Pro-Palestinian activists in Vienna, Austria, have staged a flash mob in the city center in the form of a theatrical performance devoted to the victims of Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip. The protest is one in a series of pro-Gaza rallies worldwide.
Thousands hit streets worldwide to demand end to Gaza violence (PHOTOS)

About 35 people staged a theatrical performance in from of Vienna State Opera building late Sunday, reports the APA (Austria Press Agency), leading information provider in the country. The event attracted up to 400 people, according to organizers. The police however, estimated the number at 200 people.

The flash mob was launched by the Facebook community 'Austrian activists for Palestine'.

The activists staged a performance, as seen on the photos posted on Facebook by the group. They first presented Palestinian dances. Then people dressed as Israeli soldiers were thrown to the ground by toy guns. After that the protesters fell to the ground and covered themselves with Palestinian flags, representing the victims of Israeli troops.

First, it is important for readers to understand that propaganda is only a bad thing to those who seek truth. For everyone else, in particular corporations and governments it is fun acceptable gossip, distraction, and lying tool to be used as fair game for achieving desired goals. For corporations it's a matter of checking with their attorneys on the technicalities of their advertisements.

For governments, in particular the U.S. government, it is now the primary weapon to justify and promote it's personal political ideology and (new world order) agenda. This should come as no surprise to anyone paying attention. It is very important to understand that the United States legalized propaganda when the National Defense Authorization Act (N.D.A.A.) was resigned in 2012. Michael Hastings exposed this before he was murdered. Most Americans are not even aware that propaganda is now not only legal, but the norm.

As the world explodes in violence, war, riots, and uprisings, it is challenging to step back and examine the bigger picture. With airliners being shot down over the Ukraine, missiles flying between Israel and Gaza, ongoing civil war in Syria, Iraq falling apart as ISIS gains ground, dictatorship crackdown in Egypt, Turkey on the verge of revolution, Iran gaining control of Iraq, Saudi Arabia fomenting violence, Africa dissolving into chaos, South America imploding and sending their children across our purposely porous southern border, Mexico under the control of drug lords, China experiencing a slow motion real estate collapse, Japan experiencing their third decade of Keynesian failure, facing a demographic nightmare scenario while being slowly poisoned by radiation, and Chinese-Japanese relations moving towards World War II levels, it is easy to get lost in the day to day minutia of history in the making.

Why is this happening at this point in history?

Why is the average American economically worse off today than they were at the height of the economic crisis in 2009? Why is the Cold War returning with a vengeance? Why is the Federal Reserve still employing emergency monetary policies when we are supposedly five years into a recovery and the stock market has attained record highs? Why do the ECB and European politicians continue to paper over the insolvency of their banks and governments? Why did the U.S. support the ouster of a dictator we supported for decades in Egypt and then support the elevation of a new dictator after we didn't like the policies of the democratically elected president? Why did the U.S. eliminate the leader of Libya and allow the country to descend into anarchy and civil war? Why did the U.S. fund and provoke a revolutionary overthrow of a democratically elected leader in the Ukraine? Why did the U.S. fund and arm Al Qaeda associated rebels in Syria who are now fighting our supposed allies in Iraq? Why has the U.S. been occupying Afghanistan for the last thirteen years with the result being a Taliban that is stronger than ever? Why are the BRIC countries forming a monetary union to challenge USD domination? Why is the U.S. attempting to provoke Russia into a conflict with NATO?

Why do 98% of incumbent politicians get re-elected when congressional approval levels are lower than whale shit? Why are oil prices four times higher than they were in 2003 if the U.S. is supposedly on the verge of energy independence? Why do the corporate controlled mainstream media choose to entertain and regurgitate government propaganda rather than inform, investigate and seek the truth? Why do corporations and shadowy billionaires control the politicians, media, judges, and financial system in their ravenous quest for more riches? Why has the public allowed a privately owned bank to control our currency and inflate away 96% of its value in 100 years? Why have American parents allowed their children to be programmed and dumbed down by government run public schools? Why have Americans allowed themselves to be lured into debt in an effort to appear wealthy and successful? Why have Americans permitted their brains to atrophy through massive doses of social media, reality TV, iGadget addiction, and a cultural environment of techno-narcissism? Why have Americans lost their desire to read, think critically, question authority, act responsibly, defer gratification, and care about future generations? Why have Americans sacrificed their freedoms, liberties and rights for the false expectation of safety and security? Why will we pay dearly for our delusional, materialistic, debt financed idiocy?

Because we never learn the lessons of history.

Israel and the Palestinians have agreed to a 72-hour truce in the Gaza Strip to take effect today, the latest effort to end four weeks of fighting.

Under the Egyptian-brokered accord, hostilities will cease at 8 a.m. local time with no conditions attached, Israel's Channel 2 television station said. Hamas, the Islamist group that rules Gaza, has accepted the truce, spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said in an e-mail.

While Israel hasn't sent a delegation to the Egyptian capital, it will consider going if militants abide by the cease-fire, an official said on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the matter. If quiet is maintained throughout the 72 hours, the Israeli military won't have to remain in Gaza, he said.

The Gaza offensive, which Israel says is intended to destroy the rockets that militants fire at the Jewish state and the tunnels they use to launch attacks, has been the deadliest in the territory since Israeli settlers and soldiers left in 2005. At least 1,868 Palestinians have been killed, many of them civilians, according to Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qedra. Sixty-seven people have been killed on the Israeli side, 64 of them soldiers.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel on Sunday of deliberately killing Palestinian mothers and warned it would "drown in the blood it sheds", pulling foreign policy to centre stage as a presidential race enters its final week.

Addressing hundreds of thousands of supporters at his biggest rally so far ahead of the Aug. 10 election, Erdogan again likened Israel's actions to those of Hitler, comments that have already led Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accuse him of anti-Semitism and drawn rebuke from Washington.

"Just like Hitler, who sought to establish a race free of all faults, Israel is chasing after the same target," Erdogan told the sea of cheering supporters at an Istanbul arena.

"They kill women so that they will not give birth to Palestinians; they kill babies so that they won't grow up; they kill men so they can't defend their country ... They will drown in the blood they shed," he said.

Erdogan's comments drew a sharp rebuke from a Jewish leader in the United States, who called the Turkish prime minister "the Joseph Goebbels of our time," referring to Hitler's chief propagandist.

"The time has come for world leaders to say that he has now crossed a line, and has crossed a line into the area of anti-Semitism and the world won't tolerate it," Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, told Reuters.

On her 71st workday in the basement, Paula Pedene had something fun to look forward to. She had an errand to run, up on the first floor.

"Today, I get to go get the papers. Exciting!" she said. "I get to go upstairs and, you know, see people."

The task itself was no thrill: Retrieve the morning's newspapers and bring them back to the library of the Phoenix Veterans Affairs hospital. The pleasure was in the journey. Down a long, sunlit hallway. Back again, seeing friends in the bustle of the hospital's main floor.

Then, Pedene got back in the elevator and hit "B." The day's big excitement was over. It was 7:40 a.m.

"I will not be able to do this forever," Pedene said later that day.

Pedene, 56, is the former chief spokeswoman for this VA hospital. Now, she is living in a bureaucrat's urban legend. After complaining to higher-ups about mismanagement at this hospital, she has been reassigned - indefinitely - to a desk in the basement.

In the Phoenix case, investigators are still trying to determine whether Pedene was punished because of her earlier complaints. If she is, that would make her part of a long, ugly tradition in the federal bureaucracy - workers sent to a cubicle in exile.

In the past, whistleblowers have had their desks moved to break rooms, broom closets and basements. It's a clever punishment, good-government activists say, that exploits a gray area in the law.

Police say a family of five, including three children, has been found shot to death at a home in Virginia. The other victims were two adults, both 35 years old; a family member discovered the bodies inside a house just outside Culpeper, a town of about 15,000 people 70 miles southwest of Washington, according to a detective with the Culpeper County Sheriff's Office. Deputies arrived at the scene around 10pm yesterday, after the relative found the bodies, and the shootings are being treated as homicide. Another family of five was found dead inside their Maine home last month.

His face riven with lines forged by years on the streets, Gil reaches into the top pocket of his shirt and fishes out a wedge of grimy papers. These are the precious records of his life, documents the rest of us keep in a filing cabinet at home. Eventually he finds what he is looking for, a yellow slip that looks like a parking ticket

That, as it happens, is about right, although Gil is not a man of many possessions and certainly not a car. He does, however, have size 13 shoes. In his hands is a police citation written a few weeks ago when an officer found him sitting on the kerb with his feet touching the road. "Feet in Roadway Disturbing Traffic," it reads.

A hotel in tony Hudson, NY, has found a novel way to keep negative reviews off Yelp and other sites - fine any grousing guests.

The Union Street Guest House, near Catskills estates built by the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers, charges couples who book weddings at the venue $500 for every bad review posted online by their guests.

"Please know that despite the fact that wedding couples love Hudson and our inn, your friends and families may not," reads an online policy. "If you have booked the inn for a wedding or other type of event . . . and given us a deposit of any kind . . . there will be a $500 fine that will be deducted from your deposit for every negative review . . . placed on any internet site by anyone in your party."

If you take down the nasty review, you'll get your money back.

The United States power grid has more blackouts than any other country in the developed world, according to new data that spotlights the country's aging and unreliable electric system.

The data by the Department of Energy (DOE) and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) shows that Americans face more power grid failures lasting at least an hour than residents of other developed nations.

And it's getting worse.

Going back three decades, the US grid loses power 285 percent more often than it did in 1984, when record keeping began, International Business Times reported. The power outages cost businesses in the United States as much as $150 billion per year, according to the Department of Energy.

Customers in Japan lose power for an average of 4 minutes per year, as compared to customers in the US upper Midwest (92 minutes) and upper Northwest (214), University of Minnesota Professor Massoud Amin told the Times. Amin is director of the Technological Leadership Institute at the school.