No empire has lasted forever. As history as shown, every imperialistic society has eventually succumbed to its own vices, be it misallocation of resources, concentration of wealth in the hands of a small elite minority or the overextension of its military.

While analysts and academics from around the world have noted that the United States is no exception to this rule, some who previously worked within the U.S. war machine have come out in recent years to warn the public that the U.S. is not just an empire in decline, but an empire on the edge of collapse.

One of the more notable insiders to warn of the impending collapse of the U.S. empire is Lawrence Wilkerson, a former U.S. Army colonel and chief of staff for Colin Powell under the George W. Bush administration. For the past several years, Wilkerson has come out swinging against the military-industrial complex he once served, calling the U.S. "the death merchant of the world" and expressing his dissatisfaction with "the corporate interests that we go abroad to slay monsters for."

The Russian-backed prime minister of Crimea said on Saturday that Vladimir Putin should be made president of Russia for life and that the Soviet Union would never have collapsed had Putin been in charge.

Sergei Aksyonov, marking the third anniversary of the day he signed off on Russia's annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula, said Russia needed continuous strong leadership to contend with multiple external threats.

"If our president Vladimir Vladimirovich (Putin) was in charge of things when the Soviet Union existed, the Soviet Union would not have fallen apart," said Aksyonov, who said a few days ago that Russia needed a monarchic style of government.

"Vladimir Vladimirovich must be president for life," Aksyonov told the Rossiya 24 channel.

JTA reports:

A United Nations affiliate removed a report accusing Israel of apartheid from the internet following a request from the secretary-general of the international body.

Antonio Guterres asked the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, or EWCWA, to remove the report, which was published Wednesday and says it "establishes, on the basis of scholarly inquiry and overwhelming evidence, that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid," Reuters reported Friday.

Rima Khalaf, the commission's chief, resigned because of Gutteres' pressure to remove the report, according to Reuters.

As of shortly after noon Friday, a previous link to the report yielded an error message and the report was not listed among the publications on the website for the ESCWA, an agency based in Beirut, Lebanon that is comprised of 18 Arab member states, including what is identified as the State of Palestine.

A U.N. spokesman had said earlier that the report was published without consulting the international body's Secretariat and "does not reflect the views of the secretary-general."

The United States and Israel sharply criticized the report.

"The United States is outraged by the report," Nikki Haley, the U.S. envoy to the U.N., said Wednesday in a statement. "The United Nations Secretariat was right to distance itself from this report, but it must go further and withdraw the report altogether."

Israel's U.N. ambassador, Danny Danon, said in a statement: "The attempt to smear and falsely label the only true democracy in the Middle East by creating a false analogy is despicable and constitutes a blatant lie."

Is sanity finally returning? After weeks of ranting and raving about Russian "interference" and Putin-Trump conspiracies, so-called 'intelligence' agencies and high-ranking Democrats are quietly walking back their rhetoric and managing their base's expectations - simply put: there's no 'there', there.

'Moon of Alabama' reminds us that a while ago Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone warned: Why the Russia Story Is a Minefield for Democrats and the Media:

If we engage in Times-style gilding of every lily the leakers throw our way, and in doing so build up a fever of expectations for a bombshell reveal, but there turns out to be no conspiracy - Trump will be pre-inoculated against all criticism for the foreseeable future.

And now, as The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald writes, key Democratic officials are now warning their base not to expect...

Donna Brazile says passing along a list of topics for a TV town hall event to Hillary Clinton's campaign was "a mistake I will forever regret."

Brazile, who was the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) interim chairwoman this summer and is a former CNN contributor, opened up about last year's election in a Time magazine essay. "My job was to make all our Democratic candidates look good, and I worked closely with both campaigns to make that happen," she wrote. "But sending those emails was a mistake I will forever regret."

WikiLeaks in October published emails purportedly stolen from Clinton campaign chief John Podesta, which included messages from Brazile to Clinton's campaign containing information on what would be asked during two town hall debates between Clinton and her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)

The first batch of British soldiers has arrived in Estonia to serve as part of the NATO's Enhanced Forward Presence on the borders of Russia and part of "wider efforts to defend the alliance" from the perceived threat from Moscow.

Some 130 soldiers from 5 Rifles RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire landed at the Amari airbase near Tallinn on Friday night where they were welcomed by the UK's Ambassador Bubbear Theresa and the 1st Infantry Brigade commander of Estonian forces Colonel Veiko-Vello Palm. They will now link-up with some 80 British servicemen who were sent in advance to prepare the facilities for the arrival of the soldiers.

In the coming weeks, additional British troops will be dispatched. A French contingent is also due, accompanied by tanks, reconnaissance drones and infantry fighting vehicles to form a 1,200-strong detachment.

The Pentagon Spokesperson insisted that the U.S. airstrike in the rebel-held village of Al-Jina in northern Syria on Thursday night did not hit a mosque. "The area was extensively surveilled prior to the strike in order to minimize civilian casualties," Navy Captain Jeff Davis wrote in an email. "We deliberately did not target the mosque."

He even unclassified and circulated a photo. And he pointed out that on the left, you can see a small mosque, still standing.

Syrian rebels and their families began retreating from the outskirts of Homs, the last remaining opposition-held stronghold in central Syria, after a Russian-brokered evacuation deal was signed earlier this week.

The first buses carrying rebels and their families departed from the al-Waer neighborhood in western Homs early on Saturday, state-run SANA news agency reported. Talal al-Barazi, Homs' governor, told the media outlet that the first group of evacuees includes over 1,500 people who will be transported to the northeastern edge of Aleppo province.

The evacuation operation is being overseen by Syrian and Russian military police units, al-Barazi later told Reuters, adding that all rebels from al-Waer are due to depart within around six weeks.

China and Russia have blocked a UN Security Council statement expressing concern over the situation in Myanmar's Rakhine state, where Rohingya Muslims have reportedly been subject to attacks, diplomats say. "We did put forward...some proposed press elements, but there was not consensus in the room," Matthew Rycroft, the British UN ambassador and president of the council for March, said on March 17.


A short statement would have "noted with concern renewed fighting in some parts of the country" and would have stressed the importance of humanitarian access, according to Reuters, which said it had seen a copy of the draft.

Diplomats said Myanmar neighbor China, with Russia's support, blocked the statement from being issued. China and Russia both have veto power in the council. Diplomats said both countries raised objections, but their UN missions did not reply to requests for comment.

The UN human rights office last month accused the Myanmar military of mass killings and rapes of Rohingya Muslims and the burning of villages. It said its actions "very likely" amounts to crimes against humanity.

About 1.1 million Rohingya live among the country's Buddhist majority. Many among the Buddhist population claim the Rohingya are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, even though many have lived in the country for decades. The government of former dissident Aung San Suu Kyi has been criticized by international partners for not doing enough to help the Rohingya.

Scotland's first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has told the Scottish National Party (SNP) Conference that "there will be an independence referendum." Her assertion was met with widespread applause at the Aberdeen event.

When Scotland held a referendum on independence back in September 2014, the 'No' side won with just over 55 percent of votes.


Sturgeon called for a second independence referendum during her closing address at her party's spring conference at the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Center (AECC) on Saturday.