Amateur video purporting to show Syrian armoured vehicles in Deir al-Zour
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain have all recalled their ambassadors while Jordan has called for dialogue.
Puppet Masters
Amateur video purporting to show Syrian armoured vehicles in Deir al-Zour
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain have all recalled their ambassadors while Jordan has called for dialogue.
© Reuters/Jonathan Erns
Eighty-one congressmen, or about 20 percent of the US House of Representatives, will visit Israel over the next three weeks during Congress's summer recess, with the first group of 26 Democrats scheduled to arrive on Monday.
The Democratic delegation will be followed by two Republican ones, bringing a total of 55 Republicans.
Most of the representatives are freshmen congressmen, with 47 - or fully half of the freshmen Republicans voted into office in 2010 - making the trip.
© Dark Politiks
The election of President Obama was in no small part, a referendum on the administration of George W. Bush, and his victory was interpreted as a sound rebuke to eight years of open ended warfare, a vast and growing police state, the destruction of civil liberties, disregard for the Constitution, unchecked executive power, lies and broken promises, hypocrisy and arrogance, a lack of transparency in government, out-of-control federal spending, fever-pitch fearmongering, rampant corruption, and some really stupid gaffes. But what have we gotten instead?
More of the same. A LOT more of the same. In fact, every negative aspect of the Bush Administration has come back with a vengeance in the presidency of Barack H. Obama. Everything the American people detested so strongly about Bush has not only characterized the presidency of his successor, it's gotten much worse. Don't believe me? The following is a list of 100 ways President Obama is just like President Bush. We might as well consider it a third Bush term on steroids, or call Mr. Obama "Bush 2.0." If you honestly didn't like Bush, you can't possibly justify liking Obama, not unless you ignore the facts:
The man who leads one of China's top rating agencies says the greenback's status as the world's reserve currency is set to wane as the world's most powerful policy makers convene to examine the implication of S&P's decision to strip the United States of its triple "A" rating.
In comments emailed to CNBC, Guan Jianzhong, chairman of Dagong Global Credit Rating, said the currency is "gradually discarded by the world," and the "process will be irreversible."
Dagong made headlines last week when it became the first rating agency to cut its U.S. credit rating from "A+" to "A" after policymakers in Washington failed to act in a timely manner to lift its debt celing.
© Sott
Most of written history is written on pages of blood - peaceful times of happiness, love and the recession of trauma doesn't survive the filter of condensed history.
I think today, right now, is another one of those moments just before something very bad is about to happen. And, this time, we have the proclivity of written historical records for storing bad news to learn potentially lifesaving, culture rescuing information before we slip into the blood and carnage of insanity.
© Unknown
In the tapes, Jackie allegedly blames President Lyndon Johnson for the death of JFK, who took over the post from her husband after his assassination
In the tapes, Jackie allegedly blames President Lyndon Johnson for the death of JFK, who took over the post from her husband after his assassination
The secret tapes will show that the former first lady felt that her husband's successor was at the heart of the plot to murder him.
She became convinced that the then vice president, along with businessmen in the South, had orchestrated the Dallas shooting, with gunman Lee Harvey Oswald - long claimed to have been a lone assassin - merely part of a much larger conspiracy.
Texas-born Mr Johnson, who served as the state's governor and senator, completed Mr Kennedy's term and went on to be elected president in his own right.
© Shaam New Network/EPA
Syrian students demonstrate after news of further government crackdowns emerged.
Syrian students demonstrate after news of further government crackdowns emerged.
Syrian security forces have attacked a central town and parts of an eastern city, killing at least four people in renewed fighting, activists said.
The developments came as President Bashar al-Assad's government struggled to crush a five-month long uprising.
© Lucas Jackson/Reuters
Recent events have changed the US as an unassailable economic superpower.
Recent events have changed the US as an unassailable economic superpower.
When India joined China in criticising America's chaotic handling of its hefty debts this weekend, describing the challenges facing the White House as "grave", it was the clearest indicator yet that the old order had been swept away.
Until recently the United States was the unassailable economic superpower, and the prospect of the White House being bossed about by the bond markets - let alone by Beijing or New Delhi - was unthinkable.
© Reuters
Sunday retreat is steepest intraday fall since the global economic crisis erupted in 2008
Sunday retreat is steepest intraday fall since the global economic crisis erupted in 2008
An opening loss exceeding 5% triggered circuit-breakers, causing a series of brief suspensions in trading. But stocks started off almost six percent in the red and by the close, blue chips had lost more than 7%.
Not a single large-cap stock escaped the rout, which had household investors pulling a billion shekels out of mutual funds on Sunday. Sunday's session was marked by sharp drops in stocks associated with Nochi Dankner's IDB group of holding companies and a pullback in oil and gas exploration stocks and biomed shares.
© Ariel Schalit/AP
Children of African migrants play inside the Bialik-Rogozin school in Tel Aviv, Israel, in February 2011. Pupils at the school have survived genocide, war and famine. But they were all smiles after learning that a documentary about their plight then eventual safety and asylum in Israel, Strangers No More, had won an Oscar. An Israeli academic is claiming that Israeli schools are racist.
Children of African migrants play inside the Bialik-Rogozin school in Tel Aviv, Israel, in February 2011. Pupils at the school have survived genocide, war and famine. But they were all smiles after learning that a documentary about their plight then eventual safety and asylum in Israel, Strangers No More, had won an Oscar. An Israeli academic is claiming that Israeli schools are racist.
Nurit Peled-Elhanan, an Israeli academic, mother and political radical, summons up an image of rows of Jewish schoolchildren, bent over their books, learning about their neighbours, the Palestinians. But, she says, they are never referred to as Palestinians unless the context is terrorism.
They are called Arabs. "The Arab with a camel, in an Ali Baba dress. They describe them as vile and deviant and criminal, people who don't pay taxes, people who live off the state, people who don't want to develop," she says. "The only representation is as refugees, primitive farmers and terrorists. You never see a Palestinian child or doctor or teacher or engineer or modern farmer."
Peled-Elhanan, a professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has studied the content of Israeli school books for the past five years, and her account, Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education, is to be published in the UK this month. She describes what she found as racism - but, more than that, a racism that prepares young Israelis for their compulsory military service.
"People don't really know what their children are reading in textbooks," she said. "One question that bothers many people is how do you explain the cruel behaviour of Israeli soldiers towards Palestinians, an indifference to human suffering, the inflicting of suffering. People ask how can these nice Jewish boys and girls become monsters once they put on a uniform. I think the major reason for that is education. So I wanted to see how school books represent Palestinians."
