Haven't done a science post in a bit so let's do one tonight. Sarah Collins (PHYSICS.ORG) reports:
The
most extensive survey of atmospheric chemical compositions of
exoplanets to date has revealed trends that challenge current theories
of planet formation and has implications for the search for water in the
solar system and beyond.
A
team of researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, used
atmospheric data from 19 exoplanets to obtain detailed measurements of
their chemical and thermal properties. The exoplanets in the study span a
large range in size—from 'mini-Neptunes' of nearly 10 Earth masses to
'super-Jupiters' of over 600 Earth masses—and temperature, from nearly
20C to over 2000C. Like the giant planets in our solar system, their
atmospheres are rich in hydrogen, but they orbit different types of
stars.
The researchers
found that while water vapour is common in the atmospheres of many
exoplanets, the amounts were surprisingly lower than expected, while the
amounts of other elements found in some planets were consistent with
expectations. The results, which are part of a five-year research
programme on the chemical compositions of planetary atmospheres outside
our solar system, are reported in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Water
is thought to be a key component of extraterrestrial life, and so
finding it elsewhere in the universe is likely to be central to
discovering whether aliens exist elsewhere in the universe.
The
researchers used data from 19 exoplanets to get detailed measurements
of the chemical and thermal properties of exoplanets. They looked at a
wide variety of different worlds, from relatively small "mini-Neptunes"
only 10 times bigger than our Earth to "super-Jupiters" that are as big
as 600 of our own planet, and from places that are between 20C and
2000C.
They
found that water was "common" across many of those exoplanets. But they
also discovered that there was less of it on those planets than
expected, and there was great variety between the different kinds of
worlds.
So that's very interesting. Staying with the topic of water -- ice is frozen water -- PHYS.ORG reports:
Greenland
is losing ice seven times faster than in the 1990s and is tracking the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's high-end climate warming
scenario, which would see 400 million more people exposed to coastal
flooding by 2100.
A
team of 96 polar scientists from 50 international organisations have
produced the most complete picture of Greenland ice loss to date. The
Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise (IMBIE) Team combined
26 separate surveys to compute changes in the mass of Greenland's ice
sheet between 1992 and 2018. Altogether, data from 11 different
satellite missions were used, including measurements of the ice sheet's
changing volume, flow and gravity.
The
findings, published today in Nature today, show that Greenland has lost
3.8 trillion tonnes of ice since 1992—enough to push global sea levels
up by 10.6 millimetres. The rate of ice loss has risen from 33 billion
tonnes per year in the 1990s to 254 billion tonnes per year in the last
decade—a seven-fold increase within three decades.
That
is not good. We really need a president who will address climate
change. That's why I think we need Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren
as the nominee. We can't continue to put this off. Barack Obama played
kick the can for eight years. And that's all anyone's done in my
lifetime. That's why this hasn't gotten worse and worse. We're getting
to the point of destruction.
I'm Barry MacGuirie. Eve of Destruction.
The eastern world, it is explodin',
Violence flarin', bullets loadin',
You're old enough to kill but not for votin',
You don't believe in war, but what's that gun you're totin',
And even the Jordan river has bodies floatin',
But you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
Don't you understand, what I'm trying to say?
And can't you feel the fears I'm feeling today?
If the button is pushed, there's no running away,
There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave,
Take a look around you, boy, it's bound to scare you, boy,
And you tell me over and over and over again my friend,
Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
P.F. Sloan wrote that song in 1964. Barry had the hit with it in 1965.
And
we still have people who "don't believe we're on the eve of
destruction." What's it going to take to convince them at this point?
We'll do this:
Two
piglets recently born in China look like average swine on the outside,
but on the inside, they are (a very small) part monkey.
A
team of researchers generated the pig-primate creatures by injecting
monkey stem cells into fertilized pig embryos and then implanting them
into surrogate sows, according to a piece by New Scientist. Two of the
resulting piglets developed into interspecies animals known as chimeras,
meaning that they contained DNA from two distinct individuals — in this
case, a pig and a monkey.
"This
is the first report of full-term pig-monkey chimeras," co-author Tang
Hai, a researcher at the State Key Laboratory of Stem Cell and
Reproductive Biology in Beijing, told New Scientist. Eventually, Hai and
his colleagues aim to grow human organs in animals for use in
transplant procedures. For now, the team plans to stick with monkey
cells, as developing human-animal chimeras presents a slew of "ethical
issues," the authors noted in a report published Nov. 28 in the journal
Protein & Cell.
But we won't work to save our planet. Very sad.
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Wednesday, December 11, 2019. No Christmas tree in Baghdad Plaza this year and much more.
Starting in the United States where the race for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination continues and War Hawk Joe Biden continues to stumble. Ella Nilsen (VOX) reports:
They are must win and we've talked about this (for weeks now). If Joe loses Iowa, it's a hit and his support dips. That's only more true if he were to lose Iowa and New Hampshire. And when we talk about that, we're talking about the support from voters.
However, money, money, money . . .
Money, money, money...
Money makes the trees come down
It makes mountains into molehills
Big money kicks the wide wide world around.
-- "This Place," written by Joni Mitchell, first appears on her album SHINE
Money, money, money. Joe's making an effort in Iowa and it's cost him -- financially. If he loses Iowa watch some of his funding dry up. If he loses Iowa and New Hampshire, even more dries up. Can Joe's campaign stay afloat if he loses both?
"Joe Biden needs to grow up." So argues John Krull (GOSHEN NEWS) about the 77-year-old temper tantrum throwing Joe:
The former vice president and current candidate for president indulged in a temper tantrum with an Iowa voter the other day. The voter said Biden and his son Hunter had been “selling access” to the White House when the younger Biden served on the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company.
Joe Biden flared.
“You’re a damn liar, man,” he said to the 83-year-old Iowa farmer.
Worse, the former vice president continued to defend his snappish response to the man long after his anger should have cooled. He kept telling interviewers the man was lying and that he was entitled to unload on an ordinary citizen who had the temerity to question him.
In the first place, the farmer may not have had every fact straight, but it’s unlikely that he was lying. He is a Democrat, one who said afterward that he was going to vote for whoever the party’s nominee is — even if it’s Biden.
But that is beside the point.
Biden’s little fit of pique demonstrated that he doesn’t grasp that a lot of people — many of them Democrats and independents — have a problem with his son’s work with Burisma. The fact that he was paid $50,000 per month to do not much work raises questions. That the younger Biden had scant qualifications other than his last name to fill such a position only makes things worse.
Joe's got a lot of negatives. One of them? He's reminding people of other candidates who didn't end up president. Tyler MacDonald (THE INQUISITR) reports:
Democratic presidential candidate and frontrunner Joe Biden recently released a campaign ad that attacks Donald Trump as “erratic” and “unstable,” painting the former vice president as someone offering the “strong,” “steady,” and “stable” leadership the United States needs. The ad was quickly derided by progressive commentator Kyle Kulinski, who suggested that it was following in the footsteps of Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential bid against Trump.
“It’s like the Biden campaign studied Hillary’s failed campaign and
said: ‘ok, lets try that again!’, it calls Trump ‘unstable’ and
‘erratic’, and Biden ‘experienced,'” he tweeted. “Hillary was
experienced and Trump was erratic & unstable in 2016 and he won.
‘Trump bad’ is a losing strategy!”
Kulinski continued to blast the ad’s focus on attacking Trump, suggesting that it isn’t “creative, interesting or inspiring.”
Ava and I noted this with Tom Steyer's ads -- you need to tell the people what you will do. Your obsession with Donald Trump just makes him stronger. What are you going to do to make the lives of Americans better? Instead, you make your ads all about Donald Trump, suggesting you're good at envy but not good at planning for the future.
Joe's being endorsed by Kate Miller. Not the actress. So who? A little speck from the center-world. Born in 1952, she is a bit young to be a Joe Biden supporter. But her lifetime of nonsense makes her the perfect foil. VOTE SMART notes of Kate, "Kate Miller refused to tell citizens where she stands on any of the issues addressed in the 2012 Political Courage Test, despite repeated requests from Vote Smart, national media, and prominent political leaders."
Meanwhile the Joe Clone, his mini-me, Tiny Pete continues to underwhelm despite the avalanche of easy press he's been receiving for two months now. Rebecca Morin (USA TODAY) notes:
South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg hasn't seen his recent surge in early-state polls translate to national polls. He is at 9% in Tuesday's Quinnipiac Poll, but was in second place at 16% in last month's poll.
Tiny Pete and War Hawk Joe are two birds of a feather. Thankfully, there are alternatives. Sarah Lazare (IN THESE TIMES) reports:
Update:
Following publication of this piece, a Senate spokesperson for Elizabeth Warren contacted In These Times with the following comment: “I just saw your piece on the NDAA. She does not support this level of defense funding and does not plan to vote in favor of the NDAA.”
Warren then tweeted the following remarks: “The Pentagon’s budget has been too large for too long. I cannot support a defense bill that’s a $738 billion Christmas present to giant defense contractors & undermines our values and security.”
Earlier:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is the only 2020 presidential hopeful who has pledged to vote against—and loudly denounced—the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2020, a $738 billion military spending bill that would mark a $22 billion increase over last year. The other frontrunner in the Senate, Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, which is tasked with negotiating the contents of the bill, but has so far remained silent on how she will vote. None of the other Democratic presidential candidates in Congress—Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Sen. Michael Bennet (Colo.) and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii)—have indicated their voting intention, either.
The initial House version of the NDAA included certain restrictions on how military spending could be used, including measures prohibiting the allocation of funds to an unauthorized war with Iran and stopping U.S. military support for the war on Yemen. But a new compromise bill, released Monday, strips these out. While the compromise offers some concessions, such as paid parental leave for some federal workers, peace campaigners characterize it as a win for the Right. The House and Senate are expected to vote as soon as this week on the bill, which includes authorization for Trump’s proposed “space force” as part of the compromise.
On Bernie Sanders, Beatrice Adler-Bolton (JACOBIN) offers:
To live in the United States as a person with disabilities is to encounter daily acts of abuse and oppression. Working disabled people can legally be paid less than $1 an hour under federal law, an appalling exemption to already inadequate minimum-wage standards. Disabled people on Social Security Income (SSI) must report any income, including gifts, every month to maintain meager amounts of coverage, and can lose their benefits by marrying. We are more likely to be poor, and more likely to become homeless — more than 40 percent of homeless people are disabled.
For the first time in awhile, several of the candidates in the Democratic presidential primary have outlined proposals to address this. Last month, Julián Castro made a big splash by releasing a platform that, among other things, would scrap discriminatory wage laws and allow disabled SSI recipients to wed without penalty. Even Pete Buttigieg, in a long document brimming with 1990s-style Clintonite rhetoric, has laid out an agenda to take the disabled community on a glide path to equality.
But there’s only one candidate with a comprehensive set of policies that would directly enhance the lives of disabled people in the United States: Senator Bernie Sanders.
Disability rights issues are woven directly into the proposals of almost every single policy document the campaign has released to date. The Sanders campaign clearly understands that disability is not simply a set of special interests to be siloed off, but a common aspect of everyday life affecting a key group of people that US policy routinely degrades, diminishes, and often oppresses.
Housing is a disability issue. Labor is a disability issue. Health care is a disability issue. Disabled people are on the front lines of climate change. And the agenda that Sanders is advancing not only recognizes that all of these issues greatly affect disabled people; it recognizes that no program or policy is good enough if it does not work for the most marginalized among us — the disabled very much included.
Read on for specifics (and note these are the same issues that Hilda was raising in last week and this week's HILDA'S MIX).
Turning to Iraq, Samya Kulab (AP) reports:
War Hawk Joe has still not been asked about the months of turmoil in Iraq by the press covering his campaign. Bonnie Kristian (REASON) points out:
After months of deadly, large-scale grassroots protests demanding reform in Baghdad, Iraqi, Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi announced his intent to resign and the country's parliament approved his resignation. In the protests, about 400 demonstrators, mostly young and unarmed, have been killed by Iraqi security forces; another 8,000 have been injured; and about a dozen security forces have also died in clashes with a violent minority of protesters. Today, it is unsettled who will become the new head of government.
It is unlikely to be a question easily resolved. The demonstrators' complaints are extensive, including state corruption and incompetence, unemployment and economic stagnation, and a perception of foreign influence over domestic politics, notably from Iran. More important than these specific issues, however, is the protesters' overarching critique of the governance structure in Baghdad—a structure shaped by Washington's nation-building efforts after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. That dissatisfaction makes this political unrest a fresh and urgent impetus to end American military intervention in Iraq once and for all.
U.S. exit could signal a move toward meaningful reforms the Iraqi people want. It would also be a boon for the American people, bringing closure to a misguided military intervention that has proven costly and counterproductive to U.S. security.
It is commonplace in U.S. politics to hear of the "end" of the Iraq War under former President Obama, but it is an odd end to a war which leaves thousands of occupying troops in place. The Trump administration began this year with more than 5,000 boots on the ground in Iraq, and, since then, added to their number after reshuffling U.S. forces in Syria. It has been nearly three years since Baghdad declared victory over the Islamic State—whose rise occasioned a growing U.S. footprint in Iraq beginning in 2014. In those years, Washington has ignored repeated Iraqi calls for withdrawal of all foreign militaries, as well as recent insistence from Baghdad that American forces relocated from Syria cannot stay.
Meanwhile Reporters Without Borders notes:
Muhanna was the third journalist to be murdered since a major wave of anti-government protests began in Iraq on 1 October. His death triggered an outcry on social networks.
The first journalist to be killed was Hisham Fares Al-Aadhami, a freelance photographer who was fatally shot in the chest by an irregular militia member while covering the protests in Al-Khilani Square on 4 October
The other fatal victim was Amjed Al-Dahamat, a writer and citizen-journalist who, according to the information obtained by RSF, was shot by unidentified gunmen near his home in the southeastern province of Maysan on 7 November.
“Rarely have Iraqi journalists been so exposed to danger and so vulnerable,” said Sabrina Bennoui, the head of RSF’s Middle East desk. “It is unacceptable that reporters in the field should be killed simply for having a camera or video camera. The Iraqi authorities must thoroughly investigate these clearly deliberate murders in order to identify those responsible.”
On the same day that Muhanna was murdered, another freelance photographer, Zaid Al-Khafaji, was kidnapped from his home on his return from covering the protests in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square. CCTV camera footage show men entering his home prior to his disappearance.
He was the second journalist to be abducted in recent weeks. The first was Muhammad Al-Shamari, a member of the Iraqi Observatory for Press Freedoms, who was kidnapped on 17 November and was released the next day.
Iraq is ranked 156th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2019 World Press Freedom Index.
The following sites updated:
Starting in the United States where the race for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination continues and War Hawk Joe Biden continues to stumble. Ella Nilsen (VOX) reports:
Joe Biden’s
2020 campaign is confident it can do the improbable: win the Democratic
nomination for president without winning Iowa and New Hampshire.
“We’ve long felt that one of our unique advantages is
that we have multiple paths to the nomination, and I’m not sure anybody
else can say that right now,” Biden’s deputy campaign manager Pete
Kavanaugh told Vox.
The path rests on winning the Obama coalition of nonwhite
voters; many older black voters in particular have so far signaled
their loyalty to Biden. Though they’ve been campaigning and organizing
in Iowa and New Hampshire, the former vice president’s
campaign says faltering there wouldn’t be a death knell. Their paths
hinge on strong showings in the more diverse early states of Nevada and
South Carolina, and riding that energy into delegate-rich Super Tuesday
on March 3. Pointing to the southern states of North Carolina, Florida,
Georgia, and Virginia, Kavanaugh said, “Places like that we think we
could have a really profound advantage.”
“We strongly believe — and have consistently said — that no single state is a must-win,” he added.
Political experts in the early states disagree, saying that taken together, Iowa and New Hampshire are indeed must-wins.
They are must win and we've talked about this (for weeks now). If Joe loses Iowa, it's a hit and his support dips. That's only more true if he were to lose Iowa and New Hampshire. And when we talk about that, we're talking about the support from voters.
However, money, money, money . . .
Money, money, money...
Money makes the trees come down
It makes mountains into molehills
Big money kicks the wide wide world around.
-- "This Place," written by Joni Mitchell, first appears on her album SHINE
Money, money, money. Joe's making an effort in Iowa and it's cost him -- financially. If he loses Iowa watch some of his funding dry up. If he loses Iowa and New Hampshire, even more dries up. Can Joe's campaign stay afloat if he loses both?
"Joe Biden needs to grow up." So argues John Krull (GOSHEN NEWS) about the 77-year-old temper tantrum throwing Joe:
The former vice president and current candidate for president indulged in a temper tantrum with an Iowa voter the other day. The voter said Biden and his son Hunter had been “selling access” to the White House when the younger Biden served on the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company.
Joe Biden flared.
“You’re a damn liar, man,” he said to the 83-year-old Iowa farmer.
Worse, the former vice president continued to defend his snappish response to the man long after his anger should have cooled. He kept telling interviewers the man was lying and that he was entitled to unload on an ordinary citizen who had the temerity to question him.
In the first place, the farmer may not have had every fact straight, but it’s unlikely that he was lying. He is a Democrat, one who said afterward that he was going to vote for whoever the party’s nominee is — even if it’s Biden.
But that is beside the point.
Biden’s little fit of pique demonstrated that he doesn’t grasp that a lot of people — many of them Democrats and independents — have a problem with his son’s work with Burisma. The fact that he was paid $50,000 per month to do not much work raises questions. That the younger Biden had scant qualifications other than his last name to fill such a position only makes things worse.
Joe's got a lot of negatives. One of them? He's reminding people of other candidates who didn't end up president. Tyler MacDonald (THE INQUISITR) reports:
Democratic presidential candidate and frontrunner Joe Biden recently released a campaign ad that attacks Donald Trump as “erratic” and “unstable,” painting the former vice president as someone offering the “strong,” “steady,” and “stable” leadership the United States needs. The ad was quickly derided by progressive commentator Kyle Kulinski, who suggested that it was following in the footsteps of Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential bid against Trump.
Kulinski continued to blast the ad’s focus on attacking Trump, suggesting that it isn’t “creative, interesting or inspiring.”
Ava and I noted this with Tom Steyer's ads -- you need to tell the people what you will do. Your obsession with Donald Trump just makes him stronger. What are you going to do to make the lives of Americans better? Instead, you make your ads all about Donald Trump, suggesting you're good at envy but not good at planning for the future.
Joe's being endorsed by Kate Miller. Not the actress. So who? A little speck from the center-world. Born in 1952, she is a bit young to be a Joe Biden supporter. But her lifetime of nonsense makes her the perfect foil. VOTE SMART notes of Kate, "Kate Miller refused to tell citizens where she stands on any of the issues addressed in the 2012 Political Courage Test, despite repeated requests from Vote Smart, national media, and prominent political leaders."
Meanwhile the Joe Clone, his mini-me, Tiny Pete continues to underwhelm despite the avalanche of easy press he's been receiving for two months now. Rebecca Morin (USA TODAY) notes:
South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg hasn't seen his recent surge in early-state polls translate to national polls. He is at 9% in Tuesday's Quinnipiac Poll, but was in second place at 16% in last month's poll.
Tiny Pete and War Hawk Joe are two birds of a feather. Thankfully, there are alternatives. Sarah Lazare (IN THESE TIMES) reports:
Update:
Following publication of this piece, a Senate spokesperson for Elizabeth Warren contacted In These Times with the following comment: “I just saw your piece on the NDAA. She does not support this level of defense funding and does not plan to vote in favor of the NDAA.”
Warren then tweeted the following remarks: “The Pentagon’s budget has been too large for too long. I cannot support a defense bill that’s a $738 billion Christmas present to giant defense contractors & undermines our values and security.”
Earlier:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is the only 2020 presidential hopeful who has pledged to vote against—and loudly denounced—the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2020, a $738 billion military spending bill that would mark a $22 billion increase over last year. The other frontrunner in the Senate, Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, which is tasked with negotiating the contents of the bill, but has so far remained silent on how she will vote. None of the other Democratic presidential candidates in Congress—Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Sen. Michael Bennet (Colo.) and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii)—have indicated their voting intention, either.
The initial House version of the NDAA included certain restrictions on how military spending could be used, including measures prohibiting the allocation of funds to an unauthorized war with Iran and stopping U.S. military support for the war on Yemen. But a new compromise bill, released Monday, strips these out. While the compromise offers some concessions, such as paid parental leave for some federal workers, peace campaigners characterize it as a win for the Right. The House and Senate are expected to vote as soon as this week on the bill, which includes authorization for Trump’s proposed “space force” as part of the compromise.
On Bernie Sanders, Beatrice Adler-Bolton (JACOBIN) offers:
To live in the United States as a person with disabilities is to encounter daily acts of abuse and oppression. Working disabled people can legally be paid less than $1 an hour under federal law, an appalling exemption to already inadequate minimum-wage standards. Disabled people on Social Security Income (SSI) must report any income, including gifts, every month to maintain meager amounts of coverage, and can lose their benefits by marrying. We are more likely to be poor, and more likely to become homeless — more than 40 percent of homeless people are disabled.
For the first time in awhile, several of the candidates in the Democratic presidential primary have outlined proposals to address this. Last month, Julián Castro made a big splash by releasing a platform that, among other things, would scrap discriminatory wage laws and allow disabled SSI recipients to wed without penalty. Even Pete Buttigieg, in a long document brimming with 1990s-style Clintonite rhetoric, has laid out an agenda to take the disabled community on a glide path to equality.
But there’s only one candidate with a comprehensive set of policies that would directly enhance the lives of disabled people in the United States: Senator Bernie Sanders.
Disability rights issues are woven directly into the proposals of almost every single policy document the campaign has released to date. The Sanders campaign clearly understands that disability is not simply a set of special interests to be siloed off, but a common aspect of everyday life affecting a key group of people that US policy routinely degrades, diminishes, and often oppresses.
Housing is a disability issue. Labor is a disability issue. Health care is a disability issue. Disabled people are on the front lines of climate change. And the agenda that Sanders is advancing not only recognizes that all of these issues greatly affect disabled people; it recognizes that no program or policy is good enough if it does not work for the most marginalized among us — the disabled very much included.
Read on for specifics (and note these are the same issues that Hilda was raising in last week and this week's HILDA'S MIX).
Turning to Iraq, Samya Kulab (AP) reports:
The Christmas tree
in the middle of a central Baghdad plaza occupied by anti-government
protesters is bare, save for portraits of those killed under fire from
security forces. A tribute, the demonstrators explained, to a recent
decision by Iraq’s Christians to call off seasonal festivities to honor
the losses.
Leaders
of Iraq’s Christians unanimously cancelled Christmas-related
celebrations in solidarity with the protest movement — but the aims of
their stance go deeper than tinsel and fairy lights. Slogans of a united
Iraq free of sectarianism resonate deeply within the community, which
since the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein has fearfully observed its
diminishing influence amid growing Shiite-dominated politics shaping
state affairs. The Christians have also left Iraq in huge numbers over
the years, after being targeted by militant Sunni groups such as
al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.War Hawk Joe has still not been asked about the months of turmoil in Iraq by the press covering his campaign. Bonnie Kristian (REASON) points out:
After months of deadly, large-scale grassroots protests demanding reform in Baghdad, Iraqi, Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi announced his intent to resign and the country's parliament approved his resignation. In the protests, about 400 demonstrators, mostly young and unarmed, have been killed by Iraqi security forces; another 8,000 have been injured; and about a dozen security forces have also died in clashes with a violent minority of protesters. Today, it is unsettled who will become the new head of government.
It is unlikely to be a question easily resolved. The demonstrators' complaints are extensive, including state corruption and incompetence, unemployment and economic stagnation, and a perception of foreign influence over domestic politics, notably from Iran. More important than these specific issues, however, is the protesters' overarching critique of the governance structure in Baghdad—a structure shaped by Washington's nation-building efforts after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. That dissatisfaction makes this political unrest a fresh and urgent impetus to end American military intervention in Iraq once and for all.
U.S. exit could signal a move toward meaningful reforms the Iraqi people want. It would also be a boon for the American people, bringing closure to a misguided military intervention that has proven costly and counterproductive to U.S. security.
It is commonplace in U.S. politics to hear of the "end" of the Iraq War under former President Obama, but it is an odd end to a war which leaves thousands of occupying troops in place. The Trump administration began this year with more than 5,000 boots on the ground in Iraq, and, since then, added to their number after reshuffling U.S. forces in Syria. It has been nearly three years since Baghdad declared victory over the Islamic State—whose rise occasioned a growing U.S. footprint in Iraq beginning in 2014. In those years, Washington has ignored repeated Iraqi calls for withdrawal of all foreign militaries, as well as recent insistence from Baghdad that American forces relocated from Syria cannot stay.
Meanwhile Reporters Without Borders notes:
Reporters
Without Borders (RSF) is alarmed by the growing dangers for journalists
in Iraq, where the latest fatal victim was Ahmad Muhanna, a
photographer who was shot in the back by unidentified gunmen while
covering protests in Baghdad’s Al-Khilani Square on 6 December.
Muhanna was the third journalist to be murdered since a major wave of anti-government protests began in Iraq on 1 October. His death triggered an outcry on social networks.
The first journalist to be killed was Hisham Fares Al-Aadhami, a freelance photographer who was fatally shot in the chest by an irregular militia member while covering the protests in Al-Khilani Square on 4 October
The other fatal victim was Amjed Al-Dahamat, a writer and citizen-journalist who, according to the information obtained by RSF, was shot by unidentified gunmen near his home in the southeastern province of Maysan on 7 November.
“Rarely have Iraqi journalists been so exposed to danger and so vulnerable,” said Sabrina Bennoui, the head of RSF’s Middle East desk. “It is unacceptable that reporters in the field should be killed simply for having a camera or video camera. The Iraqi authorities must thoroughly investigate these clearly deliberate murders in order to identify those responsible.”
On the same day that Muhanna was murdered, another freelance photographer, Zaid Al-Khafaji, was kidnapped from his home on his return from covering the protests in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square. CCTV camera footage show men entering his home prior to his disappearance.
He was the second journalist to be abducted in recent weeks. The first was Muhammad Al-Shamari, a member of the Iraqi Observatory for Press Freedoms, who was kidnapped on 17 November and was released the next day.
Iraq is ranked 156th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2019 World Press Freedom Index.
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