show that another minister was caught at an orgy in Marrakech, a judicial official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity since she wasn't authorized to speak publicly.
The preliminary investigation is aimed at seeking more precise information from Ferry, the official said.
In France, a preliminary investigation is conducted to see if a case should be pursued.

Explosions damaged an Egyptian natural gas pipeline in February, above, and April. Despite successful repairs, deliveries to Israel have not resumed.
American and Thai shareholders in the pipeline have demanded urgent consultations to avoid resorting to binding arbitration based on trade treaties. One letter to Egyptian ministries from an American company with an Israeli chairman threatens a lawsuit of $8 billion.
It is a very virulent strain, and according to some doctors and researchers, the most virulent they have ever seen.
"Helge Karch, the director of the RKI's EHEC consulting laboratory at the Münster University Hospital in western Germany, has devoted almost his entire life as a researcher to EHEC bacteria.The bacterium that is currently being experienced in Germany is an enterohemorrhagic strain of the bacterium Escherichia coli (EHEC), a close relative of harmless intestinal bacteria, but one that produces the dangerous Shiga toxin. All it takes is about 100 bacteria -- which isn't much in the world of bacteria, which are normally counted by the millions -- to become infected. After an incubation period of two to 10 days, patients experience watery or bloody diarrhea.
"But I've never encountered something like this," he says.










Comment: From our archives in 2010:
Israeli cabinet's guilt trip to Germany: Merkel 'donates' nuclear submarine to Netanyahu
Israel Stations Nuclear Missile Subs Off Iran