[Majorityrights News] KP interview with James Gilmore, former diplomat and insider from first Trump administration Posted by Guessedworker on Sunday, 05 January 2025 00:35.
[Majorityrights News] Trump will ‘arm Ukraine to the teeth’ if Putin won’t negotiate ceasefire Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 12 November 2024 16:20.
[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 06 February 2020 06:22.
The civet, a mammal in the mongoose family, was a carrier of another coronavirus — SARS. But it turned out in that instance that bats were the original source of the virus.
New Coronavirus ‘Won’t Be The Last’ Outbreak To Move From Animal To Human
The new strain of coronavirus that has killed hundreds of people in China and caused a travel lockdown of some 56 million people has been classified as a “zoonosis” because of the way it spreads from animals to humans.
Science writer David Quammen says the virus, which the World Health Organization last week declared a global health emergency, is just the latest example of how pathogens that start in animals are migrating to humans with increasing frequency — and with deadly consequences.
“When there’s an animal host, then it becomes much, much more difficult to eradicate or even control an infectious virus,” Quammen says. “This novel coronavirus — whether or not it turns out to be a huge catastrophe, or something we can control — one thing we know is that it won’t be the last.”
Quammen’s 2012 book, Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, traces the rise of different zoonoses around the world, including AIDS, Ebola and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). He says that one of the first questions that arise with any zoonosis pertains to the animal host: How is it being transmitted?
In the case of the new coronavirus, researchers believe that the virus may have originated with horseshoe bats in China and then could have possibly spread to other animals — which people then ate.
Quammen notes that humans are the common link in all zoonoses: “We humans are so abundant and so disruptive on this planet. ... We’re cutting the tropical forests. We’re building work camps in those forests and villages. We’re eating the wildlife,” he says. “You go into a forest and you shake the trees — literally and figuratively — and viruses fall out.”
Quammen says that the new coronavirus should be taken seriously. But he also warns against panic: “Being educated and understanding it and being ready to respond and support government response is very useful. Panicking and putting on your surgical mask every time you go on a subway ride, an airplane, is not nearly as useful.”
Interview highlights
On wild animal “wet” markets where viruses can mix
When I was in southern China researching [Spillover], only briefly, I got to see some of these markets where all forms of wild animals were on sale. ... By the time I got there, [these sorts of markets] had gone underground ... suppressed after the SARS outbreak. But then [the markets] gradually came back ... allowed to continue again and proliferate when this new virus began.
If you go into a live market, you see cages containing bats stacked upon cages containing porcupines, stacked upon cages containing palm civets, stacked upon cages containing chickens. And hygiene is not great, and the animals are defecating on one another. It’s just a natural mixing-bowl situation for viruses. It’s a very, very dangerous situation. And one of the things that it allows is ... the occurrence of “amplifying hosts” [a species that rapidly replicates copies of the virus and spreads them].
On the theory that palm civets were “amplifier hosts” for the 2003 SARS outbreak
The civet is a type of mammal that belongs to the family of mongooses. But it’s a medium-sized animal, and it is both captured from the wild for food and captive-bred and raised for food, and it was the first big suspect in the SARS outbreak. It was found that some of the people who got sick very early on had eaten butchered civet. And they tested some civets, and they found evidence of the virus. They found antibodies or fragments of DNA or RNA in these civets, suggesting that they had been infected with the virus. And that didn’t prove they were the reservoir host, but it made them the No. 1 suspect, until a couple of Chinese scientists did further work and they established that, in fact, the virus was not living permanently in the civet population in the wild or in captivity. It [had] a different reservoir host. It was living in bats and had passed, presumably, at a market somewhere. It had passed from a bat into one or more civets, and they became the amplifier host. ...
Thousands of civets in captivity were butchered and electrocuted and smothered and drowned in this first, panicked blind reaction in China to the SARS outbreak.
On why bats are often hosts for viruses
Bats are implicated in what seems to be more than their share [of zoonoses]. There are a lot of different species of bats. One-quarter of all mammal species are bats. But there are other things [special] about them — including aspects of their immune system. There have been some discoveries lately that bat immune systems are “downregulated” in a certain way that allows for the metabolic stresses of being a mammal that flies. And the downregulating of the immune system to avoid overreaction to those stresses seems, perhaps, also to create an environment in which viruses are more tolerated in bats than in other mammals.
On how coronaviruses have evolved through different species
One of the reasons SARS could adapt from bat to civet to human is the fact that it is a coronavirus, which is a group of viruses that are very readily adaptable. Experts call that intrinsic evolvability. Their rate of mutation is very high when they copy themselves. Their genome contains a lot of mistakes, and that represents mutations that are sort of the random raw material for Darwinian evolution. So viruses that have high mutation rates are able to evolve quickly and adapt quickly. And coronaviruses ... have that characteristic.
Note: This blog is based on my notes for a speech at the Harvard Class of 1957 55th reunion in Cambridge, Mass. on May 22nd.
Armageddon was threatening the financial system on Wednesday, September 17, 2008. The largest bankruptcy in American history, that of investment bank Lehman Brothers on Monday, September 15, had roiled global markets, accelerating the stupendous decline in values of every possible investment vehicle—common stocks, corporate bonds, real estate, commodities like oil, copper and gold, private equity and hedge funds alike. In the midst of the chaos Merrill Lynch, the firm that had brought Wall Street to Main Street, was absorbed in a shotgun marriage by Bank of America BAC +0%.
Only days earlier came the recognition at the New York Federal Reserve Bank and the US Treasury that AIG, the largest insurance company in the world was running out of money. This required an immediate injection of $85 billion in bail-out funds. And later another $100 billion, still not paid back to Uncle Sam.
That day, Sept 17, an even greater crisis was pending. All day long the chairman of General Electric, a company recognized across the globe as a leading industrial giant, was calling the Secretary of the Treasury, Hank Paulson to warn that the next day, Sept. 18, that GE would no longer be able to roll over its short term debt. The American business system was on the cusp of faltering mightily. The US economy was on the brink of a precipice into the unknown.
Messrs Paulson and Bernanke, at the Fed, knew the nation could not suffer the risk of a total breakdown in industry and finance. So, they decided to instantly guarantee the $600 billion commercial paper market, which is widely used to finance day-to-day operations of all major firms. This guarantee became part of the total cost of bailing out Wall Street, which totaled over $7 trillion—when you added guarantees to loans, investments and outright grants. The bailouts were key to raising the Fed’s balance sheet from $1 trillion to $3 trillion—and to upping the nation’s total amount of debt some $5 trillion to a record $15 trillion.
Conversely, the household wealth of the nation, measured by losses in financial markets and the historic drop in residential real estate—was reduced by a sickenly humungus $12-$14 trillion at the very bottom of the whole process in March, 2009. You take that money—$12-14 trillion away from the asset side of the ledger and add another $5 trillion in debt—- and you are bound to experience a decline in the nation’s GDP and a very much slower rate of recovery from such a trauma. A recovery that could take 10 years or more according to Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff. That brings us to 2018. Need I say more?
How did we reach this very near call on a total systemic breakdown?
Firstly, there were no cops on the beat. Laissez-faire free market economics was the prevailing public policy. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan spoke of irrational exuberance but took no steps to cool off markets in the late 1990s. In fact, he was asked by Loews chairman Larry Tisch and former Goldman Sachs co-chairman John Whitehead to raise the margins on trading, and refused, claiming falsely that such a move was up to the SEC—and not the Fed. Not true.
In 1999 the Glass-Steagall Act—which had separated commercial banking from investment banking for 66 years, was overturned—a move that opened the door to more speculative trading on the part of Wall Street firms.
Then, in 2000 Messrs. Greenspan, former Treasury Secretary Rubin and his successor Lawrence Summers pressed to pass a bill that would prohibit the regulation of derivatives—the fastest growing and most complicated and murky new financial product. This was an incredible mistake, as derivative contracts like mortgage backed bonds and credit default swaps mushroomed in across the globe without any oversight, strict capital requirements and on an organized exchange where buying and selling were handled daily.
The result of this vacuum; no one anywhere knew who owed what to whom across the world. Despite the danger lurking in the rapid depreciation of these contracts, Bernanke publicly stated the absurd amount of sub-prime mortgages being sold to unsuspecting buyers would not spread to a much wider, deeper crisis. He didn’t know what he was talking about, sadly..
Lastly, in 2004 the major firms convinced the SEC to let them value certain assets on their balance sheet at values they chose—rather than marking them t o market—which would reveal what losses they were carrying. This added another dangerous laxity to financial regulation. The system was falsifying its accounts believing the investments would bounce back.
The entire catastrophe’s underlying theme was summed up later by this admission from former Fed chairman Greenspan . ” I made a mistake,” he admitted in a hearing, “in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.” And we made this man into the wise parental guardian of American capitalism for 18 years. We journalists, that is.
Pressed again later on, Greenspan admitted to “shocked disbelief, (because his whole) intellectual edifice had collapsed.” Naive at minimum. At worst, locked into a narrow limited ideological viewpoint that set the stage for the meltdown. Let Goldman Sachs and Citigroup master their own appetite for profits. So much for reining in animals spirits.
Secondly, the banks and investment banks were using reckless amounts of leverage. They borrowed, in many cases, $30 to $40 of debt for every dollar of capital they had. In truth, this was a recipe for disaster, since a decline of only 4% in their capital put them on the road to insolvency. It was as if you bought a million dollar house, put down a payment of $30,000 and borrowed $970,000. What sense of irrational optimism allowed this mad way of doing business.
By the fall of 2008 the decline in the value just of subprime mortgage backed bonds—which lost up to 80% of their value in the market—meant that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Bank of America, Washington Mutual and Wachovia were in a state of peril. The only way to make money in bank stocks was to short them. My favorite day trader told me after it was all over that I should be worth $50 million. With the run on Lehman Bros. both Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs were in danger of experiencing a run on their accounts.
Perhaps AIG is the most extreme example of leverage as financial hari-kari. It had sold protection to banks and insurance companies across the globe by issuing $540 billion of credit default swaps, which meant AIG promised to make good on any losses in value of their mortgage holdings.
Posted by DanielS on Thursday, 30 January 2020 02:36.
Coronavirus Updater:
First cases in Finland, India and the Philippines; death toll reaches 170
Moodie David Report: 30 Jan 2020:
Coronavirus Update: First cases in India, Finland, the Philippines; death toll reaches 170
Finland
The coronavirus outbreak has spread to Finland with the first confirmed case. Finnish media Uutiset said that the individual is a Chinese tourist from Wuhan. The 32-year-old woman is being treated in Lapland Central Hospital in Rovaniemi.
Philippines
The first case in the Philippines has been announced by the World Health Organization.
Today, the Department of Health announced the first confirmed case of the 2019 novel #coronavirus in the Philippines. The patient is 38 years old from China.
UAE
The first cases in the Middle East have been confirmed, with the Ministry of Health & Protection in the UAE announcing that a family of four has been infected. The statement added that the general health situation “is not a cause for concern” and that the Ministry advises “all citizens and residents to adhere to the general health guidelines”.
UK
British Airways has suspended flights to and from Mainland China as the coronavirus outbreak worsens. This comes as the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office advised against all travel to Hubei Province and all but essential travel to the rest of Mainland China.
China
China is likely to have a vaccine for the novel coronavirus for public use within three months. That will include a month and a half of development and a similar period of testing, according to Li Lanjuan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Global Times reports.
1,459 new cases of coronavirus and 3,248 suspected cases, including one in Tibet, were reported across China yesterday alone as the spread of the virus accelerates. The total number of confirmed infections reached 5,974, with 1,239 patients in critical condition. The death toll has reached 132 while 103 patients have recovered. [Source: Global Times]
International
A scientific race to find a vaccine for the virus is underway, writes The Moodie Davitt Report Senior Research & Commercial Analyst Min Jon Jung. Here is a roundup of key breakthroughs so far.
January 10: Chinese scientists posted a complete genome of the coronavirus.
January 28: Hong Kong University Professor Yuen Kwok-yung was successful in producing a vaccine but testing on animals will take months and clinical trials at least another year.
January 29: Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Australia successful in recreating virus outside of China.
The joint global effort may help to shorten the time required to develop a successful vaccine, but the development is both expensive and time-consuming. The vaccine for the SARS virus was developed 20 months after the viral genome was released and the outbreak was contained with public health measures before the vaccine was ready.
Dr Paul Stoffels, Johnson & Johnson’s chief scientific officer, estimated it could take eight to 12 months before his company’s vaccines reach human clinical trials.
(Note: this article was originally written before the US assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani on January 2nd)
Trump kept the promise he made to AIPAC in March 2016: “We will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem.” Its fulfillment gave a timely support to Netanyahu, whose popularity in Israel is entirely based on his capacity to manipulate the United States, of which he brags. Commenting in May 2018 on Trump’s decision, Netanyahu paid him this compliment:
“This will be remembered the way we remember the Cyrus declaration of 2500 years ago, when he told the exiles of Babylon, ‘you can go back and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem.’ This is a historical moment and we will always remember.”
Cyrus is that Persian king whose spirit “Yahweh roused … to issue a proclamation” and “build him a temple in Jerusalem,” according to the Book of Ezra (1:1-2) A successor to Cyrus later appointed Ezra to oversee the building. For his decree, Cyrus is bestowed the title of Yahweh’s “Anointed” (Mashiah) by the prophet Isaiah:
“Thus says Yahweh to his anointed one, to Cyrus whom, he says, I have grasped by his right hand, to make the nations bow before him and to disarm kings: […] It is for the sake of my servant Jacob and of Israel my chosen one, that I have called you by your name, have given you a title though you do not know me. […] Though you do not know me, I have armed you.” (Isaiah 45:1-5)[1]
Yahweh, who “roused Cyrus’ spirit” and “grasped him by his right hand,” stands, of course, for “Jewish Power”.
Netanyahu hailed Trump as a modern-day Cyrus on several occasions, and his enthusiasm was echoed on Fox News, when Jeanine Pirro declared: “Donald Trump recognizes history. He, like king Cyrus before him, fulfills the biblical prophecy…”
Trump was like Cyrus again in March 2019, when he signed a decree recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights (top photo). It inspired Miriam Adelson, wife of Trump’s biggest donor, to comment that the President deserves his “Book of Trump” in the Bible.[2] Israel’s history is always biblical, one way or another.
I was made aware of this “Trump is Cyrus” meme by Adam Green’s impressive film “God’s Chosen People”. It seems that Trump was already promoted as a new Cyrus to Christian Zionists during the 2016 campaign. It has also been noted that, just a couple of months after taking office, Trump used the occasion of the Persian new year (Nowruz) to mention in a White House statement to the Iranian embassy that “Cyrus the Great, a leader of the ancient Persian Empire, famously said that ‘freedom, dignity, and wealth together constitute the greatest happiness of humanity.’” Using the name Cyrus rather than the form Koresch preferred by historians is an implicit reference to the Bible story. Zionists like Jonathan Cahn believe this was a cryptic message: “It was not only that the president had issued a public statement in which he spoke of Cyrus but that he spoke words attributed to the ancient king. In other words, he wasn’t only speaking of Cyrus; he was now speaking as Cyrus.”[3] Such interpretation tells us more about the Zionists’ wishful thinking than about Trump’s real intention (who wrote that statement anyway?). But then, the Zionists have proven very good at fulfilling their wishful thinking.
Of course, moving the American embassy to Jerusalem is not exactly like rebuilding of the temple. But Trump’s announcement nevertheless boosted messianic yearnings for the Third Temple. Plans, funds, and even cultic personnel are all ready. Prayers are sent to heaven that an Iranian missile would mistakenly, by Yahweh’s hand, find its way on the Al-Aqsa Mosque to get rid of the last obstacle. Confident that Trump is the new Cyrus, the Mikdash Educational Center has minted medals with Trump’s portrait superimposed on Cyrus’ on one side, and the future temple on the other. Of course, ecstatic Jews and Evangelicals have no clue that the so-called Temple Mount never supported a temple at all: what they take for the walls of Herod’s Temple is actually the remains of the Roman fort housing the legion that destroyed the Temple (as demonstrated archeologically in the documentary “The Coming Temple”).
It is not the first time that a Christian statesman is compared to Persian king Cyrus. It was said before of Lord Balfour and Harry Truman. Netanyahu actually referred to both of them when meeting Trump in the Oval Office in March 2018:
“I want to tell you that the Jewish people have a long memory, so we remember the proclamation of the great king, Cyrus the Great, the Persian king 2,500 years ago. He proclaimed that the Jewish exiles in Babylon could come back and rebuild our Temple in Jerusalem. We remember a hundred years ago, Lord Balfour, who issued the Balfour Proclamation that recognized the rights of the Jewish people in our ancestral homeland. We remember 70 years ago, President Harry S. Truman was the first leader to recognize the Jewish state. And we remember how a few weeks ago, President Donald J. Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Mr. President, this will be remembered by our people through the ages.”
Zion is a biblical program
Netanyahu’s declaration provides a good opportunity for reflecting on the importance of biblical narratives in Israel’s national consciousness, propaganda, diplomacy, and geopolitical strategy, and to analyze the Cyrus pattern in the history of the relationship between Israel and imperial powers.
Netanyahu is certainly typical of Israeli leaders’ tendency to see history as a perpetual reenactment of Bible stories. In 2015, he dramatized his phobia of Iran by referring to the Book of Esther, in an allocution to the American Congress that he managed to program on the eve of Purim, which celebrates the happy ending of the Book of Esther—the slaughter of 75,000 Persians.
Esther’s story is not unlike Ezra’s: through her, Yahweh “roused the spirit” of another Persian king, Ahasuerus, to protect the Jews and hang their persecutors. This last December, Trump became a modern-day Ahasuerus when he signed an executive order against anti-Semitism and Israel-boycott in university campuses.
Actually, the Book of Esther, Netanyahu’s favorite, is the only book in the Tanakh that makes no mention of God, which proves that “biblical” does not necessarily mean “religious”. This is a point sadly misunderstood in the Christian world.
The biblical foundation of secular Zionism is underestimated, even denied, by critics of Zionism, even when it is affirmed by the Zionists themselves. It is true that Theodor Herzl did not argue in biblical terms for his 1896 program, The Jewish State. Yet he named his movement after the Bible: Zion is metonymic designation for Jerusalem used by biblical prophets, especially Isaiah. Later on, the pioneers of the Yishuv and the founders of the Jewish State were steeped in the Bible. Ben-Gurion, an avowed atheist, used to say: “There can be no worthwhile political or military education about Israel without profound knowledge of the Bible.”[4] That statement should be taken seriously. If it is true for Zionists, then it is also true for the critics of Zionism: there can be no real understanding of Israel without profound knowledge of the Bible. The Tanakh is the alpha and the omega of Zionism. Moshe Dayan, the military hero of the 1967 Six-Day War, justified his annexation of new territory in a book titled Living with the Bible (1978).
One important thing that Ben-Gurion learnt from the Bible is that Israel’s destiny is not to be a nation like others, but the center of the world and the ruler of all nations. When asked in 1962 his prediction for the next 25 years, he declared that Jerusalem “will be the seat of the Supreme Court of Mankind, to settle all controversies among the federated continents, as prophesied by Isaiah.”[5] He was referring to Isaiah 2:2-4, announcing the messianic Pax Judaica, when “the Law will issue from Zion” and Israel “will judge between the nations and arbitrate between many peoples.” Ben-Gurion’s prophetic vision, which may be called Universal Zionism (the title of a book by the director of a Jerusalem Summit that promotes that vision), has been shared more or less by all subsequent Israeli leaders up to Benjamin Netanyahu.
It should be evident, and it surely is to Netanyahu as it was to Ben-Gurion, that for Jerusalem to become the headquarter of a “Supreme Court of Mankind” that will replace the United Nations, another world war is necessary. The fall of the American Empire, or at least its total transformation into Zionist occupied territory, is also part of the plan.
The Tanakh does not just teach Zionists the ultimate goal, it also shows them the way to go: Cyrus’ edict reproduced in the Book of Ezra, whether genuine or fake, is the blueprint for Zion’s exploitation of the Empire’s foreign policy in modern times. Transforming Gentile leaders into Cyrus-like figures is the rule of the game. That is what I would like to illustrate below.
Jeremiah, Babylon and Persia
Before we recall the way the proto-Zionists Ezra and Nehemiah worked the Persian administration into giving them control over Jerusalem, let’s go back one century earlier. In 588 BC, to subdue the rebellious Judeans, Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II besieged and finally burned Jerusalem, then deported some of its elites (Jeremiah 52:30 gives the plausible figure of 4,600 people). The exiles enjoyed broad autonomy in Babylon, and some acquired wealth and influence. Speaking on behalf of Yahweh, Jeremiah wrote to them, from Egypt: “Work for the good of the city to which I have exiled you; pray to Yahweh on its behalf, since on its welfare yours depends” (Jeremiah 29:7). Yahweh even asked Jeremiah to convey the following message to the kings of Syria-Palestine:
“For the present, I have handed all these countries over to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, my servant … Any nation or kingdom that will not serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and will not bow its neck to the yoke of the king of Babylon, I shall punish that nation with sword, famine and plague, Yahweh declares, until I have destroyed it by his hand.” (Jeremiah 27:6-8)
But twenty chapters later, Jeremiah announced the “vengeance of the Lord” on the Babylonians and called on their Persian enemies to “slaughter and curse with destruction every last one of them” (50:21). In the same spirit, the author of Psalm 137 wrote: “Daughter of Babel, doomed to destruction, […] a blessing on anyone who seizes your babies and shatters them against a rock!” The reason for this violent shift in Yahweh’s sentiment was that the situation had changed: in 555 BC, a prince named Nabonad seized power in Babylon. He made war against the Persian king Cyrus (Koresch). It is believed, by Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz in particular, that the Judean exiles in Babylon sided secretly with the Persians, and perhaps “opened secret negotiations with Cyrus.” That would explain “the kindness shown later on to the Judeans by the Persian warrior, and their persecution by Nabonad.”[6]
Attack likely to inflame tensions, potentially spark new conflict in Middle East.
BAGHDAD — The United States killed Iran’s top general and the architect of Tehran’s proxy wars in the Middle East in an airstrike at Baghdad’s international airport early on Friday, an attack that threatens to dramatically ratchet up tensions in the region.
The targeted killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, could draw forceful Iranian retaliation against American interests in the region and spiral into a far larger conflict between the U.S. and Iran, endangering U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria and beyond.
The Defense Department said it killed Soleimani because he “was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.” It also accused Soleimani of approving the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad earlier this week.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that a “harsh retaliation is waiting” for the U.S.
Iranian state TV carried a statement by Khamenei also calling Soleimani “the international face of resistance.” Khamenei declared three days of public mourning for the general’s death.
Also, an adviser to Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani warned President Donald Trump of retaliation from Tehran. “Trump through his gamble has dragged the U.S. into the most dangerous situation in the region,” Hessameddin Ashena wrote on the social media app Telegram. “Whoever put his foot beyond the red line should be ready to face its consequences.”
Later commentary on Iranian state TV called Trump’s order to kill Soleimani “the biggest miscalculation by the U.S.” in the years since World War II. “The people of the region will no longer allow Americans to stay,” the TV said.
The airport strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iran-backed militias in Iraq known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, and five others, including the PMF’s airport protocol officer, Mohammed Reda, Iraqi officials said.
Trump was vacationing on his estate in Palm Beach, Florida, but sent out a tweet of an American flag.
The dramatic attack comes at the start of a year in which Trump faces both a Senate trial following his impeachment by the U.S. House and a re-election campaign. It marks a potential turning point in the Middle East and represents a drastic change for American policy toward Iran after months of tensions.
Tehran shot down a U.S. military surveillance drone and seized oil tankers. The U.S. also blames Iran for a series of attacks targeting tankers, as well as a September assault on Saudi’s oil industry that temporarily halved production.
The tensions take root in Trump’s decision in May 2018 to withdraw the U.S. from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers, struck under his predecessor, Barack Obama.
The 62-year-old Soleimani was the target of Friday’s U.S. attack, which was conducted by an armed American drone, according to a U.S. official. His vehicle was struck on an access road near the Baghdad airport.
A Nigerian offshoot of ISIS on Thursday claimed responsibility for the killing of 11 people, calling the deaths a retaliation for the killing of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in northern Syria two months ago, according to The New York Times.
The group released video Thursday of members cutting 10 people’s throats and shooting an 11th person, with a voice-over calling the killings a “message for Christians,” although Nigerian experts told the Times that based on the group’s previous tactics, some of its victims were likely Muslims.
The group, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), split off from the terrorist group Boko Haram in 2016, citing issues with the group’s violence against other Muslims, according to the Times, but the group has likely been under increased pressure to publicly retaliate for al-Baghdadi’s death as other branches and affiliates have done.
“I think there’s a demand from IS Central: ‘ISWAP, where is your submission for revenge for Baghdadi?’” Abdulbasit Kassim, a co-author of “The Boko Haram Reader: From Nigerian Preachers to the Islamic State,” told the Times.
Kassim added that ISWAP is likely attempting to both assuage the broader Islamic State and extract concessions and ransom from the Nigerian government.
“Those who you see in front of us are Christians, and we will shed their blood as revenge for the two dignified sheikhs, the caliph of the Muslims, and the spokesman for the Islamic State, Sheikh Abu al-Hassan al-Muhajir, may Allah accept them,” a man depicted committing the killings says in the video. The man in the video made reference to an ISIS spokesman reportedly killed shortly after al-Baghdadi.
“These barbaric killers don’t represent Islam and millions of other law-abiding Muslims around the world,” Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said in a statement following the release of the video.
“We are appalled by the vicious ISIS-West Africa attack targeting Christians in Nigeria,” tweeted Tibor Nagy, the top State Department official for Africa policy.
We urge the Government of Nigeria to swiftly bring to justice those responsible for this heinous terrorist attack. (2/2)
President Trump announced the killing of al-Baghdadi in Syria’s Idlib province in October, saying the ISIS leader detonated a suicide vest during a raid by U.S. forces. ISIS announced Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi had been named his successor later that month.
Donald Trump and Gen. Qassem Soleimani (Ebrahim Noroozi/AP Photo)
The civet, a mammal in the mongoose family, was a carrier of another coronavirus — SARS. But it turned out in that instance that bats were the original source of the virus.
