There's more to the story... Wait for us in December, the ships stop for a while but keep sailing.
Sensible and rational opinions in plain words, some of my thoughts and opinions about current events. Mostly current events, or any set of interesting ideas our minds could envision and suggest. Through-out the years, I write about what is happening in our world , what is shaping and affecting it , and whatever preoccupy , dominate or engross our minds about it.
There's more to the story... Wait for us in December, the ships stop for a while but keep sailing.
The moral: When you applaud an official because he built a school or a hospital or paved a road with public money, it is as if you are applauding an ATM machine when it gives you money from your own account. So, respect your mind, because the media in all countries of the world is the fourth estate, except in Arab countries, where it is the fourth wife.
To all my sisters and brothers on all continents, nationalities, religions and sects
This message is the eternal message
It is not the message of Lenin, Stalin and Putin
"The oligarchs" are millionaire communists and socialist opportunists.
Not the message of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party
Nor the message of Trump, Biden, and Obama...
Because the socialist and capitalist opportunist leaders, especially the Arab populist coup leaders with high-sounding slogans, are the ones who became millionaires in the blink of an eye.
They are the ones who own entire countries and pass them on to their children, brothers, or even comrades in arms, as is the case in Egypt. The heirs are the army officers (Nasser, Sadat, Mubarak, Sisi, etc....) while the people are getting poorer.
Class inequality, corruption and nepotism, it can't get any worse than this in history.
For the Arab coup plotters, the Palestinian cause is added to the opportunism, to liberate it, from the last Palestinian in their different camps.
The poor people are tenants of the state that owns everything without accountability.
And the remains are for the left behind patients....
Yes, we must respect the righteous official if and when he or she unites, because he is performing his duty to the fullest extent, and the rest are just fine, except in the case of those who benefit from corruption, religious trade, and hateful sectarianism, and those who benefit from double standards or more, and from those who say “God, I ask you for my soul.” without any concern for the public interest.
That's why our country has become a place of destruction, poverty and displacement.
Under the pretext of religions, sects and purely material interests, "and after me the flood."
A good universal message to all political leaders and their oligarchies, originally received in Arabic, for Arabic audiences, from an unknown author, translated and adjusted for the suitability and benefit of the blog and its readers, as it is a message applicable to all everywhere.
Publishing this translated article, originally destined to a different audience on our American "No kings day" demonstrations all across the country is purely coincidental.
As usual, all my thanks to all.
A controversial book titled... has recently been published.
China's Quest to Engineer the Future,
Or "China and the Quest to Build the Future",
By Chinese-American writer Dan Wang.
This book does not limit itself to a superficial comparison between the United States and China,
Rather, it delves into the depths of the intellectual and institutional differences that shape the two states' decisions in the twenty-first century.
The author's gist of the idea seems both shocking and simple:
- China is a nation led by engineers.
The United States is a nation ruled by lawyers.
China: Managing with an Engineer's Mindset:
In China, the vast majority of decision-makers graduated from engineering or applied science colleges. Beijing is governed by a mindset that views problems as mathematical equations, which can be solved through precise equations, system design, or the construction of a massive project.
It is therefore no wonder that the state moves like a machine: opening a valve here, closing another there, and everything is precisely calculated like a giant irrigation system.
This mindset may sometimes lack human flexibility or open dialogue, but it produces long-term plans that are implemented without disruption.
Thus, we see China building new cities in a matter of years, constructing thousands of kilometers of high-speed train lines, and making tremendous strides in the electronics industries, renewable energy, artificial intelligence, and even in space exploration.
United States: Managing with a Lawyer's Mentality:
The United States, however, is a completely different story. Most presidents, members of Congress, and Supreme Court justices studied law or practiced law.
Even those who did not graduate from law schools -
Like Donald Trump, they have mastered the "lawyer's tricks": filing lawsuits, exploiting legal loopholes, and turning any case into an arena for endless conflict.
Thus, every step turns into a legal or political battle.
Infrastructure projects are discussed for years before being implemented, and even if they are implemented, they are hindered by lawsuits from pressure groups, human rights organizations, or affected economic interests. The result:
- Repeated postponement,
- Cost inflation,
Loss of ability to perform quickly.
As Congress engages in debates over issues of identity, minority rights, the environment, and animal rights, the United States' ability to build a long-term, inclusive national project is eroding.
Technical and scientific comparison:
The book presents concrete examples from industry and technology:
In artificial intelligence, Chinese companies like Byte Dance, Huawei, and Tencent are leading research and applications that sometimes outpace their American counterparts.
In telecommunications, China was the first to launch a widespread 5G network, while the West was mired in controversy over privacy and security.
In renewable energy, China annually builds solar and wind power plants with capacities exceeding those built by Europe and America combined.
The Weapon: America's Last Cracked Fortress:
Weapons remain the one area where the United States has undisputed superiority.
But the author reveals how this industry has deteriorated over the past decade.
Fighter development projects like the F-35 have become a symbol of delay and high cost.
- Warships that take the United States a decade to build, while China launches between 30 and 50 similar ships during the same period.
- US ammunition depots appeared nearly empty during the war in Ukraine and military support for Israel, as Washington was unable to quickly replace the losses.
What's even worse is that America has begun importing some essential materials and spare parts from Southeast Asian countries, and even from China itself.
Between the dollar and the weapon:
America has nothing left but the dollar bill,
Which forces the world to accept it as an international currency, even though it is just printed papers with no real value.
But with the rise of China and the growing role of the yuan in international trade, even this prestige may no longer be held by the dollar.
Lesson from history:
The book concludes with a call for reflection:
The twentieth century was an American century.
- The nineteenth century saw Britain and France extend their influence.
- The sixteenth century was Ottoman.
And before that, there were successive empires: Mamluk, Mongol, Abbasid, Umayyad, Roman, and Persian.
This is how God's laws operate on earth: a never-ending cycle of civilizations, and days that alternate among nations.
Today, the scene appears to be shaping up to be a distinctly Chinese 21st century.
With the trade war reigniting, and the probable cancellation of any meetings between the leaders of both countries, all eyes are again on the vulnerability of each side, the weaknesses and the strong sides of each camp, America being more vulnerable than what is generally thought and accepted, or with the same situation couple decades ago, the world itself is changing rapidly, and China and its partners are definitely changing systematically and methodically.
Translated from a forward in Arabic, a good analysis of a very factual situation, still developing between China and America, involving the entire world, it's all happening and taking place during our few years nowadays and in the coming years.
Maybe this should be obvious, but I link and forward articles I find provocative and significant, helping to better understand certain situations. Generally reflecting my ideas, but not necessarily always ones I entirely agree with.
My many thanks to all, stay safe and well.
Wes J. Bryant.
In the wake of the recent deployment of US Navy warships to the coastal waters of South America, pinnacling with two airstrikes on alleged drug-trafficking vessels, including one today that President Donald Trump said killed three people and an earlier attack that killed all 11 on board, Americans need to take pause. We must take a hard look at the implications of using lethal US military capabilities against drug cartels while casting aside our sacred and constitutionally born belief in the right of due process and dedication to the time-honored principles of international law. And we must hold Trump to the fire as he blindly leads America into conflicts that he is wholly unprepared to confront – and that will last far beyond his own presidency.
There are a number of extremely troubling precedents for using military force to combat drug cartels, and the dangers in rapidly expanding the utilization of the US military by the Trump administration, both at home and abroad, are plentiful. But the most prescient of these is the mounting potential for an armed conflict with Venezuela. A conflict which, quite clearly, the Trump administration has not thought through.
Following the Sept. 2 strike on the boat in the Caribbean, Trump released a clip of the footage stating that the operation had been carried out against “narcoterrorists” of the Tren de Aragua (TdA) drug cartel, which, per a Jan. 20 executive order, is now designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. He said that the vessel – hundreds of miles from the US mainland and reportedly turning around – had been in the process of transporting illegal narcotics to the United States, and declared that the TdA is “operating under the control of [Venezuelan President] Nicolas Maduro” and is “responsible for mass murder, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, acts of violence and terror across the United States and Western Hemisphere.” In his short statement, he used the word “terror” or “terrorist” five times in a clear attempt to assert moral righteousness and legal justification for the strike. In the announcement about today’s strike, he used the words three times, describing illegal narcotics as “deadly weapons” being used to deliberately poison Americans and adding “BE WARNED — IF YOU ARE TRANSPORTING DRUGS THAT CAN KILL AMERICANS, WE ARE HUNTING YOU!”
In what should not come as a surprise, Venezuela responded to the perceived aggression outside its borders with a show of force. In a twist of irony, a flight of US-supplied F-16s from the Venezuelan air force twice overflew one of the US Navy destroyers in international waters earlier this month. In response, Trump warned that the Venezuelan jets could be “shot down” and directed that military commanders could “do anything [they] want” if the Venezuelan military did the same again.
Trump has consistently touted the catchphrase “No New Wars” as a cornerstone of his foreign policy stance. But Americans are seeing quite the opposite unfold in both the words and actions of this administration. Last month, when questioned on the initial build-up of US military presence in the region, press secretary Karoline Leavitt declared, “The Maduro regime is not a legitimate government,” and stated that the Trump administration is “prepared to use every element of American power” against it.
Despite Trump’s public denial that the administration is pursuing regime change in Venezuela, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently forewarned, “President Trump is willing to go on offense in ways that others have not seen.” He called President Maduro a “kingpin of a drug narco state,” and advised that the Venezuelan leader “should be worried.” He stated that lethal US military actions “won’t stop with just this strike.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio echoed the same and emphasized, “The president of the United States is going to wage war on narcoterrorist organizations.” Combined with the actions already carried out by this administration, this hardly reflects any genuine intent toward no new wars. To the contrary – war seems to be exactly what the Trump administration is working to realize.
Trump and Hegseth seem to revel in the use of America’s military power, and they make no secret of that. This is seen, most recently, in Trump’s executive order to rebrand the Department of Defense as the “Department of War” along with Hegseth’s amplification of the intent as being for “maximum lethality – not tepid legality.” As I’ve previously written, it is my belief that the principles of restraint and temperance in the use of military force form the moral foundations for the US military and reflect core American values that separate us from our adversaries. But Trump and Hegseth tend to show little regard for these values.
This is exemplified in the swift moves to cut my office at the Pentagon dedicated to the evolution of precision warfare capabilities and more effective safeguarding of civilians in conflict. It is shown in the enduring provision of weaponry and unconditional political support to Israel, even as its military systematically slaughters tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians under the banner of “self-defense” and carries out strikes in sovereign nations with complete impunity. And it is foreshadowed in the reckless military operations that have been carried out in the first few months of this administration. In the strike campaign against the Houthis in Yemen throughout March and April, the number of reported civilian casualties nearly doubled within a two-month period as compared with the previous 23-year span of US action in the country, with zero accountability from the Department of Defense.
In June, in an abrupt departure from the administration’s own intelligence reporting only months earlier and solely at the request of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump directed a multi-layered bombing campaign against nuclear facilities in Iran, risking all-out war and then threatening to turn Iran “into a parking lot.” The Trump administration has now swiftly moved on to bombing alleged drug traffickers in South America – without due process and under a legally-defunct pretense of counterterrorism – while threatening the national sovereignty of Venezuela and, implicitly, that of other Central and South American neighbors.
In his inaugural address in January, President Trump claimed, “Our power will stop all wars.” This was codified in a March 4 executive order that detailed the administration’s declared “Peace through Strength” doctrine. Naively, Trump truly seems to believe this. Yet, history reminds us that, more often than not, the application of military power alone only leads to regional and global destabilization and prolonged conflict. I spent much of my military career hunting and killing members of the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and ISIS with airstrikes when, in the end, America’s so-called “war on terror” dragged on for over two decades and only served to further destabilize the Middle East and Africa. And it continues to this day under a different name and with an ever-expanding global US military footprint.
If Trump hasn’t learned these vital lessons from the “war on terror,” some for which he is directly responsible – such as the 2020 deal with the Taliban, which ultimately led to the fall of Afghanistan into the hands of the very enemy we went to war against – he should take clues from the major conflicts he is now proving wholly unable to affect. Before being sworn in for his second administration, Trump boasted dozens of times that he would end Russia’s war against Ukraine on “day one.” He asserted that his influence and power would see an end to Israel’s war in Gaza before he even took office. We see how both aspirations have played out.
The US military is always prepared for combat. It is always ready to engage any adversary on any battlefield. It was well before Trump and Hegseth, and it will be well after. But to insert an analogy from the world of Ultimate Fighting, which the Trump White House seems enamored with: when we step into that Octagon, we should be prepared to go five rounds and then some. Throwing a couple of jabs and then betting that your opponent will throw in the towel is simply the strategy of a fool.
Wes J. Bryant is a former senior targeting adviser and policy analyst at the Pentagon, where he served as chief of civilian harm assessments. He is a retired master sergeant and special operations tactical air controller in the elite special warfare branch of the U.S. Air Force and co-author of the book, Hunting the Caliphate: America’s War on ISIS and the Dawn of the Strike Cell.
This excellent report by a very professional analyst, explains our present political and foreign affairs handling, it was copied from the site Zeteo, as it was forwarded to me by email, and I'm forwarding it to my good readers via our blog, it sure describes our present situation in America and the world.
As always my many thanks to all, stay safe and well.
On September 22, 2025, in an interview with Hadley Gamble for The National, Tom Barrack declared that “peace is an illusion” in the Middle East and suggested that real peace has never existed and probably never will. He went further: peace, he said, has always been about submission — one side imposing its will, the other accepting defeat. And, he added, “Arabs don’t understand this.”
It was an astonishing display of arrogance, bigotry, and ignorance. Another amazing interview, and another reminder of the old adage: when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. In Barrack’s case, the advice should be simpler: stop speaking. Every time he opens his mouth on the Middle East, he deepens his own irrelevance and reveals the intellectual poverty of a man who mistakes a career in real estate for a license to lecture civilizations about history. While he likes to repeat that he “thinks outside the box,” he may be confusing cycles of history with building a hotel in Fresno, California. It is far too early — and far beyond his depth — for amateurs like him to issue verdicts of historical magnitude.
This is not the first time Barrack has insulted his own. On August 26, 2025, during a press appearance at Baabda Palace in Beirut following his meeting with President Joseph Aoun, he told Lebanese journalists to “act civilised” and described their behavior as “animalistic.” The reaction was immediate. Lebanon’s media unions, journalists, and civil society condemned his words as racist and humiliating. Barrack was forced to apologize, admitting that “animalistic” was inappropriate. But the mask had slipped. When pressed, his instinct was not diplomacy but contempt, the reflex of a colonial landlord scolding natives who dared to shout questions.
Now, with his latest interview, Barrack has confirmed the pattern. He poses as a realist, but he is an amateur in both history and statecraft. He speaks as though Arabs have somehow “lost” history and must accept permanent defeat, as if centuries of resilience, rebellion, and survival count for nothing. By what measure has he decided that Arabs have lost? And by what measure does he claim the United States has won? Did America win in Afghanistan, after twenty years of occupation ending in chaotic retreat? Did it win in Iraq, where trillions were wasted and Iran now dominates the political scene? The record speaks for itself: trillions spent, countless lives shattered, alliances frayed — and no victory in sight. Yet Barrack presumes to lecture Arabs about loss.
The irony is glaring. Islam itself means submission — not to another state’s diktat or a foreign empire’s bayonet, but to God. For Muslims, submission is not humiliation but dignity, a spiritual alignment that frees believers from worldly subjugation. Barrack, blinded by dealmaker’s arrogance, confuses spiritual submission with political surrender. He mistakes dignity for defiance, resistance for ignorance. A man of Arab descent should know better. Instead, he repeats the clichés of colonial administrators in Cairo and Algiers: Arabs, he says, do not understand peace; they only understand force.
There is a word for this posture: self-hatred. Barrack performs the role of the assimilated colonial subject who rises in foreign circles by sneering at his own people. History is full of such figures — the compradors of the British Raj, the évolués of the French empire, the “model minorities” in American discourse — men who are praised in the metropole for their supposed pragmatism but who serve as mouthpieces for imperial arrogance. Barrack fits the pattern exactly. He is a Lebanese-American whose grandparents came from Zahle, yet he disowns that heritage by parroting the prejudices of those who once humiliated it.
And his record in diplomacy proves the emptiness of his arrogance. His efforts to mediate between Lebanon and Israel have produced nothing but headlines. No progress, no breakthrough, not even the outline of a serious proposal. His failure is the best proof of his amateurism. For all his talk of history and peace, he has achieved none of it. This latest interview reads less like wisdom than frustration: frustration at his irrelevance, at his inability to translate real estate tricks into statecraft, at his growing exposure as a man in over his head.
Donald Trump, who prides himself on loyalty and deal-making, should be asking whether Barrack is an asset or a liability. The answer is obvious. A man who insults Arab journalists as “animalistic,” who declares that Arabs do not understand peace, who mistakes humiliation for strategy — such a man cannot serve as a credible envoy. If anything, Trump should tell him to stay in his lane. And that lane is not diplomacy.
The cycles of history are clear: peoples humiliated eventually rise. Dignity denied becomes dignity demanded. Every time submission is imposed, resistance returns. Barrack’s lecture about submission is not a roadmap to peace but a confession of his own intellectual defeat. He cannot imagine a politics of coexistence, so he falls back on the stale colonial fantasy of pacification.
The tragedy is that he does this while carrying a heritage that should have taught him otherwise. To be of Zahle, to come from a people who have survived against odds, and to turn that heritage into a sneer about Arabs not understanding peace — His contempt against his own is overwhelming. It is betrayal.
Peace is not submission. It is balance, recognition, and dignity. Tom Barrack refuses to understand any of this. And in that refusal, he exposes himself not as a realist, but as a relic — a self-hating Arab echoing the prejudices of the very empires that once humiliated his ancestors.
I'm not sure who's the writer of these words, nor its original publication, they were forwarded from a friend. This type of talk has been going on for a while, where the situation in Lebanon and its immediate neighbors including of course Israel are not improving or reaching some acceptable truce leading to some permanent peace and an end to the Israeli occupation and bombardment of Lebanon. Tom Barrack who originally gave everyone a very positive impression, is stalling big time, with him goes the US mediation, while he's coming up with different statements leading to a general stagnation and disappointment.
I'm trying to be neutral as to the statements produced by the article, but find it constructive and helpful in the shadow of what's happening on the ground. As always, my many thanks to all.