How Did The New York Times Know Soleimani Would Die?
The day before Qassem Soleimani was killed an opinion piece appeared in the New York Times written by Steven Simon, which included the following statement…
The article is about the Russian’s new hypersonic missile, the Avangard. Mr Simon waxes lyrical about how whooshy it is, how it can dart about to avoid detection, and how it is a game changer when it comes to nuclear war. In the eleventh paragraph of his dire warnings of how Putin is going to kill us, he says that such technology could be used by those intent on foreign interventions, and states the example of a surgical strike against Mr Soleimani (I wish they would make up their mind if it is Soleimani or Suleimani) as an example of how this missile might be deployed.
So what? I hear you say. It’s a coincidence. Mr Soleimani was a wanted man. It’s perfectly natural that he should be used as an example of how this fancy new Russian weapon might be employed in the wrong hands: e.g. by those blood thirsty devils the Americans.
Well yes, but did you catch the bit about the Avangard being an intercontinental nuclear missile. And, yes I know it can carry a conventional warhead. But given that it only entered service on the twenty-seventh of December, and no-one is sure it actually works, it would be one hell of a test flight to try it out by killing Qassem (or is it Qasem? or Qassim?) Soleimani.
And that is before you address the issue that you will probably blow up half the town (if not the Middle East): so why do you need to know at what address he will be? And why bother when there are plenty of weapons that can already do this (despite being less swooshy) at a fraction of the cost.
I recommend listening to yesterday’s No Agenda Show (the best podcast in the universe), Episode 1205, Death Bus. In the course of the their discussion as to what they think is going on, they play a clip at 59.34 of Amy Goodman talking to Trita Parsi, who says,
“I think a couple of former Obama officials put it best when they said this is an act of war. And it’s an act of war that took place without any consultation with congress, any authorization from congress, and any approval of congress.”
Alright, he said the words in a different order but you get the picture…. but it is irrelevant because….
What is curious is Steven Simon (the clairvoyant weapons expert who you wouldn’t trust with a peashooter) and Trita Parsi are both from the Quincy Institute (for responsible statecraft).
Intrigued, I set off to find who this Quincy Institute (for responsible statecraft) might be: I mean who wouldn’t want to know more about an ““action-oriented” think tank (who) will promote a foreign policy centred on “diplomatic engagement and military restraint” supported by “like-minded progressives and conservatives”” And it didn’t take long before I bumped into this article in the Independent from the first of July 2019… George Soros and Charles Koch to fund new ‘anti-war’ think tank.
Oh my Lord… poor Amy Goodman… someone fetch the smelling salts… she is interviewing a spokesthem for a Koch Brothers think tank…. it’s cats living with dogs… it’s Cats being a film worth seeing…
“Two billionaires on opposite ends of the political spectrum, left-wing financier George Soros and right-wing industrialist Charles Koch, are to finance a new think tank which its co-founders say will challenge America’s military-industrial complex by promoting an end to “endless war” abroad.
The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft will launch in September, having received an initial $500,000 (£385,000) from Mr Soros and Mr Koch apiece. The Boston Globe said a handful of other donors had contributed an additional $800,000 to the project.”
So I was right… (but wrong billionaire)
Whatever is going on it is not what we are being shown.
For instance the sudden reappearance of that Trump tweet from 2011, or the reference to Christopher Hitchens accusing Bill Clinton of bombing to distract from his impeachment, or Rukmini Callimachi peddling her list of options story, which is just the latest in a long line of stories akin to Trump watching Gorillas on TV (Poor Ms Callimachi has jumped the gun a bit on this one, someone at the NYT should fill her in, she’s gone to early on the Trump News Cycle — it goes ‘Trump is going to start WWIII, he’s Putin’s puppet, and *then* he’s mentally ill’… before, ‘ he hates gays, he’s misogynist, he’s done nothing as President’ and then back to ‘ he’s racist’…..Come on Ms Callimachi, the script is plastered on posters all over the walls of New York Times’ offices)….
But good effort… and good job Ms Callimachi for laundering the news with the British press. There is barely a blue-checkmark on Twitter who has not bookmarked, retweeted, favourited, and licked each pixel of your post.
And here’s another strange thing. The opening gambit of Ms Callimachi (the podcasting terror expert) goes like this…
“ I’ve had a chance to check in with sources, including two US officials who had intelligence briefings after the strike on Suleimani.”
Have you? Would these be the “two former Obama officials” who so impressed Mr Parsi?
Well it can’t be Brennan because he lost his security clearance, and Page and Strzok (despite their Iranian connection) are out of the picture. I suppose it could be Susan Rice (she was on the tele the other day, I know because utube insisted I had to watch CNN rather than the next episode of Bertie Wooster)… and Obama is probably in the loop somewhere. I suppose it could be Jeff Bezos hoovering the information when Trump ruefully asks Alexa why the monkeys on Gorilla TV aren’t fighting; ah no, he owns the Washington Post, and they get their laundry done by the Guardian.
But let’s have a look at who is funding this Quincy Institute (for responsible statecraft),
The Bijan and Soraya Amin Foundation, Colombe Foundation, Guy and Jeanine Saperstein Family Trust, Nasiri Foundation (innovation in philosophy), Pivotal Foundation, Ploughshares Fund, Rockefeller Brothers Fund (philanthropy for an Independent World), and last but not least, The Arca Foundation.
No wonder Boris Johnson said “fuck”.
Btw… the New York Times piece could have been a coded signal to someone… I suppose….