And the American Left was equally sycophantic to both.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/trump-authorized-soleimani-strike-in-june-as-potential-response-to-killing-of-americans-report/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=fourth

Trump Authorized Soleimani Strike in June As Potential Response to Killing of Americans: Report
By ZACHARY EVANS January 13, 2020 8:45 AM

President Trump in June authorized the option of killing senior Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani if Iranian aggression led to the death of Americans, NBC reported on Monday.

The conditions for an operation targeting Soleimani were that it would be a response to Iran killing Americans, and that the president would have to personally sign off on the order.

“There have been a number of options presented to the president over the course of time,” a senior administration official told NBC, saying an operation to kill Soleimani was put on the table “some time ago.”

Regarding the elite escape and migration abroad Mohsen Safaee Farahani, a member of the so-called reformist faction said: “From 1989 to this day, Iran has the highest brain migration rate in the World Bank reports.

https://www.iranfocus.com/en/life-in-iran/34028-iran-s-wave-of-brain-drain

Sorry, geniuses: NO ESCAPE.

. . . . The majority of passengers were Iranian expats, people who had turned their backs on mullah rule. Look at the incontrovertible physical evidence in distinguishing between a slowly rising commercial airliner from Tehran airport and a speedy, rapidly descending missile headed toward Tehran. Not a human error, no way. The ayatollahs meant it to happen. Someone was aboard that they did not wish to see return, a last second discovery, and the other passengers…Ah well.

I, and others, have also been speculating about this.

I have nothing but the greatest respect and admiration for the Iranian protestors and their courage. But in all honesty that is not a high bar.

I read somewhere (don’t have time to look it up now) that the flags are usually part of pro-Iranian-government demonstrations – that Iranian authorities have them drawn on pavement in order for demonstrators to walk on them to show their contempt for them, and that the noteworthy thing here was not the drawing of the flags but that the protestors refused to walk on them.

A man did it..
we dont know why..
The news no longer reports for fear of what?

What will the newsies do when things change and they find out that they will write what they are told, and no longer be reporters of the kind that they may have fantasized being that broke stories and told inconvenient facts?

Didnt they learn anything from Viktor Danilov?
A parish priest of the Greek Catholic parish in Grodno, dean of the Belarusian Greek Catholic Church, chaplain, writer in Soviet times and religious dissident.

Made famous as Boris Bazhanov (ergo the western funny bad-in-ov) man under Kruschev the movie nor curiousity tells what happened to him..
Born in Yaroslavl in 1927 in a family of doctors. In 1947 he entered the Yaroslavl Pedagogical Institute. In 1948 he was arrested for his criticism of Stalin, accused of anti-Soviet propaganda. Danilov was convicted under Articles 58-10 and 58-11 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation to 10 years in labor camp. For preparation of the escape was second conviction for a period of 10 years. During the captivity of prisoners met the priests, to rethink their positions, abandoned Marxism and atheism and accepted Catholicism. In 1955, released under the amnesty.

like Bella Dodd, he went to the church again…

as a note Boris Bazhanov was Stalins personal secretary…
until he too changed… These changers we never discuss!

Bazhanov was the personal secretary of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin from August 1923 to 1925 and held several prominent secretarial positions in the Politburo until defecting from the Soviet Union in 1928. Bazhanov was granted French citizenship and survived subsequent Soviet assassination attempts, writing and publishing memoirs and books from 1930 about Stalin and the secrets behind the Stalin regime.

Bazhanov was the only member of Stalin’s Secretariat to defect, and one of the first major defectors from the Eastern Bloc.

oh.. why did i bring him up?

On 1 January 1928, Bazhanov defected from the Soviet Union after becoming disillusioned with communism and dissatisfied with working under Stalin.[15] Bazhanov scheduled a business trip to the Soviet Union’s territory in Central Asia and crossed the border into Iran.

Even then, Russia ran Iran

for the sake of interest:
Bazhanov learned that an agreement was reached between Iran and the Soviet Union through diplomatic channels to extradite him back. Bazhanov left his detention and illegally crossed the Iranian-Indian border, from where he moved to France with the help of the British authorities. In October 1929, Stalin ordered assassin Yakov Blumkin to travel via Paris to kill Bazhanov before travelling to the island of Büyükada in Istanbul… With the help of his cousin and GPU informer Arkady Maximov, Blumkin staged a car accident to kill Bazhanov, however the plot failed

You cant change a pickle back to a cucumber…

I wish sometimes that the leftists who protest and holler about what they dont like in a free country, would sit with my family members, either old timers from Latvia, or more recent from China/Hong Kong and listen to how, when they win, they will lose that right to protest – and yet, have a lot more things to protest about.

Video: Iran police shoot at those protesting plane shootdown
https://apnews.com/1b5f51dc8712b6fcddc2010bbd9de31f

They do not realize that in each regime that wins the left battle, whether by revolution OR election, the end results are quite the same. The people who care a lot about things (whether thats right or wrong is not important), and are willing to go out (for whatever reason) and make noise over it – become the enemy of the state and a state perfectly willing to shoot at them, or remove them in the dead of night if open action is not conducive.

Venezuela Forces Killed Thousands, Then Covered It Up, U.N. Says
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/04/world/americas/venezuela-police-abuses.html

Hong Kong protester shot in street confrontation with police
Incident was broadcast live on Facebook as protesters blocked traffic following a weekend of chaos across Chinese city.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/11/hong-kong-protester-shot-street-confrontation-police-191111013907715.html
and we ALL know how many of its own people Russia killed, the satellites killed, and china killed, and pol pot killed and the Khmer rouge killed and Castroites killed. We even know how followers who were trying to make such regimes either killed or tried to kill from the weather underground members robbing a brinks truck to start a black on white race war, or Bader Meinhoff, or even the feminists Rote Zora (as they were a terrorist group too, which explains why they side with them regardless of others beliefs).

Nothing will wake them up except their being shot and standing around like idiots with such surprise on their face they cant comprehend running.

However what stuns me is that US and Israel flags WERE drawn on the pavement; and they weren’t small. Each looked to be about 30×50 ft.

Yes, that is notable … but be careful.

In Hong Kong, they have made really (excessively?) overt plays for American support (hoping to eventually cultivate it into intervention). Appealing to the West in Iran is good … but we should not be naive.

It is for sure notable, that drawing the flags was “allowed” … but keep the context in mind. It’s a nice touch, passing the word, ‘Don’t walk on the flag’!

The Mullahs want sanctions lifted. Trump says ‘No preconditions’, meaning overtly we won’t go in with a set outcome in mind … but also very much making clear that sanctions stay, until they sit & we talk.

It’s still early days, but I too am hopeful!