MICRO NEWS:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is planning to bolster its military presence in the Gulf after it pulls out its remaining troops from Iraq, the New York Times reported in its online edition on Sunday. ...the paper said that U.S. military officers and diplomats worried that the withdrawal could bring instability to the region... It said Washington was negotiating to maintain a combat presence on the ground in Kuwait and was considering deploying more warships in the area. The United States also wanted to expand its military ties with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) -- Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, it said... (By Louise Ireland, Source)

MICRO COMMENT:

"Three Basic Principles Upheld by Capitalist Empires:
"a) The basic class relationship in social production: labor being dominated by capital.

"b) The control by big capital (big money) of mainstream media, academic and recreational culture, education, especially higher learning, and general ideological orientation, all this under the banner of economic and cultural “freedom”.

"c) Domination, by economic, political, ideological and, if necessary, military means, over countries and peoples not of their own kind, so as to grab from them as much wealth as possible.

"These three principles define the ultimate limit and true nature of Western democracy. So long as all these three principles remain intact, they can go on with “importing” wealth continually while “exporting” starvation, social conflicts and wars. Therefore, so long as there still remain in the world enough “colonies” or “semi-colonies” for their capital to grab more profits from, with which they can bribe their labor aristocracy at home, their imperialist nature will not change and their democratic institutions will not be able to break through the ultimate limit of these three basic principles, still less to change the anti-freedom, anti-equality and anti-human rights status through such institutions. "

From: The Way towards Future: Chinese & Western social evolution patterns compared