jacobin | Populism involves the exclusion of elements from society not
considered a part of the “people,” usually cultural “others” and the
ambiguously defined “elites” or “anti-nationals.” A nationalist populist
discourse, as in the Indian case, differentiates between who belongs to
the nation and who does not. Hindutva’s “people” is imagined as a
religious and ethno-cultural Hindu community which excludes Muslims and
liberal elites.
In addition to delimiting the authentic “people,” this form
of populism typically relies on a leader who claims to be the sole
representative of the people and the embodiment and authority of the
popular will. Modi is a paradigmatic example of such a leader.
At an event hosted by the Indian diaspora in Houston, the “Howdy Modi?”
rally, Modi’s answer to the rhetorical question was revealing: “Modi is
nothing by himself. I am only a common man working on the orders of 1.3
billion people. So, when you ask, ‘Howdy Modi?’ I can only answer,
‘everything in Bharat is good.’” Despite the pretensions of
humility, Modi understands the populist logic well: to ask the question
how is Modi is precisely to ask how is the nation.
Additionally, this form of populism is a political style which
involves a whole repertoire of staged, mediatized performances by the
leader that are transmitted to wider audiences through media. Part of
the performative rhetoric of such populist leaders centers around some
kind of a pervasive crisis or threat. With Modi and the BJP, there is
ever present specter of “Urban-Naxals,”
“terrorists,” “anti-nationals,” “Tukde-Tukde Gang,” and “Khan Market
Gang,” all of whom are portrayed as trying to undermine the integrity of
the nation, and in effect polluting the purity of the people.
telegraph |The world’s first living robots have been built using stem cells from frog embryos, in a strange machine-animal hybrid that scientists say is an ‘entirely new life-form.’
Dubbed ‘xenobots’ because they are constructed of biological material
taken from the Xenopus laevis frog, the little bots are the first to be
constructed from living cells.
Researchers are hopeful they could be programmed to move through
arteries scraping away plaque, or swim through oceans removing toxic
microplastic.
And because they are alive, they can replicate and repair themselves if damaged or torn.
“These are novel living machines,” said Dr Joshua Bongard, a computer scientist and robotics expert at the University of Vermont, who co-led the new research.
“They're neither a traditional robot nor a known species of animal.
It's a new class of artifact: a living, programmable organism.”
Living organisms have often been manipulated by humans in the past,
right down to their DNA code, but this is the first time that biological
machines have been built completely from scratch.
Scientists first used the Deep Green supercomputer cluster at the
University of Vermont to create an algorithm that assembled a few
hundred virtual skin and heart cells into a myriad forms and body
shapes, for specific tasks.
Based on the blueprints, a team of biologists from Tufts University, Massachusetts, then assembled the cells into living bots, just one millimetre wide.
CNN | The stakes were high when Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren met at Warren's apartment in Washington, DC, one evening in December 2018. The longtime friends knew that they could soon be running against each other for president.
The
two agreed that if they ultimately faced each other as presidential
candidates, they should remain civil and avoid attacking one another, so
as not to hurt the progressive movement. They also discussed how to
best take on President Donald Trump, and Warren laid out two main
reasons she believed she would be a strong candidate: She could make a
robust argument about the economy and earn broad support from female
voters.
Sanders responded that he did not believe a woman could win.
The
description of that meeting is based on the accounts of four people:
two people Warren spoke with directly soon after the encounter, and two
people familiar with the meeting.
That
evening, Sanders expressed frustration at what he saw as a growing
focus among Democrats on identity politics, according to one of the
people familiar with the conversation. Warren told Sanders she disagreed
with his assessment that a woman could not win, three of the four
sources said.
Sanders denied the characterization of the meeting in a statement to CNN.
"It
is ludicrous to believe that at the same meeting where Elizabeth Warren
told me she was going to run for president, I would tell her that a
woman couldn't win," Sanders said. "It's sad that, three weeks before
the Iowa caucus and a year after that private conversation, staff who
weren't in the room are lying about what happened. What I did say that
night was that Donald Trump is a sexist, a racist and a liar who would
weaponize whatever he could. Do I believe a woman can win in 2020? Of
course! After all, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 3 million votes
in 2016."
Warren's communications director Kristen Orthman declined to comment.
thehill | Democrats who believe Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) had a negative influence on the 2016 general election against President Trump are increasingly expressing worries he’ll hurt the party again in 2020.
The Democrats complaining about Sanders, some of whom have histories with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s
presidential campaign, argue the rhetoric being employed by the Vermont
senator in some cases goes too far in damaging his rivals.
They
say it will make it harder for the party to unify around a nominee, and
they’re particularly worried that supporters of Sanders won’t back any
nominee who isn’t their favored candidate.
“He
needs to stop,” said one Democratic strategist, who is not affiliated
with any of the presidential campaigns. “It's not helpful and it
actually hurts the party. It’s like he didn't learn his lesson the last
time. It’s incredibly short-sighted and terrible.”
This strategist
pointed to the senator’s recent remarks in a Los Angeles Times
editorial board meeting where he said that Trump would eat former Vice
President Joe Biden’s lunch if he is the nominee.
“Joe
Biden is a personal friend of mine, so I’m not here to, you know, to
attack him, but my God, if you are, if you’re a Donald Trump and got
Biden having voted for the war in Iraq, Biden having voted for these
terrible, in my view, trade agreements, Biden having voted for the
bankruptcy bill. Trump will eat his lunch,” Sanders told the Times.
Biden
isn't the only rival Democrat taking fire from Sanders, and it's not
just those who worked on the Clinton campaign who are complaining about
him....
... Sanders is rising in polls and increasingly is seen as a real
contender in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary — and for the
general election. A new poll released Friday found Sanders with 20
percent support and Warren in second with 17 percent, just ahead of
former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D) with 16 percent and Biden with 15 percent.
Some of the Democratic angst about his rhetoric seems linked to the idea that he could actually win.
thescientist | SMA occurs from having two copies of a mutated version of the survival
motor neuron 1 (SMN1) gene, which is responsible for the proteins that
maintain neurons related to muscle movement. Without proper signals from
the brain to move, muscles
begin to atrophy and cause a host of related problems, such as
decreased mobility and an inability to swallow. Many patients die by age
two, and applicants for the lottery must be under two years old. The
drug, given intravenously, provides the brain with
a functional copy of SMN1 through a viral vector.
Pharmaceutical giant Novartis
has begun accepting applications for a lottery-based program to give
away 100 doses of a gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy, a
sometimes-deadly muscle-wasting disease that affects about 1 in 10,000
births. The initiative will provide access to children with SMA living
in countries where the intervention, Zolgensma, has not yet been
approved. But there are far more than 100 patients who could be
eligible.
The company has cited production limitations
as the reason for high treatment costs and limited doses for the
lottery. An independent bioethics committee worked with Novartis to
develop the terms of the lottery.
“It’s a difficult situation,” Ricardo Batista, the father of an infant with SMA who lives in Canada, tells The Globe And Mail. “It’s a lottery where we’re leaving children’s lives up to chance. I don’t think it’s a game that any of us want to play.”
Shortly before I went on "hiatus" last year, I posted about the Nobel given for "directed evolution" and what I casually referred to as "Mubabs" - you know - all those newfangled biologic medicines that have become pervasive mainstays of broadcast and print advertising. I thought it was amusing just how many oddly named mubabs there were and began collecting the oddly named drugs and what they were prescribed for summer before last.
reportlinker | The biologics industry comprises companies manufacturing biological
products that are derived from genetically modified proteins and human
genes.Biologics products include a wide range of recombinant therapeutic
proteins, vaccines, and monoclonal antibodies.
These products
are isolated from natural sources such as human, animal, and
microorganisms by biotechnological methods and other cutting-edge
technologies.
Executive Summary The global
biologics market was worth $221 billion in 2017 and is essentially
segmented into monoclonal antibodies, therapeutic proteins and vaccines.
Biologics are very large complex molecules manufactured in a living
system such as microorganisms, animal cells or plant cells. They are
produced using the recombinant DNA technology and are composed of
sugars, proteins, nucleic acids or a combination of these substances. In
2017, 12 biologics were approved in the USA, 10 in European Union and 7
in Japan. There are over 1000 biologics under development which will
drive the biologics market in the future. Cancer is the therapeutic area
with maximum number of biologics under development and Alzheimer’s has
the least number.
Of the total biologics market across the globe,
Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) accounted for a share of 43% in 2017 and
was worth $94 billion. North America had the highest share in 2017 at
$39.2 billion followed by Western Europe with a market value of $26.4
billion. Asia-Pacific was the third largest market with a share of 12%
and a market value of $11.4 billion. mAbs are biological drugs that
recognize and bind to a specific antigen that causes various chronic
health conditions such as arthritis, cancer, multiple sclerosis. mAbs
can be further segmented based on the presence of different amounts of
murine (mouse or rat origin) sequences in the variable region. The
segments consist of murine mAbs, chimeric mAbs, human and humanized
mAbs. Of these, humanized mAbs accounted for 43% share in the monoclonal
antibody market with a market value of $37.6 billion followed by human
mAbs and chimeric mAbs at $32.9 billion and $18.8 billion respectively.
Murine mAbs accounted only for 5% of the total mAbs market and was worth
$4.7 billion in 2017.
Therapeutic proteins or recombinant
proteins are engineered in the laboratory and works by targeting
therapeutic process which compensates for the deficiency of an essential
protein. Therapeutic proteins include cytokines, peptide hormones and
enzymes. The market for therapeutic protein was worth $80 billion in
2017 accounting for a share of 36% of the global biologics market. North
American market for therapeutic proteins was worth $33 billion in 2017
followed by Western Europe at $17.3 billion. The market in Asia Pacific
was worth $11.3 billion and the markets in South America, Eastern
Europe, Middle East and Africa accounted only for 4%, 6%, 9% and 4%
respectively. Based on the segmentation of therapeutic proteins into
cytokines, peptide hormones and enzymes, peptide hormones accounted for
45% of the market followed by cytokines at 18% and enzymes at 10% share.
Other blood factors also had a share of around 27% in the total
therapeutic proteins market globally.
ineteconomics | Upcoming labor market shortages will devastate Science and Engineering.
This was a mantra heard through much of the 1980s. And yet,
the predicted “seller’s market” for talent never materialized as
unemployment rates actually spiked for newly minted PhDs in technical
fields. In fact, most US economists seemed to think that the very idea
of labor market shortages hardly made sense in a market economy since
wages could simply rise to attract more entrants.
In the late nineties, in the course of research into immigration, I
became convinced that our US high skilled immigration policy simply did
not add up intellectually. As I studied the situation, it became
increasingly clear that the groups purporting to speak for US scientists
in Washington DC (e.g. NSF, NAS, AAU, GUIRR) actually viewed themselves
as advocates for employers in a labor dispute with working scientists
and were focused on undermining scientists’ economic bargaining power
through labor market intervention and manipulation.
Increasingly the research seemed to show that interventions by
government, universities and industry in the US labor market for
scientists, especially after the University system stopped growing
organically in the early 1970s were exceedingly problematic. By 1998, it
was becoming obvious that the real problems of high skilled immigration
were actually rather well understood by an entire class of policy
actors who were not forthcoming about the levers of policy they were
using to influence policy. The NSF/NAS/GUIRR complex appeared to be
feigning incompetence by issuing labor market studies that blatantly
ignored wages and market dynamics and instead focused on demographics
alone.
During the late 1990s I became convinced that in order to orchestrate
lower wages for scientists, there would have to have been a competent
economic study done to guide the curious policy choices that had
resulted in the flooded market for STEM PhDs. For this theory to be
correct, the private economic study would have had to have been done
studying both supply and demand so that the demand piece could later be
removed, resulting in the bizarre ‘supply only’ demographic studies
released to the public. Through a bit of economic detective work, I
began a painstaking search of the literature and discovered just such a
study immediately preceded the release of the foolish demography studies
that provided the public justification for the Immigration Act of 1990.
This needle was located in the haystack of documents the NSF was forced
to turn over when the House investigated the NSF for faking alarms
about a shortfall.
The title of this study was “The Pipeline For Scientific and
Technical Personnel: Past Lessons Applied to Future Changes of Interest
to Policy-Makers and Human Resource Specialists.” The study was undated
and carried no author’s name. Eventually I gathered my courage to call
up the National Science Foundation and demand to speak to the study’s
author. After some hemming and hawing, I was put through to a voice
belonging to a man I had never heard of named Myles Boylan. In our
conversation, it became clear that it was produced in 1986, as
predicted, immediately before the infamous and now disgraced demographic
shortfall studies.
The author turned out, again as predicted, not to be a demographer,
but a highly competent Ph.D. in economics who was fully aware of the
functioning of the wage mechanism. But, as the study makes clear, the
problem being solved was not a problem of talent but one of price:
scientific employers had become alarmed that they would have to pay
competitive market wages to US Ph.D.s with other options. The study’s
aim was not to locate talent but to weaken its ability to bargain with
employers by using foreign labor to undermine the ability to negotiate
for new Ph.D.s
That study was a key link in a chain of evidence leading to an
entirely different view of the real origins of the Immigration Act of
1990s and the H1-B visa classification. In this alternative account,
American industry and Big Science convinced official Washington to put
in place a series of policies that had little to do with any demographic
concerns. Their aims instead were to keep American scientific employers
from having to pay the full US market price of high skilled labor. They
hoped to keep the US research system staffed with employees classified
as “trainees,” “students,” and “post-docs” for the benefit of employers.
The result would be to render the US scientific workforce more docile
and pliable to authority and senior researchers by attempting to ensure
this labor market sector is always flooded largely by employer-friendly
visa holders who lack full rights to respond to wage signals in the US
labor market.
NAP | The academic research community in the United
States is heading toward an era of unparalleled discovery, productivity,
and excitement. In fields as diverse as computing and materials
science, high-energy physics and psychology, cosmology and the
neurosciences, university-based research will open new worlds of
knowledge and make possible innovations not yet imagined. The research
enterprise holds great promise for advancing social, health, and
economic goals into the next century.
The academic research community in the United States is headingtoward an era of unparalleled discovery, productivity, and excitement.In fields as diverse as computing and materials science, high-energyphysics and psychology, cosmology and the neurosciences, university-basedresearch will open new worlds of knowledge and make possible innovationsnot yet imagined.
This hopeful vision for the U.S. academic
research enterprise motivated the working group's deliberations and
analyses. To achieve this vision, the enterprise must be guided wisely
by current and future generations of investigators, university
administrators, the sponsors of research, and the broader public. The
working group's strong and positive presentation of this vision assumes
that such guidance will prevail.
Dynamic change is a central component of this
vision. The research enterprise of the future will be unlike the one of
today. Significant opportunities and challenges can be expected in the
decades ahead.
A GLOBAL RESEARCH SYSTEM
International research cooperation will become a
pervasive feature of the U.S. academic research enterprise in the next
century. Multinational research arrangements will be essential for
studying such phenomena as large-scale environmental effects and the
most demanding experimental problems in the physical and biological
sciences. The research communities of both industrialized and developing
countries will rely more and more on cooperative ventures to address
these and other research problems. Just as foreign-based companies now
support research in U.S. universities, in the future more governments
and industries are likely to support the research activities of other
nations.
Over the next few decades, the number of nations
with highly effective research systems will grow. Their university,
government, and industry laboratories will collaborate in novel,
imaginative, and effective ways. Global competition in science and
technology will require that the United States pay close attention to
the research activities of other countries, especially those targeting
economic growth as their primary research goal. This will be
particularly true for the Western European and Pacific Rim countries,
which have become fierce competitors in the knowledge-intensive global
marketplace. Several of the newly democratized nations of Eastern
International research cooperation will become a pervasive featureof the U.S. academic research enterprise in the next century.
Weinstein holding out on an Epstein podcast because of a creepy threatening dinner at which he was told not to put out what he thinks and knows?
Weinstein meets Epstein before Florida charges. Goes to Epstein's house where Epstein plainly signals that he's recording guests, Epstein meets Weinstein in a dining room where Epstein desecrates the flag, Weinstein is not judgemental about consenting adults, though he believe Epstein is Humbert Humbert not living up to the requirements of his construct role.
Science people continued talking to Epstein after charges because he funded cowboy science disagreeable to the "woke" crowd. Science people knew that it wasn't Epstein funding them, but that it was "something else" funding them through the Epstein construct. The Govt. stepped away from blue sky science in 1986 under Reagan.
The Govt underfunds science. So when the "rich guy" comes into the room, it matters. The NSF National Academy of Science under Eric Block and the Government and University Research Round Table conspired to destroy the bargaining power of scientists as laborers by implementing a replacement negroe program for science. The Reagan Govt. realized it could import scientists from China, Taiwan, South Korea and India.
H1-B's and the 1990 Immigration Reform Act took China from 0-60 in half a second and launched our current great power nemesis. The Vannevar Bush Endless Frontier Agreement was abandoned in favor of importing cheap, foreign STEM workers. Asymmetric access to the labor market is fundamental right of citizenship argues Weinstein, and this fundamental right was stripped pursuant to capital interests in removing the privileged labor value of American STEM workers and replacing them with cheap, foreign STEM workers at a 100-1 ratio.
Vulture capitalism metastatically destroyed American fundamental science! Sam Harris makes some weak and trifling "free market" mouth noises, but realizes he's up against an informational rock and a hard place in Weinstein. Then the discussion veers back to creepy-assed Epstein and the holes he was filling....,
MIT | On January 10, 2020, the Executive Committee of the MIT
Corporation, the Institute’s
governing board, released the results of Goodwin Procter’s
fact-finding regarding interactions between Jeffrey Epstein and the
Institute.
In September 2019, at the request of President L. Rafael
Reif and the Executive Committee,
MIT's General Counsel retained the firm to design and
conduct the fact-finding process.
moonofalabama | I was shocked that not one Iranian missile was intercepted. It appears
CENTCOM did not even have a capability to intercept missiles at the Ayn
al-Assad Air Base. That is military incompetence. A slew of officers
should be relieved for that
egregious incompetence including the CINC CENTCOM. No wonder the neocon
wonder boys in the Pentagon and White House decided not to join the
dance in the wee hours after the Iranian strike. Talk about scared
straight.
No U.S. air or missile defense against the incoming projectiles was observed.
The message from Iran is thus: "We can attack all your bases and you can do nothing to prevent that."
The missile attack came despite Donald Trump's threats to Iran. It called his bluff.
Further reactions will depend on the U.S. reactions
to the demand of the Iraqi parliament that all foreign forces leave
Iraq. Should the U.S. leave Iraq peacefully all will be well. Should it
insist on staying U.S. soldiers will die.
FP | On March 25, Houthi forces in Yemen fired seven missiles at Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia confirmed the launches and asserted that it successfully
intercepted all seven.
This wasn’t true. It’s not just that falling debris in Riyadh killed
at least one person and sent two more to the hospital. There’s no
evidence that Saudi Arabia intercepted any missiles at all. And that
raises uncomfortable questions not just about the Saudis, but about the
United States, which seems to have sold them — and its own public — a
lemon of a missile defense system.
Social media images do appear to show that Saudi Patriot batteries
firing interceptors. But what these videos show are not successes. One
interceptor explodes catastrophically just after launch, while another
makes a U-turn in midair and then comes screaming back at Riyadh, where
it explodes on the ground.
It is possible, of course, that one of the other interceptors did the
job, but I’m doubtful. That is because my colleagues at the Middlebury
Institute of International Studies and I closely examined two different
missile attacks on Saudi Arabia from November and December 2017.
In both cases, we found that it is very unlikely the missiles were
shot down, despite officials’ statements to the contrary. Our approach
was simple: We mapped where the debris, including the missile airframe
and warhead, fell and where the interceptors were located. In both
cases, a clear pattern emerged. The missile itself falls in Riyadh,
while the warhead separates and flies over the defense and lands near
its target. One warhead fell
within a few hundred meters of Terminal 5 at Riyadh’s King Khalid
International Airport. The second warhead, fired a few weeks later,
nearly demolished a Honda dealership. In both cases, it was clear to us
that, despite official Saudi claims, neither missile was shot down. I am
not even sure that Saudi Arabia even tried to intercept the first missile in November.
The point is there is no evidence that Saudi Arabia has intercepted
any Houthi missiles during the Yemen conflict. And that raises a
disquieting thought: Is there any reason to think the Patriot system
even works?
strategic-culture |Days after the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, new and
important information is coming to light from a speech given by the
Iraqi prime minister. The story behind Soleimani’s assassination seems
to go much deeper than what has thus far been reported, involving Saudi
Arabia and China as well the U.S. dollar’s role as the global reserve
currency.
The Iraqi prime minister, Adil Abdul-Mahdi, has revealed details of
his interactions with Trump in the weeks leading up to Soleimani’s
assassination in a speech to the Iraqi parliament. He tried to explain
several times on live television how Washington had been browbeating him
and other Iraqi members of parliament to toe the American line, even
threatening to engage in false-flag sniper shootings of both protesters
and security personnel in order to inflame the situation, recalling
similar modi operandi seen in Cairo in 2009, Libya in 2011, and Maidan
in 2014. The purpose of such cynicism was to throw Iraq into chaos.
newyorker | Members of the Trump Administration have taken direct aim at China’s
ambitions. Last fall, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that America
and its allies must insure that “China retains only its proper place in
the world.” During a visit to Europe, he said, “China wants to be the
dominant economic and military power of the world, spreading its
authoritarian vision for society and its corrupt practices worldwide.”
The Administration’s argument, in its bluntest form, frames China as a
hardened foe, too distant from American values to be susceptible to
diplomacy. In April, Kiron Skinner, Pompeo’s director of policy
planning, said in a public talk, “This is a fight with a really
different civilization.” She added that China represented “the first
time that we will have a great power competitor that is not Caucasian.”
(The comments caused an uproar. In August, Skinner left the State
Department.) Behind closed doors, Trump aides dismiss Skinner’s
invocation of race. But they also liken China to such sworn enemies of
America as Iran and the Soviet Union, and argue that only hard-line
pressure can “crush” its expansion.
Half a
century after Henry Kissinger led the secret negotiations that brought
Nixon to China, he still meets with leaders in Beijing and Washington.
At the age of ninety-six, he has come to believe that the two sides are
falling into a spiral of hostile perceptions. “I’m very concerned,” he
told me, his baritone now almost a growl. “The way the relationship has
deteriorated in recent months will feed, on both sides, the image that
the other one is a permanent adversary.” By the end of 2019, the
Washington establishment had all but abandoned engagement with China.
But there was not yet a strategy to replace it.
In
the void, there was a clamor to set rules for dealing with China in
business, geopolitics, and culture, all surrounding a central question:
Is the contest a new cold war?
NationalReview |Ralph Northam
is about to make the biggest tactical mistake in Virginia since
Cornwallis decided to park his army at Yorktown. With his attempt to
force local commonwealth’s attorneys and sheriffs in Second Amendment
sanctuaries to enforce his unconstitutional gun laws, Governor Northam
is setting himself up for a catastrophic failure. In fact, there’s no
way for Northam to win the fight he seems intent on picking with
Virginia gun owners and Second Amendment sanctuaries.
The governor isn’t being helped by fellow Democrats such as U.S.
congressman Donald McEachin, who said the governor should call out the
National Guard to enforce the law, or Attorney General Mark Herring, who
blithely says he expects that the laws will be followed once they’re on
the books.
There are also Democrats, such as Delegate David Toscano, who have
been comparing the Second Amendment–sanctuary movement to the Massive
Resistance movement that unfolded in Virginia in the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education
decision in 1954. Massive Resistance came about after Democratic
governor Thomas B. Stanley organized a state-level opposition movement
to the integration of public schools in Virginia in the late 1950s. To
compare it to today’s Second Amendment–sanctuary movement is to compare
apples and oranges on a couple of different levels.
First of all, the Second Amendment–sanctuary movement is morally
just, unlike the Massive Resistance movement of the late ’50s and early
’60s. The Second Amendment–sanctuary movement isn’t about curtailing
rights, but rather about protecting their free exercise.
gazette | Air Force Global Strike Command, which is based in Louisiana, has
confirmed that it conducts counterdrone exercises out of F.E. Warren Air
Force Base in Cheyenne, where it is based.
The command oversees
underground Minuteman silos spread across northeastern Colorado,
southeastern Wyoming and western Nebraska, the area where the drones
have been spotted nightly the past two weeks.
The Air Force isn’t claiming ownership of the drones, but neither is it denying it.
F.E.
Warren didn’t respond to an emailed question Friday on whether its
counterdrone effort had anything to do with the recent sightings.
A Federal Aviation Administration map of the region where the drones
have been spotted — Logan, Phillips, Sedgwick and Yuma counties — is
pocked with red dots of where drones are forbidden, restricted airspace
presumably above missile silos.
The Air Force counterdrone program
at Warren, which includes extensive testing of civilian drones, relies
on innovative technology including Dedrone, a system developed in Europe
that detects and tracks small civilian drones using the radio signals
they require for control.
SCMP | The real target of the US assassination of Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani – China
The US has been trying to provoke China into a military conflict since 2013 through the South China Sea, Taiwan, North Korea, Xinjiang and recently Hong Kong.
China will not be able to avoid being dragged into a war over Soleimani’s assassination
Iranian aggression but, in reality, it may actually be a strategic provocation against
China.
To understand why this is the case and see how this particular
action is merely one piece of a larger puzzle, one must take into
account all of America’s foreign policy actions. Since
the end of World War II, US foreign policy has been obsessed with how
to maintain the nation’s superpower status. It maintains strong
alliances like Nato and a military presence in virtually all corners of the planet as part of that strategy.
Over
the years, influential policymakers such as Zbigniew Brzezinski have
argued that the US must go further to ensure supremacy. For some, this
includes designating Iran, Russia and China as enemies because the US
doesn’t have total control over these countries, and stirring up Islamic
extremism because all three of these countries have large Muslim
populations that can be turned into terrorists against their own
countries.
By
creating Islamic extremism in these territories, the home-grown Muslim
terrorists could then battle these foreign governments on behalf of the
US, thus reducing the need to sacrifice American soldiers.
As a result, such proxy wars have become a permanent fixture on the world stage. The
invasion of Iraq, thecivil warin Syria, the bombing of Libya and many other actions have created extremist groups such asIslamic State that are direct threats to Iran, Russia and even China.
reuters | Accompanied by Assad, Putin visited the Old City of Damascus including, the 8th-century Umayyad mosque and an ancient church.
"I think Putin is there to reinforce the Russian
position in Syria and with the person of Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad, especially as Iran's position has been indelibly weakened,
since Soleimani was essentially Iran in Syria," said David Lesch, an
expert on Syria.
Though Iran and Russia worked
together to beat back the anti-Assad insurgency, tensions have
occasionally surfaced between them on the ground, where analysts say
they have been vying for influence.
Putin is due to hold talks on Wednesday with President Tayyip Erdogan
in Turkey, which has sent forces into much of northern Syria to beat
back Kurdish-led forces that had been backed by the United States.
Putin's previous trip to Syria was in 2017, when he visited Russia's Hmeymim air base.
Putin told Assad that much had been done to restore Syrian statehood,
while Assad thanked Putin for his assistance in restoring peaceful life
in Syria, Russia's Interfax news agency reported, citing the Kremlin. Putin will visit several facilities in Syria during the trip, it added.
Soleimani, the Iranian general killed last week, had played a
critical role in supervising Iran-backed ground forces to support the
Syrian government during the war and coordinated with Moscow ahead of
its intervention in 2015.
sicsempertyrannis | The tape was filmed in several Christian churches in Aleppo where these two men (Soleimani and al-Muhandis) are described from the pulpit and in the street as "heroic martyr victims of criminal American state terrorism." Pompeo likes to describe Soleimani as the instigator of "massacre" and "genocide" in Syria. Strangely (irony) the Syriac, Armenian Uniate and Presbyterian ministers of the Gospel in this tape do not see him and al-Muhandis that way. They see them as men who helped to defend Aleppo and its minority populations from the wrath of Sunni jihadi Salafists like ISIS and the AQ affiliates in Syria. They see them and Lebanese Hizbullah as having helped save these Christians by fighting alongside the Syrian Army, Russia and other allies like the Druze and Christian militias.
It should be remembered that the US was intent on and may still be intent on replacing the multi-confessional government of Syria with the forces of medieval tyranny. Everyone who really knows anything about the Syrian Civil War knows that the essential character of the New Syrian Army, so beloved by McCain, Graham and the other Ziocons was always jihadi and it was always fully supported by Wahhabi Saudi Arabia as a project in establishing Sunni triumphalism. They and the self proclaimed jihadis of HTS (AQ) are still supported in Idlib and western Aleppo provinces both by the Saudis and the present Islamist and neo-Ottoman government of Turkey.
Well pilgrims, there are Christmas trees in the newly re-built Christian churches of Aleppo and these, my brothers and sisters in Christ remember who stood by them in "the last ditch."
"Currently there are at least 600 churches and 500,000–1,000,000 Christians in Iran." wiki below. Are they dhimmis? Yes, but they are there. There are no churches in Saudi Arabia, not a single one and Christianity is a banned religion. These are our allies?
moonofalabama | Trump said he would ask Iraq to pay for the bases the U.S. has built
should the U.S. troops be kicked out of Iraq. The U.S. already has binding legal agreements with Iraq which stipulate that the bases, and all fixed installations the U.S. has built there, are the property of Iraq.
Trump had already asked
Iraqi Prime Ministers -twice- if the U.S. could get Iraq's oil as
reward for invading and destroying their country. The requests were
rejected. Now we learn that Trump also uses gangster methods
(ar) to get the oil of Iraq. The talk by the Iraqi Prime Minister Abdul
Mahdi happened during the recent parliament session in Iraq (machine
translation):
Al-Halbousi, Speaker of the Iraqi Council of
Representatives, blocked the speech of Mr. Abdul Mahdi in the scheduled
session to discuss the decision to remove American forces from Iraq.
At the beginning of the session, Al-Halbousi left the presidential
seat and sat next to Mr. Abdul-Mahdi, after his request to cut off the
live broadcast of the session, a public conversation took place between
the two parties. The voice of Adel Abdul Mahdi was raised.
Mr. Abdul Mahdi spoke with an angry tone, saying:
"The Americans are the ones who destroyed the country and wreaked
havoc on it. They are those who refuse to complete building the
electrical system and infrastructure projects. They have bargained for
the reconstruction of Iraq in exchange for giving up 50% of Iraqi oil
imports, so I refused and decided to go to China and concluded an
important and strategic agreement with it, and today Trump is trying to
cancel this important agreement."
The American President's threatened the Iraqi Prime Minister to
liquidate him directly with the Minister of Defense. The Marines are the
third party that sniped the demonstrators and the security men:
Abdul Mahdi continued:
"After my return from China, Trump called me and asked me to cancel
the agreement, so I also refused, and he threatened me with massive
demonstrations that would topple me.
Indeed, the demonstrations started
and then Trump called, threatening to escalate in the event of
non-cooperation and responding to his wishes, so that the third party
(Marines snipers) would target the demonstrators and security forces and
kill them from the highest structures and the US embassy in an attempt
to pressure me and submit to his wishes and cancel the China agreement,
so I did not respond and submitted my resignation and the Americans
still insist to this day on canceling the China agreement and when the
defense minister said that who kills the demonstrators is a third party,
Trump called me immediately and physically threatened me and defense
minister in the event of talk about the third party."
libertyblitzkrieg | Many of you probably have heard of the second amendment sanctuary
movement, which consists of municipalities and counties across the U.S.
passing resolutions pledging not to enforce additional gun control
measures infringing upon the right to bear arms. The current movement
traces its origins back to Effingham County in southern Illinois, which
passed a resolution in April 2018 calling the county a second amendment
“sanctuary”, essentially a vow to ignore gun control legislation
proposed by Illinois state lawmakers. This particular tactic gained
traction not just within Illinois, where 67 of 102 counties have now
passed similar resolutions, but throughout the country.
The movement started gaining more attention over the past couple of
months following the blistering momentum it found in Virginia after
Democrats won the state legislature in November. As of this writing, 87
out of Virginia’s 95 counties have passed such resolutions and it’s
important to note that virtually all of them were passed in the two
months since the election. In other words, this is happening at a very
rapid pace.
Before discussing the significance of all this, let’s address some
thoughtful criticism of the movement from Michael Boldin of the Tenth
Amendment Center. His primary point of contention is that the
resolutions these municipalities and counties are passing — unlike
immigration sanctuary ordinances passed in places such as San Francisco —
carry no weight of the law.
Specifically, they’re not passing ordinances, but rather resolutions,
which Michael describes as “non-binding political statements.” In other
words, it’s all just talk at this stage and he’s frustrated that much
of the media coverage makes it seem what’s being passed is more concrete
than it actually is. Although I disagree with his overall assessment of
the importance of what’s happening, he makes many good points and puts
some much needed meat on the bone of this issue for those getting up to
speed. He published an instructive video on the topic, which I recommend checking out.
americanpartisan | Rolling into 2020, all eyes are on Virginia following Governor Ralph
Northam’s declared intention to pass onerous new gun control laws that
could mandate the forced confiscation of common semi-automatic firearms
which have been legal for Virginians to own for more than a century,
ever since their invention. The first date in the coming showdown to be
aware of is Monday, January 20th, when the Virginia Citizens Defense League,
a pro-Second Amendment group, is organizing a “Lobby Day” rally to be
held at the state capitol to oppose these new gun control laws. It’s
estimated that thousands of Virginians will attend the VCDL rally, many
arriving in buses from all over the commonwealth.
In response to Northam’s plans, 90% of Virginia’s counties and many
of its independent cities have declared themselves to be “second
amendment sanctuaries.” After receiving vociferous pushback, Northam has
recently stepped away from promising the outright confiscation of
currently owned semi-auto weapons, and he is instead now demanding that
gun owners register “grandfathered” weapons with the state government.
Based on recent experiences in New York, Connecticut and other states
that mandated registration, it’s assumed that very few Virginians will
comply, instantly turning hundreds of thousands of otherwise law-abiding
citizens into paper felons.
What will Northam’s response be to mass defiance of his gun control
edicts? Common investigative tools could easily be used to locate
non-compliant Virginians and arrest them on felony gun charges. At least
some gun confiscation raids would inevitably lead to armed resistance,
beginning a cycle of action and reaction that could, over time, grow
into a low-intensity guerrilla conflict or a “dirty civil war.”
How plausible is this unwanted outcome? And what forms might a civil
war over gun rights take? In certain respects we are in uncharted
waters, because there are some new and unique variables in the known and
studied civil war and counter-insurgency equations that are far out of
line with available historical precedents. Chief among them: in all of
history there has never been a civil war where, at the outset of
hostilities, the resisting indigenous population was armed to the teeth
with rifles capable of making 500 to 1,000 yard aimed precision shots.
Never.
WaPo | Van Cleave has appealed to his supporters not to come bristling with
intimidating long guns — including assault-style rifles such as the
AR-15 — and politely suggested that militia members are welcome but do
not need to provide security. Police will take care of that, he said,
“not to mention enough citizens armed with handguns to take over a
modern midsized country.”
That
firepower is a concern for gun-control advocates, who also plan to turn
out on Jan. 20 — Martin Luther King Jr. Day — for what is a traditional
day of citizen lobbying at the state Capitol.
“There’s
a dangerous intersection here of speech and guns, and what I think is
critically important is that we don’t see the sort of armed intimidation
and even violence that resulted . . . in Charlottesville,” said Adam
Skaggs, chief counsel and policy director at Giffords Law Center.
Democratic
lawmakers who now control both houses of the General Assembly are
considering making rules changes to limit where guns can be carried when
the legislature convenes on Wednesday.
Visitors
are currently allowed to bring guns onto Capitol Square and — with a
concealed-weapons permit — into the Capitol itself and the adjacent
Pocahontas Building. Firearms are even permitted in the House gallery,
though the Senate gallery is off- limits.
townhall | See, for too long we were asking the wrong question when tinpot
dictators dared hurt Americans. We asked, “What would a gender-fluid
Oppression Studies major at Yale do?” As I have observed before, the
correct question is “WWJC do?” – “What would Julius Caesar do?”
Trump
ordered hard hits at five Shiite militia weapon sites, and not with any
warnings either. They got one of ours, we got about two dozen of
theirs. Like the old joke about 1,000 lawyers at the bottom of the sea,
that’s a good start.
The Iranians, whose Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps is the ultimate source of most of the Shiite terror in the
world, decided to respond in what they thought was a clever way: send a
few thousand of their camo-clad dummies to attack the embassy and hope
and pray a bunch of them got mowed down on camera. In the meantime, wave
a lot of banners, burn some stuff, and pound on the reinforced glass
for the press’s benefit.
But apparently, no one told the
“mourners,” as the austere scholars at the endlessly useless New York
Times dubbed the members of Islamic Antifa, that they were supposed to
get smoked. They went home with the embassy unseized. Getting martyred en masse is not that much fun when you’re just one sucker out of dozens – heck, they may run of virgins.
You don’t get to hurt Americans. Ever If you do, bad things will happen.
Welcome to the Trump Doctrine.
We
don’t want an escalation and we should show restraint where we can –
but killing Americans must be a red line, a real one, not an Obama one.
If this does escalate into a major confrontation, we need to keep some
principles in mind. We need to do more than “send messages." Pain should
be our message. Any strike should have a tactical (if not strategic
effect). Hitting the arms caches means they have fewer arms, and they
got the message. And we focus on destroying what the decisionmakers in
Tehran care about: sink some capital ships, vaporize a bunch of
aircraft, flatten a refinery. It’s even better when it can support the
Persian patriots in Iran who want to hang their oppressors from the lamp
posts.
“Proportionality” is a sucker’s game. Our goal should be
pain. Screw with America and we hurt you, mullahs. Personally. Not just
the idiots who do your dirty work. You and your toys.
nationalinterest | No country has ever possessed a reliable defense against a long-range
strategic weapon. Instead, nuclear states count on the threat of atomic
counterattack -- "mutual assured destruction" is the Cold War term --
in order to deter a nuclear attack.
Avangard could become just another strategic weapon that that United
States counters with strategic weapons of its own. "Our response would
be our deterrent force, which would be the triad and the nuclear
capabilities that we have to respond to such a threat," Hyten said.
Hypersonic weapons might be more useful, and more effective, if they
do not carry nuclear warheads. In July 2018, Michael Griffin, the U.S.
Defense Department's undersecretary of defense for research and
engineering, warned about the "tactical capability that these sorts of weapons bring to theater conflicts or regional conflicts."
Griffin characterized hypersonic vehicles as "very quick response,
high speed, highly maneuverable, difficult to find and track and kill."
With Avangard reportedly combat-ready, Russia competes with China to
be the first country to deploy a hypersonic weapon. China in October
2019 publicly debuted its DF-17 hypersonic surface-to-surface missile
during a military parade in Beijing.
It’s unclear whether the DF-17 actually is operational. It’s also
unclear how many DF-17s China possesses and how it plans to use the
missiles during wartime. Most importantly, it’s not obvious that China
has built a sensor network capable of selecting targets for the DF-17.
craigmurray | Developed by Daniel Bethlehem when Legal Adviser to first Netanyahu’s
government and then Blair’s, the Bethlehem Doctrine is that states have
a right of “pre-emptive self-defence” against “imminent” attack. That
is something most people, and most international law experts and judges,
would accept. Including me.
What very few people, and almost no international lawyers, accept is
the key to the Bethlehem Doctrine – that here “Imminent” – the word used
so carefully by Pompeo – does not need to have its normal meanings of
either “soon” or “about to happen”. An attack may be deemed “imminent”,
according to the Bethlehem Doctrine, even if you know no details of it
or when it might occur. So you may be assassinated by a drone or bomb
strike – and the doctrine was specifically developed to justify such
strikes – because of “intelligence” you are engaged in a plot, when that
intelligence neither says what the plot is nor when it might occur. Or
even more tenuous, because there is intelligence you have engaged in a
plot before, so it is reasonable to kill you in case you do so again.
I am not inventing the Bethlehem Doctrine. It has been the formal
legal justification for drone strikes and targeted assassinations by the
Israeli, US and UK governments for a decade. Here it is
in academic paper form, published by Bethlehem after he left government
service (the form in which it is adopted by the US, UK and Israeli
Governments is classified information).
While the Bethlehem Doctrine allows you to kill somebody because they
might be going to attack someone, sometime, but you don’t know who or
when, there is a reasonable expectation that if you are claiming people
have already been killed you should be able to say who and when.
The truth of the matter is that if you take every American killed
including and since 9/11, in the resultant Middle East related wars,
conflicts and terrorist acts, well over 90% of them have been
killed by Sunni Muslims financed and supported out of Saudi Arabia and
its gulf satellites, and less than 10% of those Americans have been
killed by Shia Muslims tied to Iran.
This is a horribly inconvenient fact for US administrations which,
regardless of party, are beholden to Saudi Arabia and its money. It is,
the USA affirms, the Sunnis who are the allies and the Shias who are the
enemy. Yet every journalist or aid worker hostage who has been horribly
beheaded or otherwise executed has been murdered by a Sunni, every
jihadist terrorist attack in the USA itself, including 9/11, has been
exclusively Sunni, the Benghazi attack was by Sunnis, Isil are Sunni, Al
Nusra are Sunni, the Taliban are Sunni and the vast majority of US
troops killed in the region are killed by Sunnis.
Precisely which are these hundreds of deaths for which the Shia
forces of Soleimani were responsible? Is there a list? It is of course a
simple lie. Its tenuous connection with truth relates to the Pentagon’s
estimate – suspiciously upped repeatedly since Iran became the designated enemy – that back during the invasion of Iraq itself,
83% of US troop deaths were at the hands of Sunni resistance and 17% of
of US troop deaths were at the hands of Shia resistance, that is 603
troops. All the latter are now lain at the door of Soleimani,
remarkably.
srategic-culture | A remarkably non-propagandistic news-report, in the New York Times,
by Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman and Mark Mazzetti, included powerful
evidence that the impeachment-effort against US President Donald Trump
is motivated, in part if not totally, by a desire by US Senators and
Representatives — as well as by career employees of the US Departments
of Defense, State Department, and other agencies regarding national
defense — to increase the sales-volumes of US-made weapons to foreign
countries. Whereas almost all of the contents of that article merely
repeat what has already been reported, this article in the Times
states repeatedly that boosting corporations such as Lockheed Martin,
General Dynamics, Boeing, and Northrop-Grumman, has been a major — if
not the very top — motivation driving US international relations, and
that at least regarding Ukraine, Trump has not been supporting, but has
instead been trying to block, those weapons-sales — and creating massive
enemies in the US Government as a direct consequence.
In an Oval Office meeting on May 23, with Mr. Sondland, Mr.
Mulvaney and Mr. Blair in attendance, Mr. Trump batted away assurances
that [Ukraine’s current President] Mr. Zelensky was committed
to confronting corruption. “They are all corrupt, they are all terrible
people,” Mr. Trump said, according to testimony in the impeachment
inquiry.
In other words, Trump, allegedly, said that he didn’t want “terrible
people” to be buying, and to receive, US-made weapons (especially not as
US aid — free of charge, a gift from America’s taxpayers).
The article simply assumes that Trump was wrong that “they are all terrible people.”
Indeed, Trump himself has sold hundreds of billions of dollars worth of US-made weapons to the Royal Saud family
who own Saudi Arabia, and he refuses to back down about those sales on
account of that family’s having been behind the widely-reported
torture-murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi,
and on account of their effort since 2015 to starve into submission — by
bombing the food-supplies to — the Houthis in adjoining Yemen, and on
account of their using US weapons in order to achieve that
mass-murdering goal. Consequently, even if Trump is correct about
Ukraine’s Government, he would still have a lot of explaining to do, in
order to cancel congressionally authorized US weapons-sales to Ukraine
but not to Saudi Arabia.
WaPo | At
his resort in Florida, the president was told that Soleimani was going
to be coming to Baghdad; senior officials felt he was taunting the
United States by showing up in the Iraqi capital, implying that he could
move around with impunity.
Calls
among the national security principals were convened by the vice
president throughout the week after initial discussions on Sunday to
kill Soleimani, a senior administration official said.
Officials
reminded Trump that after the Iranians mined ships, downed the U.S.
drone and allegedly attacked a Saudi oil facility, he had not responded.
Acting now, they said, would send a message: “The argument is, if you
don’t ever respond to them, they think they can get by with anything,”
one White House official said.
Trump
was also motivated to act by what he felt was negative coverage after
his 2019 decision to call off the airstrike after Iran downed the U.S.
surveillance drone, officials said. Trump was also frustrated that the
details of his internal deliberations had leaked out and felt he looked
weak, the officials said.
The
United States tracked Soleimani’s movements for several days, keeping
Trump apprised, and decided that their best opportunity to kill him
would be near the Baghdad airport, the senior administration official
said.
He
ultimately gave final approval just before the strike, a senior
administration official said, making the call from his golf resort.
Trump
also had history on his mind. The president has long fixated on 2012
attacks on U.S. compounds in Benghazi, Libya, and the Obama
administration’s response to them, said lawmakers and aides who have
spoken to him, and he felt the response to this week’s attack on the
embassy and the killing of an American contractor would make him look
stronger compared with his predecessor.
“Benghazi
has loomed large in his mind,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) in
an interview, explaining the response this week.
Graham
was at Mar-a-Lago on Monday and said the president told him he was
concerned they “were going to hit us again” and that he was considering
hitting the Iranians.
No specific plan was ready to kill Soleimani, but it was on Trump’s mind, Graham said.
“He
was more thinking out loud, but he was determined to do something to
protect Americans. Killing the contractor really changed the equation,”
Graham said.
“He was saying, ‘This guy is a bad guy, he’s up to no good, we have to do something,’ ” Graham said.
theguardian | Iran has already vowed to respond to a killing it described as an act of
war. The country’s ambassador to the UN said on Saturday that it would not go unanswered. “There will be harsh revenge,” Majid Takht Ravanchi told CNN. “The time, the place, will be decided by Iran.”
The US Department of Homeland Security said the response could include cyber-attacks.
More conventional targets might include US installations, diplomatic
and military personnel, or oil facilities. US citizens have been warned
to leave Iraq.
Billboards with Suleimani’s instantly recognisable face appeared on
major streets in Iran overnight, many bearing a warning from the supreme
leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that “harsh revenge” awaits the US.
The Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, also said Washington did not
realise what a great mistake it had made, during a visit to pay
condolences to the general’s family. US citizens would be feeling the
impact for years to come, he said.
The Baghdad funeral procession began at the Imam Kadhim shrine, one of the most revered sites in Shia Islam.
Mohammed Fadl, a mourner dressed in black, said he had come out in a
show of loyalty and defiance. “It is a painful strike, but it will not
shake us,” he said.
Two helicopters hovered over the crowd of mourners, who included
Iraq’s prime minister, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, and leaders of Iran-backed
militias.
Iran’s envoy to Baghdad, Iraj Masjedi, told Iranian state media that
Abdul-Mahdi had insisted on holding a public funeral for Suleimani and
al-Muhandis in Baghdad.
scroll | Former National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon on Friday said that the Citizenship Amendment Act and the withdrawal of special status of Jammu and Kashmir
under Article 370 of the Constitution had led to India being isolated
from the international community, even by its traditional allies, the Hindustan Times reported.
“There
has been no meaningful international support for this series of
actions, apart from a few committed members of the diaspora and a ragtag bunch of Euro MPs
from the extreme right,” Menon said at an event in New Delhi. He said
many world leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and even King Harald V of Norway have criticised India’s actions.
Merkel had on November 1, during a visit to India, said that the present situation in Kashmir is “not sustainable”.
“We seem to know that we are isolated,” Menon said, referring to External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s
decision to skip a meeting with the foreign affairs committee in the
United States due to the presence of Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, who
has been critical of India’s actions in Kashmir.
Earlier today a U.S. drone or helicopter killed Major General Qassim Soleimani, the famous commander of the Iranian Quds ('Jerusalem') force, while he left the airport of Baghdad where he had just arrived. He had planned to attend the funeral of the 31 Iraqi soldiers the U.S. had killed on December 29 at the Syrian-Iraqi border near Al-Qaim.
The Quds force is the external arm of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary
Guards Corps. Soleiman was responsible for all relations between Iran
and political and militant movements outside of Iran. Hajji Qassim
advised the Lebanese Hisbullah during the 2006 war against Israel. His
support for Iraqi groups enabled them to kick the U.S. invaders out of
Iraq. He was the man responsible for, and successful in, defeating the
Islamic State in iraq and Syria. In 2015 Soleimani traveled to Moscow
and convinced Russia to intervene in Syria. His support for the Houthi
in Yemen enabled them to withstand the Saudi attackers.
Soleimani had arrived in Baghdad on a normal flight from Lebanon. He did
not travel in secret. He was picked up at the airport by Abu Mahdi
al-Muhandes, the deputy commander of the al-Hashd al-Shaabi, an official
Iraqi security force under the command of the Iraqi Prime Minister. The
two cars they traveled in were destroyed in the U.S. attack. Both men
and their drivers and guards died.
The U.S. created two martyrs who will now become the models and idols for tens of millions of youth in the Middle East.
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