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Decades old Jewish synagogues in Western Afghanistan have been renovated and are being used as much needed schools in the war torn nation.

Messiahs! Rulers and the Role of Religion explores history's ever-recurring rise of despotic rulers and examines how they portrayed themselves as gods in their quest for domination. This series looks at emperors and kings, tyrants and despots who succumbed to megalomania.
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Those in the financial press have often portrayed the contagion now devouring financial institutions worldwide as a new, more virulent strain. But a closer look reveals that humanity has been here before. And we'll be here again, unless we start taking a fundamentally different approach.

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Mortally Wounded? Global Finance and Banking in Crisis

Uri Savir's new model for "peace building," as opposed to "peacemaking," is foreshadowed in this 1999 video featuring excerpts from three key players in the Mideast peace process: Uri Savir, Shimon Peres and Abu Ala (Ahmed Qurei). Savir, who was Israeli chief negotiator for the Oslo Accords, has long had a passion for peace in the Middle East.  His new book, Peace First (2008) features a foreword by Peres, who was the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs during the Oslo negotiations, and an afterword by Qurei, who was the Palestinian chief negotiator.