What is American exceptionalism? Where does the US's world monopoly on democracy come from? How does the US give itself license to do as it pleases?

"Exceptionalism" is a film by RT correspondent Anissa Naouai.

This is it. China has had enough. The (diplomatic) gloves are off. It's time to build a "de-Americanized" world. It's time for a "new international reserve currency" to replace the US dollar.

It's all here, in a Xinhua editorial, straight from the dragon's mouth. And the year is only 2013. Fasten your seat belts - and that applies especially to the Washington elites. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.

Long gone are the Deng Xiaoping days of "keeping a low profile". The Xinhua editorial summarizes the straw that broke the dragon's back - the current US shutdown. After the Wall Street-provoked financial crisis, after the war on Iraq, a "befuddled world", and not only China, wants change.

This paragraph couldn't be more graphic:

Instead of honoring its duties as a responsible leading power, a self-serving Washington has abused its superpower status and introduced even more chaos into the world by shifting financial risks overseas, instigating regional tensions amid territorial disputes, and fighting unwarranted wars under the cover of outright lies.

A US debt default could hit on Thursday, and world leaders are second guessing the dominant role America plays in finance. Regardless of the final decision in Washington, confidence and credibility in the US has already eroded.

In an editorial published by the Chinese state-owned press agency Xinhua, a columnist says the US economy has 'failed' and put many countries who hold state assets in dollars at risk.

"To that end, several corner stones should be laid to underpin a de-Americanized world," the editorial read.

Last week China, the biggest US creditor, started to make preparations for a technical default on loans. The European Central Bank and the People's Bank of China (PBC) have agreed to start supplying each other with their currencies, avoiding the dollar as an intermediary currency. The currency swap agreement will last for three years and provide a maximum of 350 billion yuan ($56 billion) to the ECB and 45 billion euro ($60.8 billion) to the PBC.

In a further sign of growing distrust, China introduced a so-called "haircut", or a discount, on the value of US Treasuries held as collateral against futures trades.

Developing and developed nations are equally concerned, and institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have issued several warnings.

The chief of the International Monetary Fund says the U.S. government's stalemate over spending and its debt limit is "very, very concerning" and could roll back economic progress around the world.

Christine Lagarde, who took over the financial watchdog-and-rescue organization in 2011, said global finance ministers assembled for meetings in Washington last week feeling like Japan had finally turned the corner and that economies in the U.S. and Europe were on the upswing.

"And then they found out that the debt ceiling was the issue," she said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." "They found out that the government had shut down and that there was no remedy in sight. So it really completely transformed the meeting in the last few days."

Ms. Lagarde, a lawyer from France, added a global perspective to the standoff that has roiled Washington for weeks and befuddled overseas investors who typically view the U.S. as a paragon of financial rectitude.

Now big-wigs are begging these yo-yos not to crash the economy.

America's great minds of business and finance have reached a consensus on the government shutdown and worse, the prospect of a debt default: While the latter is worse, both are bad. Those same great minds are well aware how the shutdown came to pass and why default still looms on the horizon, whether next week, next month, or next year.

Yes, the frightened corporate leaders surely know how this happened -- because their money funded the tea party candidates and organizations responsible for the crisis.

Consider Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., a tea party freshman whose outspoken stupidity on a default's potential benefits, such as an improved U.S. credit rating, has provided a bit of dark humor in these dark days. Yoho, a large-animal veterinarian, announced months ago that he would never vote to raise the debt ceiling.

Like most Republican candidates, he had no problem raising contributions from business interests, notably including contractors, insurance companies, manufacturers and agricultural processors. All of which presumably share the horror of default expressed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. But no doubt Yoho parroted the usual right-wing cliches about taxes, regulation, labor, and health care, so all the business guys wrote a check without caring that Yoho is an ignorant yobbo.

The National Security Agency's $2 billion mega spy center is going up in flames.

Technical glitches have sparked fiery explosions within the NSA's newest and largest data storage facility in Utah, destroying hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment, and delaying the facility's opening by one year.

And no one seems to know how to fix it.

For a country that prides itself on being a technology leader, not knowing the electrical capacity requirements for a system as large as this is inexcusable.

Within the last 13 months, at least 10 electric surges have each cost about $100,000 in damages, according to documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal. Experts agree that the system, which requires about 64 megawatts of electricity - that's about a $1 million a month energy bill--isn't able to run all of its computers and servers while keeping them cool, which is likely triggering the meltdowns.

Embattled IRS official Sarah Hall Ingram made 155 visits to the White House to meet with a top Obama White House official with whom she exchanged confidential taxpayer information over email.

Of Ingram's 165 White House meetings with White House staff, a staggering 155 of them were hosted by deputy assistant to the president for health policy Jeanne Lambrew, according to a June Watchdog.Org analysis of White House visitor records.

Ingram exchanged confidential taxpayer information with Lambrew and White House health policy advisor Ellen Montz, according to 2012 emails obtained by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Currently there are roughly around 50 million people in America on food stamps. This program is officially referred to as the politically correct sounding Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP. This federal program provides people with low or no income the ability to purchase food with Electronic Transfer Benefit or EBT cards. For years many have warned that since so many people are now dependent upon this program, ending it would result in widespread riots, looting and violence.

Considering that the federal government is on an unsustainable fiscal path as the world's largest debtor nation it is quite possible that it will soon become impossible for this program to continue. Interestingly enough we got a taste of what could happen when the system that processes EBT cards went down for a short period of time over the weekend.

Officially a systems glitch is being blamed for the outage after a test of the EBT backup system resulted in a system failure. The outage affected at least 17 states including Alabama, California, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia. The outage lasted throughout Saturday until the systems were restored later that evening. Even though the system was only down for a matter of hours, panic immediately ensued. One Massachusetts grocery store reported having to turn away roughly 50 percent of their customers due to their inability to process EBT cards. In Maine carts filled with groceries were left behind by shoppers at different stores. At a Mississippi Wal-Mart customers rioted upon finding out that they could not accept their EBT cards forcing the store to close. Similar situations occurred across the country with reports on social networking sites indicating that many folks were ready to riot.

During the course of the outage at least two Wal-Mart stores in Louisiana began processing EBT cards with no purchase limit. Immediately EBT card holders began filling up their carts with as much as they would hold to take advantage of the glitch. This resulted in chaos with police finally called in to restore order. Photos and videos have emerged showing bare shelves and an endless amount of abandoned grocery carts filled with huge quantities of food. Even though Wal-Mart as a company sucks, one has to question the morality of these people that rushed at the chance to take advantage of the broken system.

Eight years after spending $5 billion on a heavily-criticized universal camouflage pattern, the Army is back at the drawing board looking for a new design that's estimated to cost another $4 billion.

In 2004, the Army decided to scrap the two traditional camouflage uniforms that had long been used by the military - one meant for woodland environments, another for the desert - and claimed to have come up with a universal pattern that could be worn anywhere and blend in with any environment.

The $5 billion dollar experiment with the universal pattern is over as the Army is phasing out the uniform after less than a decade of use. But many soldiers and observers are wondering why it took this long and cost this much to replace an item that performed poorly from the start during a period when the money could have been spent on other critical needs, like potentially life saving improvements to military vehicles and body armor.

Less than a decade after the so-called Universal Camouflage Pattern, or UCP, was introduced the Army is back to the drawing board, set to announce a new camouflage pattern and standard uniform to be worn by the more than million members of the active duty and reserve forces.

Evidence of the UCPs inadequacy as a combat uniform is easy to find - just look at pictures of soldiers currently serving in Afghanistan, they're not wearing the UCP, which was deemed unsuitable for operations there, but a different uniform known as the MultiCam. In 2009, Congress responded to soldiers' "concerns about the current combat uniform which they indicated provides ineffective camouflage given the environment in Afghanistan," by passing a bill in the appropriations act requiring that the DOD "take immediate action to provide combat uniforms to personnel deployed to Afghanistan with a camouflage pattern that is suited to the environment of Afghanistan." The result was the MultiCam. But that uniform, while it is currently worn in Afghanistan, was not a replacement but an interim substitution for the UCP, which is still the Army's official uniform and the one worn by all soldiers not overseas.

© Alon Ron
Then-Israel Navy chief, Rear-Admiral (ret) Eliezer Marom, June 1, 2010.

Israeli embassy says it is looking into the issue. Under British law, permission to arrest foreign citizens for war crimes is limited.

The former commander of the Israeli navy, Rear-Admiral (ret) Eliezer Marom was detained for questioning Monday morning at London's Heathrow Airport immediately after landing in the United Kingdom.

After brief questioning, Marom was released and allowed to continue his visit. A spokesman for Israel's embassy in London confirmed the details and said "we are looking into the issue right now."

Following initial inquiries, none of the relevant British authorities, the Home Office, which is responsible for border controls, the London Metropolitan Police and the Foreign Office, are aware of Marom having been detained or questioned.

Israel's Foreign Ministry is continuing to look into the incident but at this stage, it seems that Marom was under the mistaken impression that the routine questions he was asked at passport control at Heathrow Airport and the slight delay he experienced were actually an attempt to detain him over war crimes allegations.