Working to suppress the protesters in Syria, the army there, the New York Times reports, is "gathering confidence":
Gathering confidence after forcing rebels out of strongholds in the north, the Syrian government on Wednesday launched its biggest raid in months on the southern city of Dara’a, where the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began a year ago, opposition activists said.
The activists feared that the government was now emboldened after seizing most of the northern city of Idlib on Tuesday amid faltering international efforts to stop the violence and was turning its attention to crushing centers of the rebellion in the south as the symbolically important one-year mark of the uprising approached.
Thursday is the anniversary of protests in Dara’a that followed the killing of schoolchildren who had scrawled anti-government graffiti. Those demonstrations turned what had been sporadic protests into a nationwide uprising.
"Confidence," one gathers, means a renewed willingness to employ whatever means necessary to suppress the protesters. More deaths will be a result of this, undoubtedly, as Bashar al-Assad's regime tries to maintain its control.
The Associated Press crunches the numbers and finds that Occupy protests have "cost local taxpayers at least $13 million."
During the first two months of the nationwide Occupy protests, the movement that is demanding more out of the wealthiest Americans cost local taxpayers at least $13 million in police overtime and other municipal services, according to a survey by The Associated Press.
In a graphic video posted on CBS's website, an Occupy Wall Street protester threatens violence: “No more talking. They’ve got guns, we’ve got bottles. They’ve got bricks, we’ve got rocks…in a few days you’re going to see what a Molotov cocktail can do to Macy’s.”
Earlier this week, a group of Harvard undergraduates aligned with Occupy Wall Street protesters made a statement yesterday by staging a “walkout” of an introductory economics course taught by conservative professor Greg Mankiw. Mankiw, who chaired the Council of Economic Advisers for President George W. Bush, says in a phone interview that about 5 to 10 percent of the 700-person lecture class (Harvard’s largest) walked out “very politely” just after noon on Wednesday.
A new Emergency Committee for Israel ad asks Democratic leaders who have embraced Occupy Wall Street to condemn the anti-Semitism elements of the protest. "Why are our leaders turning a blind eye to anti-Semitic, anti-Israel attacks?" the ad asks. "Tell president Obama and Leader Pelosi to stand up to the mob. Hate is not an American value."
“What do we want?” “Jobs!” “When do we want them?” “Now!”
The couple hundred participants at Wednesday’s Rebuild the Dream rally on the southwest lawn of the U.S. Capitol raise their fists defiantly as they shout. Some hold blue, pre-made signs bearing the phrase, “Jobs, Not Cuts,” and the letter “A,” the logo for Rebuild the Dream, the organization led by former Obama administration green jobs czar Van Jones.
Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton writes in the Daily that “President Obama’s indecisiveness has unquestionably limited American options, making almost any potential intervention riskier and less likely to succeed.”
"They are overwhelmingly white and Anglo, although a scattering of Hispanics, Asian Americans and African Americans combine to make up almost one-fourth of their ranks."
Just as Iranians were reminded of their stolen June 2009 election and continued oppression, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) decided to kick them while they’re down. On June 10, with the active involvement and approval of the Obama administration, the Council adopted a decision on human rights in Iran that was a sentence long and contained no condemnation whatsoever.
