Detailed Lebanese & Lebanese Related LCCC English New Bulletin For September 19/2018
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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Putin Says Israel Didn't Down Russian Aircraft; Netanyahu Offers Condolences
تقرير من الهآررتس: بوتين يقول إن إسرائيل لم تسقط الطائرة الروسية ونتانياهو يقدم تعازيه للروس
Noa Landau, Yaniv Kubovich from Haaretz and Reuters September 18/18
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/67541/haaretz-netanyahu-offers-condolences-%d8%aa%d9%82%d8%b1%d9%8a%d8%b1-%d9%85%d9%86-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%87%d8%a2%d8%b1%d8%b1%d8%aa%d8%b3-%d8%a8/
Earlier, Russia blamed downed military aircraft on Israel's 'deliberate provocations' striking Syria ■
France denies involvement, U.S. says plane shot down by Syrian air defense systems
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Israel was not responsible for the downing of a Russian military aircraft during a strike on Syria Monday night. "It looks like a chain of tragic circumstances, because the Israeli plane didn't shoot down our jet," he said.
Putin's comments were a shift in tone after Russia accused Israel earlier of a "hostile provocation" in striking the Syrian port city of Latakia, which led to the downing of a Russian military plane with 15 servicemen on board.
When asked about comparisons to Turkey's downing of a Russian aircraft in 2015, Putin said: "This is a different situation. The Turkish fighter jet knowingly downed our plane.
The Russian president noted that the Defense Ministry's statement, vowing a retaliatory response, was "fully coordinated" with him. "The retaliatory measures will be directed above all to boosting the security of military men and installations in Syria," he said. "These will be measures everyone will see."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke on the phone with Putin and expressed his condolences, but added that the responsibility for the downing of the Russian plane rests with Syria. He also reiterated that Israel is determined to prevent Iran from gaining a military foothold in Syria and thwart Tehran's attempts to aid Hezbollah with lethal weapons against Israel.
In the call with Putin, Netanyahu stressed the importance of continuing the security coordination with Russia, which he said has saved many lives on both sides over the past three years. He offered to send Russia all necessary details in order to investigate the incident, including dispatching the Israel Air Force chief to Moscow.
Earlier on Tuesday, Russia's Defense Ministry accused Israeli military planes of creating a "dangerous" situation in Latakia, near where the aircraft was downed by Syrian air defense systems, as it claimed Israel warned Moscow about the planned operation one minute beforehand, adding that it was not enough time to get the the plane to safety.
The defense ministry said 15 Russian military service people died because of Israel's "irresponsible actions," adding that it reserves the right to take appropriate measures after Israel's hostile actions.
According to the ministry, the Israeli F-16 jets carrying out the air strikes used the Russian plane as a cover to allow them to approach their targets on the ground without being hit by Syrian anti-aircraft fire.
"Hiding behind the Russian aircraft, the Israeli pilots put it in the line of fire of Syrian anti-aircraft systems. As a result the Il-20 ... was shot down by the (Syrian) S-200 missile system," Konashenkov said.
He said the Israeli pilots "could not have failed to see the Russian aircraft, as it was coming in to land from a height of 5 km (three miles). Nevertheless, they deliberately carried out this provocation," Konashenkov said.
Israeli army spokesperson Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis said in a statement that Israel "expresses sorrow for the death of the aircrew members of the Russian plane that was downed tonight due to Syrian anti-aircraft fire," adding that Israel holds the Assad regime fully responsible for the incident.
"Israel also holds Iran and the Hezbollah terror organization" for the event, said the statement. "Overnight, Israel Defense Forces fighter jets targeted a facility from which systems to manufacture accurate and lethal weapons were about to be transferred on behalf of Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon."
Manelis said Israel and Russia have a deconfliction system that has proven itself effective many times in recent years, and that "this system was in use tonight as well."
An initial inquiry by IDF top brass and the prime minister's bureau, Manelis said, showed that extensive and inaccurate anti-aircraft fire by Syrian forces downed the Il-20.
"When the Syrian Army launched the missiles tat hit the Russian plane, IAF jets were already within Israeli airspace," said the statement, adding the Ilyushin was not present in the area of the operation during the Israeli airstrike.
It also said Syrian anti-aircraft batteries fired indiscriminately, "and from what we understand, did not bother to ensure that no Russian planes were in the air."
The statement concluded by saying Israel will share all the relevant information with the Russian government as to confirm the facts of the inquiry. An Israeli political official later echoed these comments as well, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are expected to speak soon.
Israeli Ambassador to Russia Gary Koren was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry following the incident, according to Russian media, though the Israeli Foreign Ministry declined to comment.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu informed his Israeli counterpart, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, that Moscow holds Israel wholly to blame for the shooting down of a Russian military plane near Syria.
The Kremlin was extremely concerned by the incident and President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences for those who were killed, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
The Russian Defense Ministry said a recovery operation in the Mediterranean Sea is underway and that it has already located the wreckage in the sea and has retrieved some bodies and some fragments of the plane. A U.S. official earlier said Washington believed the aircraft, which is an Il-20 turbo-prop plane used for electronic reconnaissance, was inadvertently shot down by anti-aircraft artillery operated by Moscow's ally, the Syrian government.
Around the time the plane disappeared, the Syrian coastal city of Latakia, near a Russian airbase to which the Il-20 was returning, came under attack from "enemy missiles" and missile defence batteries responded, Syrian state media reported. The defense ministry in Moscow said the aircraft was returning to the Russian-run Hmeymim airbase in Latakia province when, at about 11 P.M. Moscow time (20:00 GMT), it disappeared from radar screens. The plane was over the Mediterranean Sea about 35 km (20 miles) from the Syrian coastline, Russia's TASS news agency quoted the ministry as saying in a statement.
"The trace of the Il-20 on flight control radars disappeared during an attack by four Israeli F-16 jets on Syrian facilities in Latakia province," the statement was quoted as saying.
"At the same time Russian air control radar systems detected rocket launches from the French frigate Auvergne which was located in that region." The fate of the 14 people on board the missing plane is unknown, and a rescue operation has been organized out of the Hmeymim base, the ministry said. The Israeli military had no reaction, saying it does not comment on "foreign reports." French military spokesman Colonel Patrik Steiger told Reuters. "We deny any involvement." A series of unusual airstrikes on Syria were attributed to Israel on Monday night. The official SANA news agency reported that ten people were injured in the attack, eight of whom were shortly discharged after being admitted to a nearby hospital.
According to Syrian media, missiles were fired toward military targets close to three large cities in the north of Syria: Lattakia, Homs and Hama. In recent weeks there has been a significant uptick in the amount of reports attributing attacks to Israel. Previous attacks, according to foreign media, mostly targeted the area of the Damascus International Airport.

Sweden: Anti-Immigration Party Becomes Kingmaker
Soeren Kern/Gatestone Institute/September 18/18
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13004/sweden-election-immigration
Swedish police received more than 2,300 reports of potential crimes linked to this year's election, including voter intimidation and threats of violence against property or persons. An international team of observers found irregularities in 46% of the polling stations visited. The team expressed particular concern over the lack of secrecy in voting. Swedish authorities allow more than one voter (normally from the same family) to enter the polling booth together, ostensibly to ensure that the more literate family member can assist the less literate ones to correctly fill in the ballot paper.
"We are concerned about the significant level of family voting where women, older voters and the infirm can be guided or even instructed how to vote by another family member... We feel this may be a way of suppressing some voters from freely choosing their own choice." — Statement on the Swedish election from Democracy Volunteers, election observers.
With tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of migrants receiving welfare payments without having made any contributions, Sweden's current welfare system seems destined to collapse, according to Sweden Democrats leader Jimmie Åkesson.
In Swedish elections, each party has separate ballot papers with the party name prominently displayed. The picking of ballots takes place in public, so anyone present can observe which party's ballot paper the voter will choose. As a result, some voters may have felt intimidated and reluctant to publicly reveal that they wanted to vote for the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats. (Image source: Jens O. Z. Ehrs/Wikimedia Commons)
A strong showing by the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats in the Swedish elections on September 9 drained away so many votes from the establishment parties that the two main parliamentary blocs were left virtually tied and far short of a governing majority.
The Sweden Democrats won 17.5% of the vote and emerged as the third-largest party in the country, according to the official election results released on September 16. The result, a 4.6% improvement on the 12.9% it won in 2014, placed the Sweden Democrats into a situation of holding the balance of power in the next parliament.
Incumbent Prime Minister Stefan Löfven's center-left Social Democrats came in first, with 28.3% of the vote — the party's worst result in more than 100 years. The center-right Moderate party came in second, with 19.8% of the vote, a 3.5% drop from 2014.
With eight political parties in the Swedish Parliament, the establishment parties traditionally have organized themselves into two rival parliamentary blocs: On the left, the Social Democrats and their allies garnered 40.7% of the vote. On the right, the Moderates and their allies won 40.3% of the vote.
Although the Sweden Democrats are now in a position to play kingmaker in Parliament, the mainstream blocs have vowed not to cooperate with them because of their "nationalist" positions on immigration and the European Union.
Sweden, with a largely homogenous population of around 10 million people, received nearly 500,000 asylum seekers from Africa, Asia and the Middle East since 2010. The arrival of so many overwhelmingly male migrants from different cultural and religious backgrounds has created massive social upheaval, including a surge in sexual assaults and gang violence in cities and towns across Sweden.
The Sweden Democrats campaigned on a promise to curb immigration, restrict family reunifications, speed up deportations and crack down on migrant crime. Party leader Jimmie Åkesson also warned that mass migration poses an existential threat to Sweden's social welfare system. With tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of migrants receiving welfare payments without having made any contributions, the current welfare system seems destined to collapse, he said.
Pre-election polls showed that the anti-immigration message was resonating with Swedish voters. A YouGov poll published on September 5 — just four days before the election — showed that support for the Sweden Democrats was at 24.8%, compared to 23.8% for the Social Democrats and 16.5% for the Moderates. In other words, the poll suggested that the Sweden Democrats had become the largest party in Sweden.
Observers have proffered several theories to explain the disconnect between the polls and the final election results. Some commentators have pointed to efforts by the mainstream parties to portray the Sweden Democrats as "far right," "racist," and "neo-Nazi" due to the party's supposedly "nationalist" and "populist" stance on immigration. The stigma of voting for the Sweden Democrats may have given some voters pause.
During a televised debate in October 2016, for example, Prime Minister Löfven called the Sweden Democrats "a Nazi party, a racist party." He also claimed that "swastikas are still in use at their meetings." The Sweden Democrats accused Löfven of slander and threatened to report him to the Parliament's Constitutional Committee. Jonas Millard, the party's representative on that committee, said:
"When Sweden's prime minister claims that the Sweden Democrats are a Nazi party, it is not just a lie, but also completely lacking in understanding of history and lacking in respect for all those millions of people who have been exposed to real Nazism."
Löfven later relented and said that his words had been taken out of context. Since then, however, Löfven has repeatedly accused the Sweden Democrats of having links to Nazism, even though Åkesson, who became party leader in 2005, has applied a zero-tolerance policy toward racism and has expelled members suspected of extremism.
A day before the September 9, 2018 election, Löfven again branded the Sweden Democrats as racist:
"We are not going to retreat one millimeter in the face of hatred and extremism wherever it shows itself.
"Again, and again, and again, they show their Nazi and racist roots, and they are trying to destroy the European Union at a time when we need that co-operation the most."
Meanwhile, the Social Democrats invested eight million Swedish krona ($850,000; €770,000) of taxpayer money to encourage voter participation among migrants. That strategy appears to have paid off: in Stockholm's Rinkeby district, where nine out of ten residents are immigrants, the Social Democrats received 77% of the vote while the Sweden Democrats won only 3%.
A similar pattern took place in Sweden's five dozen other no-go zones (Swedish police euphemistically refer to them as "vulnerable areas"), although a detailed analysis of the election results by the Swedish-Czech author Katerina Janouch and her colleague Peter Lindmark show that the Sweden Democrats are making gains among migrants, especially among women who are concerned about rampant crime and the imposition of Islamic sharia law.
Others believe that election fraud may have benefited the mainstream parties at the expense of the Sweden Democrats. It remains unclear how widespread voter irregularities were, and what if any impact they may have had on the final election results. The Swedish police, however, received more than 2,300 reports of potential crimes linked to this year's election. The complaints include voter intimidation, including threats of violence against property or persons.
Separately, the Swedish Election Authority (Valmyndigheten), the central authority responsible for conducting elections, received more than 400 complaints of alleged voter fraud, and prosecutors are now investigating possible crimes in connection with the election, according to the newspaper Aftonbladet.
An international team of 25 election observers, "Democracy Volunteers," deployed throughout polling stations in Stockholm, Malmö, Gothenburg, Uppsala and Västerås — in total, the team observed over 250 polling stations across these locations — found irregularities in 46% of the stations visited.
The team expressed particular concern over the lack of secrecy in voting. In Sweden, each party has separate ballot papers with the party name prominently displayed, and voters pick the party-specific ballot of their choice from a stand inside the polling station.
The picking of ballot papers takes place in public, so anyone present can observe which party's ballot paper the voter will choose. As a result, some voters may have felt intimidated and reluctant to publicly reveal that they wanted to vote for the Sweden Democrats.
The election observers also criticized family voting, a practice in which Swedish electoral authorities allow more than one voter (normally from the same family) to enter the polling booth together, ostensibly to ensure that the more literate family member can assist the less literate ones to correctly fill in the ballot paper.
The election observers concluded:
"We are concerned about the significant level of family voting where women, older voters and the infirm can be guided or even instructed how to vote by another family member....
"A key aspect of voting is that a voter should have their individual right to cast their own vote independently and without the interference, or even knowledge of another voter.
"We feel this may be a way of suppressing some voters from freely choosing their own choice without the knowledge of others and we would recommend that the Swedish election authorities look at this as part of their own review in due course."
In a study entitled, "Is Voting in Sweden Secret," Jørgen Elklit of the Department of Political Science at Aarhus University wrote that family voting is a long-standing problem in Sweden and appears to be especially prevalent in immigrant communities:
"This type of help to disadvantaged voters obviously also puts repressed family members in a complicated situation, if they want to vote differently from their repressors. Family voting was rather common in the former Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe....
"It was very surprising (almost unbelievable) to read in the ... election observation report from the 2014 Swedish elections ... that the observers noted a considerable amount of family voting in Stockholm. There are ... indications that this phenomenon is primarily seen in polling districts with relatively many voters of non-Swedish background."
Other election irregularities include:
In Botkyrka, the Moderates party was offered 3,000 votes by local Muslim leaders in exchange for a construction permit to build a mosque. The party waited until two days before the election to reject the offer. Public prosecutors are now probing whether the offer was a criminal offense. In Degerfors, a Social Democrat politician allegedly offered to pay voters 500 Swedish krona ($55; €50) in exchange for their votes. In the same town, a Social Democrat politician allegedly followed voters into a polling station, and then accompanied them to the ballot box. The politician, who has not been named, is being investigated for improperly influencing voters.
In Eda, a Social Democrat politician allegedly helped voters fill in their ballots.
In Falu, hundreds of ballots were invalidated because they were delivered late by the postal service. In Filipstad, the Moderates party filed a complaint with election authorities after men were observed entering the polling station with women, picking the ballot papers for them and then following them to the ballot box to ensure that they voted for the Social Democrats. The Election Committee Chairperson in Filipstad, Helene Larsson Saikoff, herself a Social Democrat, said that she did not see any problem with the practice of family voting: "It is up to the voter if she wants to be accompanied by her husband or some good friend." In Gothenburg, the second-largest city in Sweden, some polling stations excluded ballot papers for the Sweden Democrats.
In Heby, a recount of votes resulted in significant differences between the results on election night. When asked how this could be, the chairman of the electoral committee in Heby, Rickert Olsson blamed the "human factor" which was due to "fatigue."
In Märsta, poll workers advised voters not to seal their ballot envelopes. Sweden Democrats said that the envelopes could have been tampered with.
Elsewhere, the newspaper Metro reported that ballot papers for the Sweden Democrats were stolen from the Swedish embassies in Berlin, London and Madrid, thereby making it impossible for Swedish "expats" in those areas to vote for the Sweden Democrats.
"In all the election observations I have been on, I have never seen a choice as undemocratic as the one in Sweden," said Danish MP Michael Aastrup Jensen, a veteran election observer who monitored the Swedish election in a private capacity. "It is far from the European standard."
Similar allegations of voter fraud surfaced in 2014 election. At the time, The Sweden Report wrote: "For starters, a number of mailmen have officially protested delivering voting cards from the Sweden Democrats (SD), the third-largest party in the country, because they do not agree with the politics of the party....
"There are several reports from Stockholm, Gothenburg, Laholm and Halmstad where the envelopes from SD have clearly been opened and resealed. The content has been removed or in some cases replaced with voting cards from other parties....
"Other irregularities against SD includes stolen voting cards at the pre-voting locations, and in one case a more advanced scheme: Someone had switched SD municipality voting cards with those of a neighboring municipality, making it very easy to cast an invalid vote.
"As if that wasn't enough, there's the risk of tampering by the election administrators themselves. In the May election for the EU-parliament, a noted case involved a vote counter openly debating whether to simply throw away the stack of SD votes on Facebook."
Meanwhile, information about an official EU report, which concluded that Sweden has the worst border controls in the European Union, was allegedly kept from voters until after the elections were over, according to the newspaper Expressen.
The report warned that Swedish border guards are poorly trained and lack basic knowledge about how to detect counterfeit passports and other travel documents used by fake asylum seekers and returning jihadis. The report said that the problem is especially acute at Stockholm's Arlanda Airport, the main airport in Sweden, and recommended that Frontex, the EU border control authority, be deployed to help Sweden to secure its external border.
Several border control officers interviewed by Expressen said that officials at the Ministry of Justice deemed the report to be "politically explosive" and that it "should therefore be kept secret until the election was completed." Justice Minister Morgan Johansson denied the accusations.
Some observers argued that the Social Democrats managed to eke out a success in the 2018 election only by adopting some of the immigration proposals advocated by the Sweden Democrats. In May 2018, for example, Prime Minister Löfven, in an effort to stanch the bleeding of votes, announced a plan to tighten asylum rules, improve border controls and cut welfare benefits for migrants whose asylum applications have been rejected.
Others noted that by making the election primarily about immigration, and by forcing the established parties to harden their policies on asylum, the Sweden Democrats emerged as the actual winners.
The leader of the Sweden Democrats, Jimmie Åkesson, addressing the Danish People's Party's annual meeting in Herning, Denmark on September 15, said it would be impossible for the other parties in Sweden to shut his party out of influence in the negotiations to form the next government:
"They make every effort to form a new government without giving us influence. But it will be impossible to keep us out. The sooner they realize it, the faster we will avoid chaos."
The scale of the challenge facing Sweden is daunting. A recent study by the Pew Research Center estimated that even if all immigration were immediately to stop, the proportion of Muslims in Sweden would still rise to more than 11% of the overall population by 2050. A medium migration scenario places Sweden's Muslim population at 20.5% in 30 years; a high migration scenario places the Muslim population at 30.6%.
*Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute.
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Mullah John Kerry
Mamdouh AlMuhaini/Al Arabiya/September 18/18
Former US Secretary of State John Kerry’s best moments was when he delivered his speech after the Assad regime targeted Ghouta with poisonous gas in 2013. It was a strong and humanitarian speech in which he repeated “and we know” what happened more than 40 times in a frank condemnation of Assad.
He used influential phrases like what happened was “a moral obscenity” and it “shock the conscience of the world”. Millions of people were waiting for an American military strike when he utters his last words.
However, his president Obama took a long tour with his chief of staff in the White House’s garden and without Kerry knowing anything, he changed his mind and decided to back down on the plan. Obama preferred Moscow’s pledge to purge Assad’s storage of Sarin gas. They were few minutes of glory and then Obama threw him under the bus, the bus of history.
Some of Kerry’s critics call him Mullah Kerry because of his obsession in the nuclear deal, the repeated concessions he made and the warmth displayed during meetings with Iranian officials.
Like any professional diplomat Kerry swallowed the insult. He drew a smile on his face due to the accomplishment which avoided war and bloodshed. He led the negotiations then told media outlets that all chemical weapons in Syria were disposed of. We know it was a trick as the Assad regime resumed its strikes of which the most famous are the Khan Shaykhun and Duma massacres. This was not an honorable chapter in the history of the former American administration, including of Kerry. However, he later went ahead to lead another major diplomatic mission – this time enthusiastically – and which is to seal the Iranian nuclear deal which ended up failing after President Trump tore it apart before the world’s eyes.
Violating diplomatic norms
Before the deal was made, Kerry’s injuries which he sustained after falling off his bike and which left him on crutches for a while did not stop him, and he seemed boastful as he limped competing with the European negotiators to get to negotiating halls in an attempt to finalize the agreement before it’s too late.
His activity is still on to this day as he hopes to revive the deal. Kerry still meets with Iranian officials, which is a flagrant violation of diplomatic and political norms. His successor Mike Pompeo has criticized this and Senator Marco Rubio said: “Hopefully Iran hires John Kerry to be their lead negotiator. Because he is certain to negotiate a bad deal for whichever side he is on”. In his recently-published memoirs Every Day is Extra, Kerry narrates plenty of stories about what happened in closed meetings and about the arguments with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and which were followed by warm greetings and smiles in front of the cameras. In one story, Kerry narrates a heated moment between Zarif and Lavrov. The latter looked at the former and sarcastically told him: “Are you really authorized to accept the final offer?” His statement insulted Zarif’s dignity so he angrily stood up and headed towards the door to leave. Kerry jumped from his seat and tried to calm him saying that the Russian minister did not mean to insult him.
However, Zarif’s satisfaction must come at a price, and he frankly said he wants more candy, i.e. concessions. This is what happened as Kerry returned to his team and pleased Zarif to resume the negotiations by cancelling some sanctions.
American writer Eli Lake wrote in his Bloomberg article that the entire story is a charade that’s planned between the Russian and Iranian ministers to manipulate Kerry and weaken his negotiating stance and corner him. Most probably this is right but it’s also clear that Kerry – upon pressure by his president – was willing to play the role of the stupid extra in the charade. He is not an idiot but he was searching for diplomatic glory for himself and for the Obama administration which failed on almost all foreign fronts.
Becoming Mullah Kerry
Some of Kerry’s critics call him Mullah Kerry because of his obsession in the nuclear deal, the repeated concessions he made and the warmth displayed during meetings with Iranian officials. This is in addition to his daughter Vanessa’s marriage to Dr. Brian Vala Nahed who is originally Iranian. All this created – as they say –weakness inside him towards anything that’s Iranian. These are just analyses which are difficult to figure out their accuracy unless we delve into his mind and examine his heart; however, Kerry’s inclination towards the Iranians and running after them is due to purely personal goals.
Kerry is politically ambitious and he tried to be a president before and failed. In his book, he attributed Obama’s rise to him and Obama’s ability to become president to him as he has given him the golden opportunity to make his famous speech at the 2004 democratic convention.
Kerry made a mistake and four years later he saw the dream that he’s always had being achieved by a young man who is almost unknown and who has no political experience and who does not come from a rich family (Kerry’s wife Teresa Heinz is the heiress of Heinz). Hence, it was said that Kerry felt that he deserved the presidency more than Obama did.
His obsession with the nuclear deal and meetings with Iranian officials even angered some Democrats because they are an unprecedented violation that serves his own personal aims before anything else. He wants this as an accomplishment to add to his resume and to invest in later in the future to become president.
It’s difficult for him to do so as his record is full of failure. He failed at becoming a president and he failed as a secretary and finally when he sealed the largest political deal in his life Trump destroyed it. This is why an angry Kerry insulted Trump few days ago when he said Trump “got the maturity of an eight-year-old boy with the insecurity of a teenage girl”. Actually these are nice insults said against the man who destroyed your future. Although he denied that he is planning to run for the presidency, everything he does says the opposite. Kerry loves the mullahs for his own personal aims but he’s not one of them.

To those who did not live in the moment
Turki Aldakhil/Al Arabiya/September 18/18
“Learning never exhausts the mind!”
I often wonder about this Da Vinci quote. At what creative stage of his life did he write it? Before or after he had reached artistic maturity? If the aim of learning is to work and achieve, then something Greek philosopher Aristotle said in 322 BC is still relevant today: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
If I want to share some ideas I’ve have learned, in the possibility that I will one day implement them, it’s as if I am a doctor treating his patients when he himself is ill.
Hence I find me dragged towards advising myself and recommending others to make use of their day. Do not underestimate this small piece of advice as there’s nothing harder than managing the next moment, let alone tomorrow or the next ten years. If you can improve your day, then know that the entire life is made up of days and you can hence be kind and create every day. No wonder that all timescales go back to the moment that escapes from you now.
It’s great to have a long-term vision with constant preparation for surprises, but trust those who have done so and realized that the most difficult part was the art of managing the day. He who is not good at managing the day will not be good in managing upcoming days.
Those who get used to dealing with each day and then master it repeat this pattern. We call these the people of awareness and mastery. Look wherever you want and you will not see a successful man without a habit. This is why Arabs said in the past: “The habit is deep-rooted”.
Speaking of preparations for the path’s surprises, always remember Thomas Jefferson’s quote when he briefly said – and he’s a master in that – “In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.”
Let go of the past completely, and focus on the present moment as this moment alone is the most capable of hiding and escaping.
If the adventure of even managing a single day is difficult for you, don’t be upset. Greek Philosopher Aristotle has met such men and women and he beautifully criticized them when he said: “There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing”. He’s honest here as the river sweeps the little rocks which have not decided their path in advance before the flood reaches the town. Prince and poet Badr bin Abdul Muhsin seems to have a different opinion that opposes Aristotle’s as it looks like fame weighs heavily on him. The extremely kind and humble prince, as all those who know him say, decided to support those forgotten, the ordinary men, when he said:
Oh how lucky he is whom no one knows
If he is kind, he will be thanked
And if he is bad, he will not be blamed
This is not the first time that Badr is biased to ordinary men. Few years ago, I asked him about the emirate and poetry and which was closer to his heart. He said that he inherited the emirate from his father who inherited it from his father, hence, he has not asked anyone about it, and as for poetry “it’s everyone’s essential need, a collar that people embrace you with.”
When you look for wise words – which by the way I am fond of collecting – you’d realize how similar they are. Sometimes it’s difficult to attribute a saying like: The only way to achieve the impossible, is to believe it's possible” to Charles Kingsleigh as all civilizations have poets, politicians and writers who directly or indirectly called for avoiding thinking about the impossible and ignoring it so the possible replaces the impossible.
If I hadn’t written about the greatness of the imagination recently, I would have repeated my idea which I don’t get bored of repeating. Let go of the past completely, and focus on the present moment as this moment alone is the most capable of hiding and escaping. As for the future, please do not choose a path other than optimism. Don’t be negative and don’t look at tomorrow with the eyes of a fearful man. If fear of the future yields results, everyone would have feared it.
Imagine the threat of seeing the mirage instead of the right path, and when the road comes to an end and doubt overwhelms you, you select another road although everything indicates you are in the right direction. You have dealt in the world of ideas with what’s absent, a mystery – which you could have granted confidence – with fear and worry, and when you believed the latter two, the road repudiated you.
Ancient Arabs are known to have said:
What is gone is gone
What is to come is a mystery
And what you have is the hour you live
About the moment, habit and all that, Robert Louis Stevenson sums me in his famous saying: “Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”
It’s beautiful to get used to planting these seeds, so we and our people constantly wait for a beautiful harvest in the future.

Closing down Palestinian embassy in Washington: End of the cause?
Abdulrahman al-Rashed/Al Arabiya/September 18/18
The red building in Wisconsin Avenue in Washington was until few days ago the headquarters of the General Delegation of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, i.e. the embassy of the “State” of Palestine in the US. It carried an important symbolic value on the political level, which was eliminated when the US State Department notified the Palestinian mission it was shutting it down for good and asked the mission’s head Ambassador Husam Zomlot to leave the country along with his family. The presence of a Palestinian diplomatic mission in the US came as a result of the Oslo Agreement which recognized Palestinian presence and which was also recognized internationally for the first time. Despite the criticism, the Oslo Agreement is a historic political project that revived the PLO and the cause were buried as a result of expelling the PLO from Beirut and its departure by sea to Tunisia. Oslo failed because extremist regional regimes and extremists from both the Palestinian and Israeli sides thwarted the few chances, which gave the opportunity to resolve the Palestinian cause.
Since the beginning of the conflict everyone knew that changing the Palestinian situation can only happen either via war, and the possibility of its eruption is like a mirage, or negotiations.
Due to the Palestinian officials’ unrealistic approach, they showed up to negotiate when it was too late. The Palestinians now have so little. As time passed by, their rights on the land decreased due to their continuous rejection and verbal bids. In addition to the Palestinian leadership’s desperation, which it has been suffering from for years, the leadership does not understand the character of President Donald Trump. Since the beginning of his presidential term, one of Trump’s acquaintances warned: Try to understand how to disagree with him otherwise he will throw you under the bus!
This is what happened to Abu Mazen whose friends are now rushing to get him from under the bus. Among the mistakes committed by the Palestinian leadership is that it tried a confrontation and forgot that the American government has huge influence on Palestinian activity as it’s the largest funder of the Palestinian refugees and their organization UNRWA contributing around quarter of a billion dollars each year. One of the major mistakes is believing that Palestine is a pivotal cause which Arabs and Muslims will not give up on. Truth is they have given up on it a long time ago as each state is preoccupied with its causes
Dispatched delegates
When delegates dispatched by President Trump went to the Occupied Palestinian Territories to explain their ideas, the Palestinian leadership refused to receive them. The leadership was angry because the American government had executed an old decision to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Of course we understand the anger of the Palestinian Authority but the opposite should have happened; the Palestinians should have met the American delegation and not reused to meet them. Sitting down and talking about the problem would have been the right approach. We all know that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is a pragmatic politician who has long experience in resolving disputes both on the domestic and foreign levels and that’s why he’s still governing to this day. He managed to confront rivals like Hamas with the least amount of damage. Although he hates taking up high-risk political projects, he’s aware that the US comes in second, after Israel, in terms of negatively or positively affecting his citizens’ lives.
Of course, it is possible that there is intent to get rid of the Palestinian cause by eliminating the refugee status in the UN, suspending their budget, decreasing support to the Authority and ending its diplomatic presence.All this is very possible and is the result of the laziness and failure in managing previous peace projects over the course of 30 years. It’s normal that a day comes when the rest of the stances are finalized. One of the major mistakes is believing that Palestine is a pivotal cause which Arabs and Muslims will not give up on. Truth is they have given up on it a long time ago as each state is preoccupied with its causes.
Egypt has finalized its stance since Camp David and Jordan did the same when it signed the Wadi Araba Treaty. Syria has practically before them signed the disengagement agreement after the 1973 War and Golan has become Israel’s most secure border area.
As for Lebanon, it is a helpless country controlled by Iran; otherwise it would have been the first Arab country that seeks a peace agreement with Israel. This is the truth, which the dreamers in the Arab world must realize. This truth is what pushed late President Yasser Arafat to sign the Oslo Accords as or else he and all other Palestinian leaders will live and be buried in foreign countries.

Idlib bloodbath: The next step in information warfare
Dr. Azeem Ibrahim/Al Arabiya/September 18/18
The final rebel holdout against the Assad regime in Syria is in Idlib province. Confrontation is inevitable as both Assad and his Iranian and Russian allies are looking to wrap things up in the country’s civil war, and it does not take a military genius to know that the final attack will be ferocious. The handbook for beating a civilian population into submission developed by Assad and the Kremlin in particular is already well understood. First encircle the target area and block all traffic of food. Then, bomb hospitals to ensure insufficient medical facilities when casualties start mounting up. Last, use munitions with the highest psychological impact, such as cluster bombs and chemical weapons to break the targets into surrendering. In case you were not certain, yes, all three of these tactics are explicit war crimes.
What used to happen until now, however, is that the propaganda offensive by the Russian information warfare machine to obfuscate and confuse the evidence for war crimes committed by Assad and the Kremlin started either as during the acts themselves, or immediately after. But this is now changing, and the Kremlin has moved onto the next logical evolution of its propaganda capabilities: pre-emptive misinformation. Kremlin-backed “media” channels have started pushing the narrative that the rebels in Idlib province are acquiring and planning to use chemical weapons. This does two things: 1) it supposedly gives Assad and Putin cause and urgency to step up their offensive against the rebels in Idlib; and 2) if chemical weapons were to be deployed, well this time “we know” that it was the rebels who had such weapons on hand.
Translation: an all-out Assad-Russian assault on Idlib is imminent and it will be utter bloodbath, complete with liberal deployment of chemical weapons and any other illegal weapons and munitions against civilian targets deemed necessary to shatter the psyche of the local population.
There are still plenty of conflicts to be fought if Assad wants to reassert Syrian national integrity, and if Russia and Iran are willing and able to continue helping him fight his civil war
Identifiable state actors
Under normal circumstances, such advance warning of intent to commit war crimes by clearly identifiable state actors would be useful in formulating a response from the international community, which might prevent such an attack, or at least mitigate it to some extent. But we do not live in normal time. The incumbent administration in the United States have no personal moral interest in humanitarian concerns, either around the globe or indeed in their own country.
China does not get involved in these kinds of disputes as matter of policy, and the rest of Western Europe has neither the leadership, nor the will, to risk direct confrontation with Russia in order to prevent civilian massacres in Syria. The aftermath of this assault is equally predictable. Tens to hundreds of thousands dead, horrific pictures on the news, a new wave of refugees heading toward Europe, and the tacit acceptance by the West that the situation is what it is, and nothing can be done about it now – “at least Assad is not ISIS”, is what they will be telling themselves. Will this finally bring peace and some measure of stability to the region? That is not quite so clear.
While the Sunni-Arab Syrian opposition will have been finished off, Turkey still operates in the Syrian theatre, and a fact that is widely obscured from the reporting on Syria, the regions of Afrin, Jazira and Euphrates continue to be administered by the de facto autonomous Democratic Federation of Northern Syria, a multi-ethnic quasi-state dominated by anti-Assad Kurds. There are still plenty of conflicts to be fought if Assad wants to reassert Syrian national integrity, and if Russia and Iran are willing and able to continue helping him fight his civil war. Keep an eye out on Russian propaganda channels for mentions of the Kurds in Syria.