Three years of war in Lebanon, these years of devastation. More than 7 per cent of the country occupied by Israel. The south ravaged. Thousands killed in Israeli strikes. A slew of ceasefires that were never upheld. This is what’s left of Mansouri, a village outside the occupied area, reduced to rubble after the June ceasefire.

BREAKING: The U.S. forced Canada and other countries to withdraw from a major European conference set to discuss American disinformation, it was revealed today. State-level foreign affairs representatives from Canada, Lithuania and the European Union suddenly pulled out after pressure from Washington DC, the UK Guardian reported this morning. “Three persons familiar with the matter, including European officials, confirmed that the US state department had been in touch with multiple governments over their support for the conference,” the paper said. The groups left abruptly, and their names were covered over with plain paper on posters showing sponsors and supporters. The event, running this week in Vilnius, Lithuania, is run by a Brussels group called EU Disinfo Lab. . PROTECTION FROM U.S. The US is unhappy about a scheduled panel at the conference called “USA as a FIMI threat: adapt, acknowledge, push back”, the newspaper said. FIMI stands for “foreign information manipulation and interference”. Panelists, including three Americans, one a former CIA officer, were due to discuss how Europe and other nations could protect themselves from US disinformation. The US has long been known as the world’s biggest purveyor of disinformation by far, with 18 separate intelligence agencies pushing large amounts of funding out to thousands of groups across the planet. They push a “west good, east bad” narrative, in which the US is heroic “leader of the free world” and Iran, China, and Russia are "adversaries". . ANALYSIS: A BETRAYAL BY THE HOSTS? The organizers of #Disinfo2026, the annual gathering of Europe’s counter-disinformation community, took a risk by accepting Lithuania as host country. The tiny European nation claims to be “the most pro-USA country in the world”, and apparently tipped off Washington DC that this panel was due to take place at the meeting. The US then ordered participants to immediately pull out, even though the event was just days away. It is not known how many national groups the US pressured to withdraw. But it is easy to see which countries obeyed—thanks to the last-minute disappearance of their logos. The foreign ministries of Canada and Lithuania withdrew, and so did the European External Action Service, representing the EU. . NEED FOR AN ENEMY The incident shows that the US still has enormous power to protect its narrative, in which it is the world leader in all spheres, and other large powers are cartoon villains. The father of US foreign policy, George F Kennan, described the US need to dream up enemies in a 1996 interview: “The enemy must always be a center, he must be totally evil, he must wish all the terrible things that could happen to us -- whether [that] made sense from his standpoint or not. ... Carrying wartime extremisms into a period which was nominally one of peace ... is one of the great fundamental causes of the Cold War.” Meanwhile, if you ask the US State Department what happened at the disinformation conference, they'll have plenty of people to dream up answers. Trouble? Probably caused by the Russians. Or the Chinese. Or the Iranians. . .