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going according to plan — shit and chaos from the empire as not to appear like an empire...

empire

Earlier this week, David Ignatius at the Washington Post published an interesting column ruing the decline of U.S. “influence” in the Middle East. His central theme is that U.S. “disengagement” from the region is allowing local actors to chart their own courses, and that many of them are now making bad decisions. In his view, the prospects for positive change in the region are receding and that we will all be worse off as a result.

It’s a thoughtful column and worth reading. It’s also a revealing one, because it rests on one of those unspoken assumptions that are articles of faith in the U.S. foreign-policy community. Specifically, it suggests that U.S. influence is always a good thing and that its diminution (whether by accident or by design) is something to mourn. But if you’ve been paying attention to the results of U.S. policy over the past quarter-century—especially in the Middle East but also in some other places—that position may not be the hill you want to die defending.

Look, it’s easy to understand why American foreign-policy elites like having lots of “influence.” To some degree it’s unavoidable. The United States is still the 800-pound gorilla in the international system and other global actors will inevitably pay close attention to whatever Uncle Sam is doing. For foreign-policy practitioners, having lots of influence and being fully engaged is also a heady experience; it means foreign governments will take your calls, treat you with deference and respect when you visit, and sometimes they follow your advice (or at least pretend to). If you’re in the foreign-policy business, it’s a helluva a lot more gratifying to represent the United States than to be out there pitching on behalf of a small or weak country whose voice does not carry.

But “influence” (a notoriously nebulous term) is merely a means to some end; it is not an end itself. Having lots of influence is not necessarily a good thing if you have no idea what to do with it, or if what you choose to do is wrong-headed, or if you end up shouldering burdens and bearing responsibility for mishaps and miscues that you lacked the wisdom or foresight to avoid.

Which brings me, naturally, to the Middle East, where American influence is now supposedly waning. What’s the track record of U.S. influence over the recent past?

One could argue that U.S. influence was a net positive for much of the Cold War. The U.S. role in the Middle East was fairly limited: Washington backed a number of allies for some combination of economic, strategic, and domestic political reasons, and it worked hard to limit the Soviet role in the region and to make sure that oil and gas kept flowing to markets around the world. And until the first Gulf War in 1991, Washington did all this without having to send its own ground or air forces to the region for any length of time and without having to fight any costly wars. Instead, the United States relied on diplomacy, intelligence cooperation, and foreign assistance and generally acted like an “offshore balancer,” relying on local allies and keeping its own forces over the horizon. It even switched sides once or twice when strategic circumstances dictated. U.S. policy wasn’t a perfect success, perhaps, but on the whole this approach worked pretty well.

But U.S. influence in the region—though considerable—had been almost entirely negative ever since. For starters, despite having enormous potential leverage at their disposal, successive Democratic and Republican administrations mishandled the Oslo peace process, fueling extremism and helping make the two-state solution that the United States favored a dead letter by 2018. Unconditional U.S. support for its various Middle East clients also helped inspire groups like al Qaeda, and the policy of “dual containment” adopted by the Clinton administration in 1993 helped turn Osama bin Laden’s attention away from his local enemies (i.e., the House of Saud) and toward the “far enemy,” with the results we all saw on Sept. 11, 2001.

 

Read more:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/17/americas-anxiety-of-influence/

and still not one russian to be seen...

Dr. Robert Epstein, the senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology and a panelist on Breitbart News’ “Masters of the Universe” town hall on Internet freedom, joined SiriusXM hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak on Thursday’s Breitbart News Tonight to warn of technology firms’ growing political power.

Epstein pointed to Google’s dominance of the Internet search market.

“As it happens, 90 percent of search around the world is conducted on just one search engine,” noted Epstein. “There’s never been a precedent for anything like this, ever. You’ve got one company that’s controlling search around the world.”

Epstein added, “That’s a power to shift opinions that’s in the hands of a handful of people in one particular town in Northern California, affecting people around the world, with no way to counteract what they’re doing, with no competitors out there.”

 

Read more:

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/08/24/robert-epsteins-midterm-warnin...

the lebanese position...

The president of Lebanon, Michel Aoun, [would have] had a telephone conversation with the president of Syria, Bachar el-Assad.


Since the beginning of the war only the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and the president of Ossetia, Anatoli Bibilov, have maintained official contacts at this level with the Syrian Arab Republic.


Most [western] countries in the world consider the conflict in Syria to be a "civil war". Russia and Ossetia argue that it is a foreign aggression perpetrated through jihadists.


In June 2012, the various Lebanese parties signed the Baabda Declaration [1], in which they agreed not to allow the intervention of the Lebanese institutions [political parties] in the war in Syria. Nevertheless, the signatory parties became involved in the conflict from the start: first the "Current of the Future", party of the current Prime Minister Hariri, in support of the jihadists, and, later, Hezbollah, in support of the government of Damascus.


For his part, President Aoun believes that, in the aftermath of the Putin-Trump summit on 16 July, the policy of "distance taking" no longer has any purpose. The Lebanese president does not therefore have to recognize the victory of Assad to negotiate the return to Syria of the refugees and the normalization of relations between the two countries.


Contrarily, other Lebanese political figures, who consider the Trump presidency to be a road accident and the Helsinki summit less than nothing, remain loyal to the Baabda Declaration, conceived by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the eve of the first Geneva Conference.

 

Translation

Rachele Marmetti

Il Cronista 

 

Translation:

"Goofgliani Blatanto"

 

Read more:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article202599.html

 

Note: Hariri's surprise announcement of an intent to resign, broadcast on 4 November 2017 on Saudi state TV, has widely been seen as part of the Iran–Saudi Arabia proxy conflict in Lebanon, and triggered a dispute between Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. The resignation was later suspended, following President Michel Aoun's request to "put it on hold ahead of further consultations". Hariri rescinded his resignation on 5 December.

 

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warning...

Russia’s foreign minister is the latest official to warn the US against using a possible chemical weapons provocation to justify a new strike against Syrian forces. He said Moscow warned the West not to play with fire in Syria.

Sergey Lavrov reiterated the warning that a staged chemical weapons attack in Syria’s Idlib province may trigger a US-led attack on the forces loyal to Damascus.

READ MORE: US & allies can have missiles ready to strike Syria within 24 hours – Russian Foreign Ministry

“A new provocation is being prepared by the West to hamper the anti-terrorist operation in Idlib,” Lavrov said during a joint media conference with his Syrian counterpart, Walid Muallem. “We have facts on the table and have issued a strong warning to our Western partners through our Defense Ministry and our Foreign Ministry not to play with fire.”

Earlier, the Russian military reported that a group of militants in Syria was preparing a provocation, in which chlorine gas would be used to frame the Syrian government forces. The incident would be used by the US and its allies to justify a new attack against the country, similar to what happened in April, according to the claim.

Amid international tensions, Russia has launched a massive naval exercise in the Mediterranean Sea, which involves 25 ships and 30 aircraft, including Tu-160 strategic bombers.

The US earlier stated that it would retaliate to a possible a chemical attack by the Syrian government, using more firepower than it did in April. The previous tripartite strike by the US, the UK and France targeted what they called sites involved in chemical weapons research. It came in response to an alleged use of an improvised chlorine bomb against a militant-held area. Russia insists that the incident had been staged with the goal of triggering the Western response.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/437256-lavrov-warning-syria-west/

 

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another empire deal of the century till tomorrow maybe...

President Donald Trump’s much-delayed “deal of the century” is creeping into view.

The latest insight is provided by the U.S. decision to defund UNRWA—the UN organization responsible for feeding and educating Palestinians denied a homeland, residing for generations in refugee camps throughout the Middle East, almost everywhere but Israel.

The decision to dramatically reduce U.S. funding for UN programs for refugees, not only those in the Gaza Strip, but also in the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, comes in the wake of Washington’s earlier decisions to reduce aid to the Palestinian Authority and sets the stage for U.S. efforts at the UN to reduce the number of formally recognized refugees. 

The fog enveloping Trump’s deal of the century is clearing, revealing a U.S.-led effort to simply remove Palestinians from the diplomatic and humanitarian equation. This policy is far more ambitious than Obama’s ill-famed preference to “lead from behind.” But rather than solve the issue, Trump is implementing a destructive and destabilizing plan to simply wish the Palestine problem away.

 

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/trumps-middle-east-deal...

 

See also:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/34427

women march against war...

Sputnik reporter Alex Rubinstein was on the ground for the 2018 Women's March on the Pentagon and was able to speak to protest organizer Cindy Sheehan and director Bonnie Caracciolo. Sheehan's son was killed in Iraq in 2004.

Sputnik: Is the march primarily addressing US wars overseas as a women's issue?

Sheehan: "Women around the world are being occupied by US imperialist forces or countries that the US are supporting, [like] Israel and its genocide against Palestinians, in Gaza, particularly."

"We know that the United States is supporting Saudi Arabia and its absolute horrible, incomprehensible, destruction of Yemen where tens of thousands of of people are dying and millions are starving at this moment."

On gender acceptance by the US military:

Sheehan: "We can't celebrate gay or trans people being allowed to join the military. It's not that I think they should be prevented. I don't think that anybody should join the military."

On Trump:

Sheehan: "We don't like Trump, but we don't like Trump for the same reason that we didn't like Obama and Bush. They are representative of the most evil, violent, racist and sexist [people] in [the US] empire, if not in history."

"When Trump was first elected, my first thought was, ‘well, maybe the movement will be revitalized,' even though I feel that the movement was very hypocritical because they were against the war in Iraq and Afghanistan while Bush was president but not against those wars when Obama was president, or his destruction of Libya or further incursions into Africa, Syria, Somalia and not ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."

On Washington DC and the political will for peace:

Sheehan: "The Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans."

"We have to take these forces who have separated from the Democrat and Republican parties and funnel that energy more positively."

Sputnik: How does the peace movement coincide with your experience as an American with a family?

Caracciolo: "I don't want my kids to go to the military. We need to keep our kids out of there. We all need to take a big hard look at where our money is going."

"The suicide rate among returning veterans is absolutely over the cliff. Also, if you look at these refugee streams, they are women and children that are suffering from every angle. So, [war] is a women's issue."

"It always absolutely has been a women's issue. We want our sons and other brothers and our husbands and our uncles to be with us on this, because it is everybody's issue, ultimately."

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/201810211069083344-anti-war-rally-women-penta...

 

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