Army Futures Command announced last week that troops from the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, have received the Army’s next-generation rifles and light machine guns chambered in a new 6.8mm round. These new weapons are replacing the decades-old M-4 and M-16 battle rifle platforms.
Military Times reports soldiers from 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell were handed XM7 Next Generation Rifle and XM250 Next Generation Automatic Rifle ahead of training in April.
Produced by firearm maker Sig Sauer, the XM7 is a 6.8×51mm gas-operated, magazine-fed assault rifle that replaces the M-4 carbine for close combat fighting. The XM250 is a 6.8×51mm gas-operated, belt-fed light machine gun that replaces the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, or SAW. Both rifles are chambered in 6.8×51mm, a new round for the Army that will increase range and improve lethality against the most advanced body armor used on the modern battlefield.
XM7
XM250
The fielding of these two rifles “is a culmination of a comprehensive and rigorous process of design, testing and feedback, all of which were led by soldiers,” Col. Jason Bohannon, manager of soldier lethality for the Program Executive Office Soldier project, said in a statement.
Bohannon continued: “As a result, the Army is delivering on its promise to deliver to soldiers the highest-quality, most-capable small-caliber weapons and ammunition.”
The latest figures from the Army’s fiscal 2025 budget request show a plan to purchase 111,428 XM7 rifles and 13,334 XM250 automatic rifles. The service also wants to purchase 124,749 XM157 Fire Control devices, also known as next-gen optics, which would be standard on battle rifles through 2030.
Both next-gen rifles “ensure increased lethality against a broad spectrum of targets beyond current/legacy weapon capabilities; increased range, accuracy, and probability of hit; reduced engagement time; suppressed flash/sound signature; and improved controllability and mobility,” the Army’s budget explains.
The new rifles come as the threat of major conflict across the world has never been higher. Conflicts could quickly spiral out of control in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. There is also rising concern about China in the Pacific.
The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication is requiring students to complete the course Diversity and Civility at Cronkite (DCC) in order to earn their bachelor’s degree in journalism.
The course, which also applies to students studying sports journalism and digital media, redefines such traditional phrases as “America is a melting pot” as race-based microaggressions and teaches future journalists to avoid assuming “unearned benefits” that come with “heterosexual privileges.”
Examples of outdated heterosexual privileges given in the curriculum include excluding biological males who identified as female from traditional sex-segregated places like women’s locker rooms and women’s prisons.
“To object to a man using a women’s bathroom is an example of discrimination against transgender individuals,” reads a chapter in the course entitled “Sexuality and Gender Identity.”
Also part of the seven-unit course is required reading material entitled “A Guide to Gender Identity Terms.”
It includes lessons that emphasize the importance of asking someone for their preferred pronouns and using them.
“You should offer your own pronouns first and then ask for the other person’s pronouns,” the reading material states. “While it can be awkward at first, it can quickly become routine.”
The course also teaches students to view statements like “I believe the most qualified person should get the job,” as a microaggression that translates into “People of color are given extra unfair benefits because of their race,” and “Everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough,” as implying that “People of color are lazy and/or incompetent and need to work harder.”
In response to inquiries from The Epoch Times, the state-run college described the mandatory course as “an entry-level course intended to bring thoughtful, open-minded discourse to issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, income, geography and other aspects of personal identities.”
“The goal of the course is to help students appreciate people’s differences and to channel disagreements toward civil discussion,” the college said in a statement. “With that view, students should be better able to approach reporting and communications projects with a multicultural perspective and inspire mutual respect among students from various backgrounds and beliefs while at the university, and beyond.”
Opt-Out Possible
A spokesperson for the Walter Cronkite School, which is part of Arizona State University (ASU) also told The Epoch Times that students may opt out of specific discussions by sending their professor a private email requesting to do so.
Timothy Minella, Senior Constitutionalism Fellow at the Goldwater Institute’s Van Sittert Center for Constitutional Advocacy told The Epoch Times that the required journalism course is especially disturbing because it is being mandated by a public, taxpayer funded college.
“Students who decide to major in these subjects are not necessarily signing up to be progressive activists,” he said. “A public university that should be serving the entire public, not just the liberal slice of it, needs to return to its core mission of education, not indoctrination.”
Mr. Minella, who recently wrote a critical analysis of the course after obtaining student assignments and teacher syllabuses through a public records request, said he was especially shocked by an assignment for students contemplating a career in public relations.
The assignment, as shown by records obtained by Mr. Minella, was based on an NPR interview with Demi Lovato, a pop star who has changed her gender identity multiple times.
It asks students: “Imagine you’re working at a PR firm and you have a client whose first album is about to drop. Your client’s gender identity is nonbinary and they use they/them pronouns. They have a massive press tour planned. How do you prepare journalists to talk with your client?”
Mr. Minella said the designers of the course “seemingly attempted to include every aspect of leftist identity politics” they could think up.
Pushing Diversity
The growing controversy of state colleges pushing transgender and critical race theory has become widespread.
On March 2, in a 84 to 30 vote, the South Carolina House approved a bill to ban mandatory diversity training for both students and staff at state universities.
The bill also bans any diversity mission statements as part of their admissions and employment process. If passed, it would add South Carolina to 22 states that passed similar legislation.
The issue also rages on in secondary public schools across the United States.
Earlier this week, two civil rights lawyers filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of a group made up of a Little Rock high school teacher, students and their parents against Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and state Education Secretary Jacob Olivia, over the state’s LEARNS Act. LEARNS stands for Literacy, Empowerment, Accountability, Readiness, Networking, and School Safety.
It bans the teaching of CRT and gender ideology in public schools. The group claims the law violates their Constitutional rights to free speech.
In other recent legal action on the issue, the conservative legal group Liberty Counsel (LC) won its battle with the Osseo Area School District in Minnesota for mandating a course for high schoolers entitled “LGBTQIA+ History and Culture Lesson.”
In a March 28 email to LC, the school district wrote that “teacher opt-out religious accommodations will be approved” and “students may choose to leave prior to or during the lesson.”
Mr. Minella said diversity is being pushed to extremes in schools. By his calculations, he found that in the school year 2023, more than 400 students at the Walter Cronkite school, spent more than 2,000 hours of class time learning about diversity, equity, and inclusion.
According to Mr. Minella, there are at least 100 classes offered at the journalism school that includes “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion,” in its core curriculum.
In addition to the report on the DCC course at the Walter Cronkite School, The Goldwater Institute recently filed a lawsuit against ASU on behalf of two professors who were allegedly threatened with disciplinary charges for refusing to participate in the college’s diversity training.
In response to inquiries by the Epoch Times about the lawsuit, an ASU spokesperson said in an email that “universities are” and that the school is “reserving comment until the board is fully briefed at its next board meeting.”
Its journalism school is named after legendary news anchor Walter Cronkite, dubbed the “most trusted man in America” by a public opinion survey conducted in 1972.
In a 1973 interview for Playboy Magazine, Mr. Conkrite, who died in 2009, said that “being a liberal, in the true sense, is being nondoctrinaire, nondogmatic, non-committed to a cause—but examining each case on its merits.”
He also said in the interview that “most newspapermen by definition have to be liberal; if they’re not liberal, by my definition of it, then they can hardly be good newspapermen.
“If they’re preordained dogmatists for a cause, then they can’t be very good journalists; that is, if they carry it into their journalism.”
Not everyone agreed he was the most trusted man in America, including Arizona Republican and one-time presidential nominee Sen. Barry Goldwater—the namesake of The Goldwater Institute.
Mr. Cronkite was often accused by conservatives back then of taking cheap shots at Mr. Goldwater, known as the “Grand Old Man of The Republican Party.”
On the day of President John. F Kennedy’s funeral, the CBS newsman reported that Mr. Goldwater was giving a political speech in Indiana instead of attending the President’s funeral when the U.S. Senator was actually in the state to attend his mother-in-law’s funeral.
In Russia Mass Deportations Of Muslim Migrants Surge After Moscow Terror Attack
There have been widespread reports of mass deportations of Muslim migrants from Russia in the wake of the March 22 terror attack on the Crocus City Hall venue in a Moscow suburb which killed at least 140 people and left hundreds more wounded and injured.
This trend is said to be the result of a significant uptick in raids by authorities on apartments and dorm complexes known to house Central Asian migrants, amid concerns that Islamic radicals could carry out more attacks.
President Vladimir Putin has put blame on Islamic extremists for the major attack which involved four gunmen planting explosives and randomly shooting into crowds; however, he and Kremlin officials also believe the men had assistance from Ukraine or possibly US or other foreign intelligence.
The alleged gunmen, who reportedly tried to escape across the Ukrainian border, are all Tajik nationals. A number of other foreigners have also been arrested in the days after the attack. Washington has said ISIS-K was behind it, while condemning Moscow’s allegations that the US or Ukraine could have had something to do with it.
The regional pro-opposition outlet Meduza hassaid that in the last week of March, St. Petersburg courts “received 584 cases of administrative offenses in connection with non-compliance with migration legislation.”
The report indicated that at least 418 foreigners were then ordered to go to special holding facilities to await expulsion from the country. “Another 48 people must pay a fine and leave the Russian Federation on their own,” Meduza wrote.
In Russia, after the Crocus City Hall mass murder of 143 people by Tajik Muslims, the mass deportations have begun.
An organization of human right lawyers who work in Russia, Perviy Otdel, observed in a statement Friday that in the St. Petersburg region, “Temporary detention centers for foreign citizens are packed, surrounded by special vehicles and buses heading to the airport.”
The Amsterdam-based Moscow Times linked the surge in deportations to the Crocus City Hall terror attack:
The countries where the migrants were being sent to were not specified, though it is known that labor migrants in Russia mostly hail from poor Central Asian countries.
Bailiffs reportedly refer to St. Petersburg’s mass deportations as “Operation Anti-Migrant,” with raids targeting local hostels and apartments. Similar raids were reported in Moscow and other Russian cities.
Anti-immigrant sentiment surged after four gunmen — who were later identified as Tajik nationals — stormed Crocus City Hall last Friday, killing 144 people and injuring 382 in the shooting and massive fire at the popular concert venue.
The backlash against Russia’s sizeable Tajik immigrant community is expected to grow. Recent years have seen over one million unemployed Tajiks enter Russia in search of work.
🚨 Russia: Yesterday Vladimir Osechkin relayed info from FSB sources that an order for indiscriminate mass raids and repressions against Muslims came down in ‘response’ to the Crocus City Hall massacre. Today, the FSB made mass arrests at the Wildberries warehouse in Electrostal. pic.twitter.com/pjr5OkhECN
A separate Moscow Times report has found that “Between 2012 and 2018, over 2,000 Tajik citizens joined terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq, making Tajikistan the third highest sender of foreign fighters to the war on a per capita basis.”
The report continues: “Most joined Islamic State, with some taking up key positions, including the group’s War Minister Gulmurod Halimov, who used to serve as head of Tajikistan’s OMON paramilitary police force.” This means Russia’s monitoring of and crackdown on this migrant community is likely only to grow from this point.
Preventive mental health therapy for children may be doing more harm than good—and there’s research to prove it, author Abigail Shrier suggests in her new book “Bad Therapy.”
“What you might not know is that the stuff that travels under the headline ‘mental health’ is really harmful for kids,” she said at a recent book-signing event hosted by the Lincoln Club at Newport Beach. “I’m telling you that according to the best psychological research available, it’s exactly what you would want to do if you wanted to break kids down.”
In “Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up,” which hit The New York Times’ best seller list, Ms. Shrier investigates the mental health industry and its negative impact on children, and concludes that when it comes to preventive therapy—especially for children—more is not always better.
Ms. Shrier’s previous book, “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” led her to the explore the potential harmful effects too much therapy can have on children.
“Irreversible Damage,” exposed the “social contagion” and phenomena behind the sudden spike in the number of teenage girls identifying as transgender.
“Twenty percent of seventh-grade classes were deciding they were transgender, and the terminus of this journey, as they call it, was a double mastectomy and infertility,” Ms. Shrier said.
She knew from talking to parents of gender dysphoric children that gender ideology was a social contagion that was spreading, and that a worldwide controversy was brewing. But, at the time, she said, liberals thought she was “picking on a tiny minority of kids who weren’t harming anyone,” and conservatives were asking her, ‘Why would you write about that?’”
“Nobody wanted to talk about it,” she said.
“Irreversible Damage” lit a political firestorm with the progressive left and remains a cultural lightning rod. The New York Times condemned the book in a review prompting Target stores to pull it from their shelves and triggering some Amazon employees who threatened to quit their jobs in a failed attempt to get the book banned.
The influential book not only shocked parents but it led them to question the gender ideology they discovered was being pushed in schools across America and sparked the parental rights movement across the nation.
‘Bad Therapy’
Ms. Shrier began her latest book, “Bad Therapy,” with a couple of questions: “Why was the generation that had gotten the most treatment, the most wellness techniques, the most regular emotional regulation techniques, the most anti-bullying classes, the most miserable? And, why do they have no interest in growing up?”
She decided to attend a conference about a multi-tiered system of support devoted to the mental health of children in California.
“I thought I should go and find out what our schools were doing to support the kids I knew were in distress,” she said. “Well, by the end of the three-day conference, I learned that actually every kid is in therapy. They just call it something else. They call it social emotional learning, or anti-bullying classes, and they look a lot like group therapy.”
Ms. Shrier also discovered a whole body of research on the known harms of therapy such as a study of burn victims who left therapy feeling worse than the control group and people who had lost a loved one feeling sadder than those who didn’t go to therapy, she said.
“First responders responding to catastrophe have left therapy feeling worse about themselves and their lives and what they went through than those control groups that didn’t,” she said.
It was then that Ms. Shrier began to realize the symptoms society was seeing in children are “exactly the symptoms you would see in a population that had gotten way, way, way too much therapy,” she said.
Social Emotional Learning
Ms. Shrier went to the schools to find out how social emotional learning, or SEL, is taught to children.
“How do you actually teach SEL? Well, let’s start by sharing a time when you’re happy. Well, that’s boring. Nothing to teach there. Control your joy? Let’s start by all sharing the time when we felt sad, when we felt misunderstood, when we thought we might be bullied,” she said. “Now we’re on a roll. Now we have something for the teachers to teach.”
The problem is that parents are often blamed for the child’s sadness at school because, after all, “Whose job is it to keep kids safe?” she asked.
“So now, we’re criticizing parents,” she said. “It’s completely built into the system. And, I’m not saying that because it’s a conspiracy. I’m just saying, naturally, if you want to teach wellness and emotional regulation, the way to do it is to focus on a time when kids felt sad.”
Ms. Shrier predicts in the book that social emotional learning would lead more children to be sad, anxious, phobic, and alienated from their parents.
When she finished the book in October, Ms. Shrier didn’t know researchers in Australia and England wondered the same thing and were conducting experiments on wellness techniques and anti-bullying, she said.
As it turned out, two new studies showed that “kids ended up being sadder and more anxious, more depressed and more alienated from their parents than the control group,” she said.
Rise of the Expert Class
The rise in the expert class to break down parental authority has been happening for generations, she said.
Society began to regard informal relationships “as hazardous and somewhat sinister,” and instead placed their trust in “experts.”
“So, we didn’t trust grandma as much even though she had raised good kids to adulthood, but to this parenting expert whose oldest child was five, we listened,” she said.
But, while the overtreatment of children who don’t need therapy is causing damage, she said there are still children and adults who do need therapy.
“There are kids who need it. But, if you don’t treat them well, you’re only introducing risk,” she said. “They stand to gain nothing.”
Ms. Shrier stressed that she’s not opposed to therapy or medication.
“If you have a severe phobia and are afraid to leave your house, by all means get the therapy. It will help you leave your house if it’s done right. If you’re so germophobic you can’t shake people’s hands, get the therapy. … If you have a severely anorexic kid … get your kid the help they need of course,” she said.
Parents need to know that therapy for a child is “an entirely different experience than therapy with an adult, because an adult can say to a therapist, ‘Listen, I really appreciated that, but I wouldn’t call my mom emotionally abusive,’ or ‘Listen I know you’ve said in the past that’s toxic, but I’m not going to cut off my parents,” Ms. Shrier said.
Society now treats a healthy-minded child who is a little worried or a bit anxious by sending them to therapy, exposing them to risks such as increased anxiety, increased depression, alienation from their parents, and demoralization, the feeling that they are limited by a mental health diagnosis, and in some ways the sadness of all treatment dependency, she said.
Children are left feeling that “they can’t do for themselves,” or make decisions, without consulting an expert or an adult, which hinders them from gaining confidence and growing up, she said.
“We’ve never had an American generation that believes less in its ability to rise to a challenge than this one,” she said.
‘They’ve Been Told a Lie’
Ms. Shrier interviewed a young woman who has received preventive, or prophylactic, therapy since she was 6 years old, when her parents divorced. The woman, called Becca in the book, never stopped going to therapy.
Although Becca, now 17, has never been diagnosed with a mental illness, she continues to see a therapist to discuss her “anxiety,” Ms. Shrier said.
When Ms. Shrier asked what Becca and her therapist were currently working on, she replied that the therapist was helping her prepare to make friends in college.
“This is what we’re seeing in the rising generation. They don’t believe they’re up to the basic challenges of adulthood. They think they need a mental health day off,” she said. “They don’t want to have kids or get married either because they think they’re sick. In some ways, it’s the saddest thing of all, because they’ve been told a lie that they’re all mentally ill; it’s just a question of degrees.”
‘Who Objects to Wellness?’
Policies governing therapy are almost always couched in language that makes them difficult to challenge.
“They are always being sold as something you can’t object to, like wellness,” she said. “Who objects to wellness?”
“That’s how all the conversion therapy bans got passed, she said. These bans were sold as a way to stop the cruel practice of trying to force gay young people to go straight, but then they slipped in gender identity language,” Ms. Shrier said.
So now, therapists who tell a girl she’s a girl and not a boy can be accused of conversion therapy and lose their license, she said.
Therapeutic Culture
Therapeutic culture has worked its way into “everything,” Ms. Shrier said.
And, while anti-bullying classes may sound like a good idea on the surface, how they’re taught and by whom has side-effects, she suggested.
“You know what you need to do to teach kids not to bully? Teach them right from wrong: ‘Don’t pick on someone smaller than you. Don’t join in,’ and ‘I’m going to be really disappointed if you do. That’s not a behavior we expect in this house. It’s wrong.’ That’s how you teach anti-bullying,” she said.
“You know what you don’t do? Go into a class with a school counselor and teach all the kids they’re so fragile that if anyone says anything they don’t like they’re going fall apart, because now you have kids who don’t believe they can survive anything. That’s what they’ve been told over and over.”
The remedy is simple, she said.
“This is the easiest thing in America to fix. We’ve got a lot of problems, but this one is so easy,” she said. “Mom and Dad can fix it tomorrow. It doesn’t even take any money. You just need to assert your authority and tell kids what’s what. That’s it.”
Children are dwelling far too much and too long on their problems, and not learning how to perform errands and tasks that build confidence, she said.
“If a kid takes his problem to a pastor, or grandma, or an aunt, at some point, the aunt or the grandma is going to say, ‘You’re fine. We’ve talked about this enough. Go play!’” she said. “And guess what a therapist won’t say. ‘You’re fine.’ That’s the problem.”
Almost any activity would be better for children than social emotional learning or “talking about our bad feelings” in schools, she said. “Paint the gym, play ball—they could literally do anything—pick up trash on the side of the highway, and it would be better for them than sitting around talking about their pain,” she said.
It’s “not fair” to children who have gone through a traumatic experience to talk about their pain right before a math test, she said.
“You’re not helping them, but you might convince a kid who hasn’t gone through something really hard that actually they were abused, too,” she said.
How Much Therapy is Too Much?
Ms. Shrier told The Epoch Times in an interview that while researching “Irreversible Damage” she realized that at the core of the “social contagion” she exposed were the children’s therapists and school counselors.
“In almost every case, a kid had a therapist or school counselor that encouraged them in the idea that they might be transgender,” she said.
It was “obvious and disturbing” that mental health professionals had left children “worse off or introduced a new problem,” she said.
Since too much therapy can increase anxiety and depression, “it can introduce new symptoms, like the idea that you can have gender dysphoria,” she said.
Ms. Shrier interviewed Arthur Barsky, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and world expert on illness anxiety disorder, somatic symptom disorder, or what used to be called call hypochondriasis—the condition afflicting hypochondriacs.
Mr. Barsky, she said, told her hypochondriasis isn’t about people imagining pain, but rather hyperfocusing on the normal pains we all feel.
“If you make that an organizing principle of your life, the pain will magnify,” she said. “That’s what these kids are doing to their emotional lives.”
Today’s children, many who are leading unhealthy lifestyles, think the solution must be diagnosis, therapy, or medication, but too much therapy has led them to every kind of diagnosis, including gender dysphoria, Ms. Shrier said.
Parents ‘Terrified’
‘Helicopter moms,’ the term for overprotective parents who hover over their children fearing they will be traumatized at school or away from home, have given rise to a new generation of parents who are even more afraid, according to Ms. Shrier.
“They’re frantic,” she said. “It’s much worse than helicoptering. It’s surveillance parenting.”
These parents “are actually tracking their kids with an app on their phones,” and calling teachers demanding their children not be seated next to students who might hurt their feelings, she said.
“They’re calling coaches. They’re calling bosses,” she said.
And they’re convinced they must protect their child from being “called a bad name at elementary school” because if they don’t the trauma will devastate them, she said.
“They can never look away,” she said. “They’re terrified of emotional injury. They’re terrified of bullying.”
‘Surveillance Parenting’
While generations of older Americans, including conservative opinion hosts, have mocked the rising generation, often calling them “snowflakes” who need “safe spaces” and “therapy dogs” so they don’t melt over comments they find offensive, Ms. Shrier says the problem runs much deeper than thin-skinned youth.
“It’s worse than that,” she said. “Kids are not able to deal with normal problems in adult life because they’re genuinely believing themselves sick.”
American society has been immersed in trauma and therapy culture for more than a generation, and its effects are “profound,” she said.
“Now kids don’t say ‘I’m shy,’ they say ‘I have social phobia.’ They don’t say ‘I’m worried,’ they say ‘I have anxiety.’ They don’t say ‘I feel sad,’ they have depression,” she said. “That is proof that they were swimming in the language of psychopathology.”
These parents bought into the notion that preventive therapy was an innocuous intervention, “but it’s not,” she said.
“It’s false. It’s never been true, but they believed that,” Ms. Shrier said. “Where did they get that idea? They’d all been teased, they’d all been neglected, they’d all had their hearts broken, so why did they become convinced in one generation that their children couldn’t survive that?”
The answer: “Because the experts told them.”
This parental generation trusted the mental health experts and believed the “trauma narrative” they were selling, she said. Some became “obsessed” with normal problems children face at school because they grew up to think everybody can use therapy like “a mental tune-up,” even though there is a body of research called iatrogenesis “when a healer introduces a harm.”
Most parents weren’t aware of the negative side effects therapy can cause, especially for children who don’t need it, Ms. Shrier said.
Preventive Mental Health
Some of this therapeutic culture stems from rising divorce rates over the last few decades.
“A lot of us went to therapy as adults and we thought that really helped, and we assumed it would be the same for a kid,” she said. “It’s not.”
Mental health experts—the American School Counseling Association, the National Association of School Psychologists, the American Psychological Association—that had nothing to say as children headed into the second academic year of lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the lockdowns were “the most obvious detriment to kids’ mental health,” she said, “now present themselves as the cure.”
These mental health experts behave more like groups that want to enrich themselves than people who are “actually trying” to help the mental health of children, she said.
“Now, if you need therapy, if you have a disorder, if you have a real problem, it’s worth the risk. It’s when you don’t have a problem, that you only stand to face the risk because you don’t stand to benefit,” she said. “So, I’m not against treatment. What I’m against is what they call ‘preventive mental health,’ which has no proven track record of helping anybody. And, by the way, of course it can’t. It’s treating people who don’t have a problem.”
Which US College Major Is The Worst For Finding A Job?
Finding a job can often be a Sisyphean task in this rapidly changing modern economy. Highly sought after skills come and go, following the greater tides of technology change, marketplace behavior, and shifting consumer patterns.
After all, take a look at what’s happening in the tech world.
Education plays an important role in this job hunting business of course. And some skill sets are losing their sheen, with their practitioners having a harder time than others in securing gainful employment.
But which ones are the worst right now?
We visualize the top 10 U.S. college majors, ranked by their unemployment rate, including their underemployment rate for additional context. These figures are of recent college graduates (those aged 22–27 with a bachelor’s degree or higher) and are sourced from the New York Federal Reserve, current up to February 2024.
ℹ️ Underemployment is when workers are working less than full-time or in insufficient jobs for their training.
Ranked: U.S. Majors with the Highest Unemployment Rates
Heading the first three spots on this list are all the majors with “art” in their name.
Nearly 8% of recent Art History, Liberal Arts, and Fine Arts graduates are unemployed, with more than 50% of them underemployed.
At fourth place, 7.8% of recent Aerospace Engineering majors have not found a job—a surprising statistic since engineering is regarded as one of the more stable majors to study.
In fact from same data source, Industrial and Mechanical engineers have some of the lowest unemployment rates in the country.
However, aerospace engineering jobs tend to be clustered around the big companies in an otherwise small industry, with additional requirements for security clearances. Tellingly, the underemployment rate for aerospace engineering graduates is less than 20%, which is the best out of this list.
At fifth, sixth, and seventh place are History (7.5%), English (6.6%), and Mass Media (6.3%) of which the former two have also seen a rapid decline in undergraduates in the last decade.
Viral infections are thought to be a central cause of between 10 to 20 percent of cancers worldwide, representing a significant portion of the global cancer burden.
A recent discovery may further our understanding of how viruses cause cancer.
Researchers from the Cleveland Clinic uncovered one of the mechanisms that a type of virus called Kaposi sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) uses to induce cancer.
The study, published last month in Nature Communications, found that the KSHV virus activated a specific pathway responsible for cell metabolism and the way cells grow and multiply. Using current U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved breast cancer drugs, they were able to reduce the replication of the virus, stop the progression of the lymphoma, and shrink existing tumors in preclinical models.
Jun Zhao, of the Cleveland Clinic Florida Research and Innovation Center, who holds a doctorate in genetic, molecular, and cellular biology is the study’s lead author.
“Our findings have significant implications: viruses cause between 10% to 20% of cancers worldwide, a number that is constantly increasing as new discoveries are made. Treating virus-induced cancers with standard cancer therapies can help shrink tumors that are already there, but it doesn’t fix the underlying problem of the virus,” Mr. Zhao explained in a news release. “Understanding how pathogens transform a healthy cell into a cancer cell uncovers exploitable vulnerabilities and allows us to make and repurpose existing drugs that can effectively treat virus-associated malignancies.”
Kaposi Sarcoma-Associated Herpesvirus
Kaposi sarcoma-associated herpesvirus, also known as human herpesvirus 8 (HHV8), is “A type of virus that causes Kaposi sarcoma (a rare cancer in which lesions grow in the skin, lymph nodes, lining of the mouth, nose, and throat, and other tissues of the body). Kaposi sarcoma-associated herpesvirus also causes certain types of lymphoma (cancer that begins in cells of the immune system),” according to The National Cancer Institute.
According to the news release, Kaposi sarcoma-associated herpesvirus is similar to other herpesviruses in that it is often asymptomatic and stays in the body laying dormant after primary infection. However, when the immune system becomes weakened or compromised, as it does in many elderly people, transplant recipients, or those with HIV or AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome), the virus can reactivate. In these high-risk immunocompromised groups, the reactivated virus “can trigger aggressive cancers.”
Cancer cells replicate quickly and reprogram the body’s metabolism to help them grow and spread. Most viruses don’t produce their own energy or the molecules they need and therefore hijack the body’s cells to do the work for them. However, the researchers found that the KSHV virus assumes control of two host proteins (CDK6 and CAD) which causes the virus to replicate more quickly and the cells to multiply and spread out of control.
The news release also states that KSHV-induced cancers are “fast-acting, aggressive and difficult to treat,” and that an estimated 10 percent of people in North America and Northern Europe, and 50 percent of people in Africa have KSHV, although the numbers are thought to be much higher because the virus can present without symptoms and often goes undiagnosed.
A University of Pittsburgh article about KSHV writes, “It is highly likely that over 95% of persons who are healthy and infected with KSHV do not have symptoms and never will,” and that problems develop once a person’s immune system becomes compromised.
Viruses and Cancer
In addition to KSHV, several other viruses are known to cause human cancers. According to the American Cancer Society, the following viruses can cause cancer in humans:
Human papillomaviruses
Epstein-Barr virus
Hepatitis B virus and hepatitis C virus
Human immunodeficiency virus
Human T-lymphotropic virus-1
Merkel cell polyomavirus
The American Society of Microbiology states that “Viruses can lead to cancer by associating with host proteins, proliferating when the human immune system is weakened, and hijacking proliferating human cells. Compared to other viruses, human tumor viruses are unusual because they infect, but do not kill, their host cells.” This process allows the human tumor viruses to initiate ongoing infections.
The research team discovered that the combination of Palbociclib—a drug that is FDA-approved to treat breast cancer and works by blocking CDK6—and a compound that blocks CAD (the two host proteins that are hijacked by the virus) caused a substantial reduction in tumor size and improvements in cancer survival rates in preclinical models. According to the news release, “Most tumors virtually disappeared after about a month of treatment, and remaining tumors shrank around 80%. Survival increased to 100% for selected lymphoma cell lines.”
Future Impact
The findings could lead to new options for the treatment of KSHV-associated cancers, which include Kaposi’s sarcoma, primary effusion lymphoma, and HHV8-associated multicentric Castleman disease. They could also potentially extend beyond KSHV-associated cancers to other viruses that cause cancer using the same or similar mechanisms.
As for what the findings mean for the future, Mr. Zhao says, “Cellular metabolism could be hijacked by both viruses and cancers for pathogenesis. By investigating these metabolic rewiring mechanisms, we aim to find the Achilles’ heel of cancer-causing viruses and non-viral cancers. I’m excited to see what the future of this work holds.”
La Niña Forecasted To Fuel Explosive Atlantic Hurricane Season
Hurricane season doesn’t start until June 1st—or about two months from today, April 1st. Weather forecasters have already warned that the Atlantic Hurricane season could be super active, and that’s a major problem for anyone trying to plan a vacation in the Bahamas later this year or operators of offshore oil/gas wells across the Gulf of Mexico.
“The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season is forecast to feature well above the historical average number of tropical storms, hurricanes, major hurricanes and direct US impacts,” AccuWeather Lead Hurricane Forecaster Alex DaSilva said.
DaSilva explained: “Sea-surface temperatures are well above historical average across much of the Atlantic basin, especially across the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean and the Main Development Region [for hurricanes].”
Besides the very warm Atlantic Ocean water temperatures adding fuel to the fire, the development of La Niña (read: “The Coming Collapse Of El Nino And Flip To La Nina”) in the Pacific results in less disruptive winds, known as wind shear, over most of the Atlantic basin, which means tropical systems will form more easily.
All three Atlantic hurricane seasons, 2020, 2021, and 2023, La Niña was present and featured well above the 30-year historical average of 14 named storms.
DaSilva forecasts 20-25 named storms across the Atlantic basin in 2024, including 8-12 hurricanes. He expects four to seven major hurricanes and four to six storms to land on the Gulf and East Coast.
And, of course, corporate media will blame fossil-fuel-caused climate change for an active hurricane season while Gen-Z climate buffoon Greta instills more climate anxieties into her hopeless young followers.
If you want to understand the direction of debt, rates, the USD, inflation, risk asset markets, gold and the US endgame, it might be better not to listen to the experts.
In fact, Johny Cash is a far better source…
Five Feet High & Rising
In a classic 1959 tune by Johny Cash, the singer asks: “How high’s the water mama?”
This question is then answered by a riff which chants, “she said it’s two feet high and risin.’”
And with each subsequent refrain, the water level goes to three feet, four feet and then five feet, “high and risin’.”
In short: An obvious flood.
And when it comes to debt in the land of the world reserve currency, Johny Cash may have something to teach Jerome Powell and the other DC children drowning the US (and its debt-soaked Dollar) into a slow but steady debt flood.
Boring?
I’ve often said that good journalism, like honest economics, is boring.
One has to understand “hard” indicators like bond yields (which move inversely to bond price) and the high-school level basics of supply and demand forces.
But as I’ve also said countless times, and will say countless times more: The bond market is THE thing, because bonds are all about DEBT.
If you understand bonds, and in particular, the Fed’s hidden (real) mandate to save Uncle Sam’s sovereign IOU’s from sinking in price, then you will be able to easily foresee (rather than date predict) the future of risk assets, gold, BTC, the USD and yes, inflation.
The complex truly is that simple.
How High’s the Debt Mama? 120% and Risin’
And if you turn to Johny Cash and ask “How high’s the debt level mama?” well… the blunt answer informs just about everything you need to know.
So, let’s keep it simple.
Simple, Not Boring
Debt is WHERE it all begins, and it tells you exactly HOW the American song ends.
And just how high is the water (debt) mama?
Ten years ago, US public debt was $17T “and risin’.”
Today it’s $34.5T “and risin’.”
America’s debt to GDP is 120%, its deficit to GDP is around 6%, and every 100 days we add another $1T in borrowing to our shameless bar tab of debt addiction masquerading as capitalism.
Even our own Congressional Budget Office will confess that unless we issue more debt (and print more debased money to monetize it), our Medicare and social security piggy bank will be empty by 2030.
Meanwhile, the USA is staring down the barrel of $212T in unfunded liabilities yet only $190T in assets.
Apologists (i.e., truth and math-challenged politicos), however, will tell you there is no crisis, even as the water levels rise past our closed eyes.
The clever ones will remind us that America’s USD comprises 85% of FX transactions, the vast bulk (80%) of international trade settlements, and is in constant “milk-shake” demand from the Eurodollar, derivative and SWIFT payment systems.
In other words, the Dollar is gonna be just fine.
Hmmm…
Facts vs. “Just Fine”
As warned from day-1 of the myopic (and suicidal) sanctions against Putin in which the US weaponized the world reserve currency, those days of a “just fine” USD simply ended.
Not all at once, but slow and steady, like a flood’s water line…
In just 2 years, we’ve seen undeniable signs of de-dollarization from the BRICS+ nations and an extraordinarily telling shift in the petrodollar dynamics (20% of 2023 global oil sold outside the USD), which would have been otherwise unimaginable in the pre-sanction era.
But, if you remain convinced that America and its reserve currency have magical immunity from the de-dollarization’s slow drip greenback demise, let’s get back to the oh-so boring but oh-so honest cries of the US Treasury market.
Why?
Again. Because the bond market is everything.
As important, the bond market has everything to do with debt, and current US debt is drowning the nation and diluting the USD, one slow trillion at a time.
And for years I have pounded my fist saying the Powell’s “war on inflation” was a ruse, as every debt-soaked nation needs to debase its currency to inflate away debt.
For years, I’ve argued that the Fed would simply lie about inflation (i.e., grossly under-report it) in order to make it appear statistically lower than what we actually knew/felt it to be.
Even Larry Summers, who is the classic arsonist (from his repeal of Glass-Steagall to deregulating the derivatives markets) now playing at fireman, has publicly stated that the actual US CPI scale, using pre-1983 housing methods, peaked last year at 18%, not the official 3.7% range…
If we then tack on a US debt/GDP ratio that is 30% higher today than in 2009, we mathematically see that despite Powell’s repressive “higher-for-longer” rate polices, we’ve made zero dent in our debt—instead, we’ve increased it.
In other words, our war against inflation is a loss; and our debts have increased.
And in the last couple of years, I’ve been pounding my fist that Powell would pivot from rising rates, to pausing rate cuts to eventually cutting rates followed in turn by outright money printing (or rather mouse-clicking Dollars) to “pay” Uncle Sam’s debt at the expense of our currency via what Luke Gromen calls “super QE.”
And all modesty aside, I think I/we have been right…
Right or Wrong?
Already, and as of last week, Powell has openly projected rate cuts in 2024, and they are likely to come by or near September.
We’ll see.
For now, just the promise (words) of rate cuts have been enough to send Pavlovian (Fed-dependent) markets to all-time-highs despite a real economy already under water.
And the subsequent decline in the Market Option Volatility Estimate (“MOVE” Index) was a neon-flashing sign that the market is getting ready for a new flood of dollar-diluting liquidity…
Where’s the QE, Matt?
But what about my forewarned QE?
What about that ultimate moment when Powell admits full defeat in his so-called “war” on inflation (while quietly seeking inflation) and openly does what many off us (nod again to Luke Gromen et al) already know he will do, that is: Debase the currency to “save” a rigged-to-fail (i.e., debt-based) USA?
Clearly, it seems, I/we have been wrong about that QE, no?
Well…Not so fast.
Coming Through the Back Door
In fact, Powell, along with his former Fed colleague-turned-mind-numbing Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, have been doing un-noticed back-door QE at staggering levels too complex (or obvious) for the mental midgets in our so-called main stream media to even notice.
Shocker? Hardly…
Facts Are Stubborn Things
The fact is that five times in the last four years, DC has been doing QE by just another name (what I call “backdoor QE”) to avoid the embarrassment of direct QE.
Notwithstanding the “not-QE” (which really was QE) in 2019 when the Fed bailed out a cash-dry repo market (which, by design, no one understood), the DC magicians have been doing trillions worth of QE-like liquidity measures without having to call it, well QE…
That is, the Fed and Treasury Dept. have been pulling liquidity out of the drying Treasury General Account, the now retired “BTFP” measures, and the intentionally confusing reverse repo markets.
More recently (and equally as well intentionally confusing to the masses), the Fed is quietly on the verge of allowing the Fed banks to use unlimited leverage to buy unlimited amounts of USTs off the Fed’s balance sheet via the removal of what the fancy lads call “Supplementary Reserve Ratios.”
This latest trick, by the way, is just off-balance sheet QE, and yet another symptom of the big banks becoming branch offices of the Fed, as our already centralized America becomes even more grotesquely, well…centralized, which is a classic symptom of a desperate and debt-soaked regime.
But just in case none of the foregoing tricks of backdoor QE have convinced you of what basically amounts to just QE, we can get our clearest signals from—you guessed it: THE BOND MARKET.
That is, one of the most obvious examples of “backdoor QE” is the Treasury Department’s open yet ignored trick of issuing most of its recent debt from the short duration end of the yield curve.
What The T-Bills Are Saying
By issuing more short-term IOUs in the form of T-Bills, this takes the supply-push inflation pressure off the openly unloved 10Y USTs, whose price declines (and subsequent as well as fatally unpayable yield/rate spikes) not only crushed regional banks, but Uncle Sam’s wallet as well.
OK. Yield curves and duration implications may sound, well… boring, but stick with me because this really, really matters.
The extreme levels of T-Bill issuance (as opposed to 10Y IOUs) has immense implications and is a flashing neon sign that the US is not heading into an economic crisis, but is in fact, ALREADY in a crisis.
Today, T-Bill issuance is at a two-decade high, and comprises greater than 85% of all US Treasury issuance.
This short-end issuance is far more like QE, i.e. simple money printing—which, we remind you, is highly inflationary/reflationary.
Hard to believe? See for yourself:
The last time we saw such QE-like desperation from the T-Bill side of the yield curve was during the Great Financial Crisis and the COVID crisis.
No Crisis? Huh?
But according to our so-called “leaders,” we are not at all in a crisis today. As they keep reminding us, we are at “full employment” (eh-hmmm) and nominal GDP is growing at 6%.
Then again, nominal GDP “growing” on the back of over $23T in UST issuance (bonds, notes and bills) is simply debt-driven “growth,” and debt-driven growth is not growth, it’s just debt.
In short, and as Luke Gromen concluded far better than I: “You know the debt crisis is real when the US resorts to short-term debt issuance.”
Summing Up
Whenever one is dealing with truth-challenged profiles like the Fed, Treasury Dept or White House, it is far better/simpler to watch what they do rather than what they say, as the difference is approximately 180 degrees…
All of the evidence above (from debt levels, de-dollarization trends, petrodollar shifts, backdoor QE measures and T-Bill over-issuance) screams of an open and obvious debt crisis which ALWAYS indicates a consequent currency crisis.
Always.
And as I have said for years, including a public discussion with Brent Johnson, the US can’t afford a strong USD because its debt levels require a weaker, inflated USD, regardless of its “relative”/DXY “strength.”
The string cite of evidence above (and beyond just rate cuts) is simply a cleverly veiled way of the Fed and Treasury telling us they want (need) a much weaker USD to save their necks at the expense of the dollar in your portfolio, checking account or wallet.
Gold, of course, is sniffing this out.
So are the stock markets and BTC.
So are the global central banks, who are stacking gold and dumping USTs at record levels.
The COMEX and London exchanges are also sniffing this out, as physical gold and silver is going from churn motions to actual physical delivery at record levels.
Meanwhile, even the BIS has made gold a Tier-1 asset.
Just saying…
The empirical (rather than “sensational”) evidence of an unloved UST and distrusted (debased and weaponized) USD is there for all who have eyes to see and ears to hear.
Gold has hit all-time-highs (and will go much, much higher) simply because the USD is going much, much lower.
But, of course, no one in DC will say the quiet part out loud.
Canada Marks Most Rapid Population Growth In 66 Years
Thanks to an influx of immigrants in 2023, Canada has experienced its most rapid population growth in six decades, according to True North.
As of January 1, 2024, the nation’s population reached a staggering 40,769,890, marking a 3.2% increase from the previous year, the highest annual growth reported since 1957.Canada’s real-time population clock shows that the country’s population has now broken 41 million, just months after breaking the 40 million threshold.
In Q4, 2023 alone, Canada’s population increased by 241,494 people between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31.
“In 2023, the vast majority (97.6%) of Canada’s population growth came from international migration (both permanent and temporary immigration), and the remaining portion (2.4%) came from natural increase,” reads a report published last week by Statistics Canada.
According to the report, temporary immigration has primarily fueled the population increase – as a record 804,901 non-permanent residents, including temporary workers and international students, while 471,771 permanent migrants also arrived in alignment with targets set by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.
According to a recent report by True North’s Candice Malcolm, the number of illegal migrants has exploded tenfold since Stephen Harper was Prime Minister. She said that the total number of newcomers in Canada is approximately 2.2 million people annually.
Amidst this rapid growth, interprovincial migration has also seen notable shifts, with Alberta recording a significant net gain, the largest seen since comparable data became available in 1972. -True North
That said, Ontario saw an exodus of 36,197 people to other provinces, which followed a loss of 38,816 people in 2022.
Marc Miller, Canada’s Immigration Minister, previously said that the number of foreign workers and international students had resulted in a system that was “out of control,” and recently announced a new target to be introduced in September that would bring temporary residents from 6.2% of the population to 5% within three years.
Senior BMO economics Robert Kavcic suggested that this reduction could bring Canada’s population growth from more than 3% to around 1%.
“The 400,000-500,000 range is just about the sweet spot for net immigration that provides needed long-run labour supply, while also being absorbable,” he said.
Russia Voices Outrage As Death Toll Rises To 11 After Israeli Attack On Iran’s Damascus Embassy
Update(1838ET): Monitors cited in AFP report the death toll from Monday’s Israeli air strike on the Iranian embassy complex in Damascus has risen to 11. “The death toll from the Israeli strikes on the Iranian embassy annex has risen to 11: eight Iranians, two Syrians and one Lebanese — all of them fighters, none of them civilians,” AFP quoted the war monitor as saying.
Regional and international reaction came hours later, with Lebanese Hezbollah — a close ally of Iran — vowing that Israel will be “punished” for the attack. As we detailed earlier (below), several top IRGC commanders were killed in the strike at a moment a high-level military meeting was taking place.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry reacted as follows: “We strongly condemn this attack on the Iranian consular office in Syria. We consider any attacks on diplomatic and consular facilities, the inviolability of which is guaranteed by the relevant Vienna Conventions, to be categorically unacceptable.”
However, Russia has by and large taken a back seat when it comes to responding to Israeli attacks on Syria. Israeli aircraft typically fire on Syria from over nearby Lebanese airspace, but Syrians have increasingly wondered why Moscow doesn’t use its significant anti-air systems parked in the region to defend against such attacks on its ally the Assad government. But Russia and Israel apparently reached a status quo deal years ago, which allow for the Israeli raids as long as they are ostensibly targeting ‘Iranian assets’.
Among the slain in Monday’s attack was Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a top commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), who reportedly oversaw Quds Forces operations in Syria and Lebanon. Clearly Israeli’s intelligence capabilities are significant regarding Iranian movements and operations inside Syria, given Israel clearly knew the where and when of the top level meeting.
A strike like this — against an embassy which is supposed to be ‘protected’ by international diplomatic norms upheld by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations — is somewhat unprecedented and so marks a massive escalation by Israel.
David Asher, a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and former senior State Department official under the Trump administration had this to say in terms of what’s likely to come next:
“This is a huge strike against Iran’s Qods Force. Expect to see Iranian missile retaliation directly against Israel. Things are moving beyond proxy war into direct conflict. Crude prices should make a decisive move higher on macro risk,” he told ZeroHedge.
Others are currently speculating that Israel may be trying to provoke a war with Iran to get the US directly involved on its side. The Hezbollah situation along Israel’s northern border continues to be at crisis levels, given that an estimated 80,000 Israeli citizens remain evacuated from their homes.
Recent months have seen Israeli officials float a bold plan for a US-enforced ‘buffer zone’ which would remove Hezbollah from near the Israeli border. While the plan calls for an international peacekeeping force, those troops would essentially become an occupying force in the eyes of Hezbollah and the Iranians. But Israel likely perceives that it needs full Washington support and military backing if it were to pursue a final ‘end all’ battle with Hezbollah, which would certainly collapse all of Lebanon into chaos and crisis. Without doubt, the Netanyahu coalition government wants to see regime change in Tehran as well.
* * *
Update(1450ET): Tehran is vowing a “harsh” response to the Israeli attack on its embassy and consulate earlier in the day, which killed at least five to eight people, reportedly including IRGC leaders. Iran’s foreign minister slammed it as “a violation of all international obligations and conventions” while the Syrian government denounced it as a “terrorist attack”.
Iran’s Ambassador to Syria Hossein Akbari was not injured in the attack, which appeared to have occurred at the moment a high level meeting was taking place. Iranian state media has since confirmed the death of Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander in the elite Quds Force of the IRGC. There are further indicators that two more top IRGC commanders may be among the slain…
#Israel‘s strike in #Damascus today is a huge development & a major escalation.
“Tasnim reported that Zahedi’s deputy was also killed in the strike,” regional media further confirms.
Depending on Iran’s response, this could be the start of an all-out regional war. For months now, Iranian-made ballistic missiles and drones have rained down on Israel, fired by Iran’s proxies in Lebanon and Yemen. This new brazen Israeli attack on Iran’s embassy takes things into uncharted territory, and also opens up the potential for the Iranians to target Israeli embassies abroad.
The annex or consular building next to the embassy in Mezzeh district was flattened in the strike…
There are emerging reports and accompanying video confirmation that an Israeli airstrike destroyed part of the complex of the Iranian embassy in the Syrian capital on Monday.
Syrian state media is also reporting that Israel conducted a rare daytime strike in the vicinity of the Iranian embassy in Damascus. Video shows that the entire front of the embassy complex and drive along with a side annex building have been destroyed.
Watch: Airstrikes target a building near the Iranian embassy in Syria’s capital Damascus. Syrian state media says that Syrian air defenses intercepted “hostile targets” in the vicinity of the capital.#Iran#Syria
However, the embassy building itself is standing and appears to have not been directly struck in the attack. Regional reports say an annex of the main embassy was taken out.
This may have been a targeted strike on a top Iranian security official, given Reuters is now reporting that the strikes killed the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Syria, Mohammad Reza Zahedi…
ISRAELI AIRSTRIKE ON DAMASCUS KILLS LEADER OF IRANIAN REVOLUTIONARY GUARD CORPS MOHAMMAD REZA ZAHEDI, SECURITY SOURCE TO REUTERS
IRAN’S ARABIC LANGUAGE AL ALAM TV SAYS IRANIAN CONSULATE BUILDING IN SYRIA HAS BEEN COMPLETELY DESTROYED
Below is local footage showing a row of vehicles on fire in the attack aftermath:
Did Israel miss the Iranian embassy or is this a warning?
Amid unverified early reports, a regional monitor has said the death toll is at eight killed in the strikes on the Iran embassy annex in Damascus.
According to Israeli media, the attack occurred during a meeting of top-level officials:
Initial reports citing Iranian media say senior IRGC official Mohammad Reza Zahedi was killed in the alleged Israeli strike.
The strike occurred during a meeting involving senior regional figures, adding a layer of complexity to the incident. New images released by Syrian media outlets depict the aftermath of the airstrike, revealing significant damage to the targeted building and its surroundings.
Reuters cites Iran’s SSN news website, which alleges that the Israeli airstrike specifically targeted Iran’s consulate and ambassador’s residence in Damascus.
Earlier on Monday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed damage to Eilat navy base on the Red Sea, in what appeared to be an unprecedented targeted drone launch by Iran-backed Iraqi militia.
Oil prices are already reacting to this increased geopolitical tension…
This was a very high risk strike also given the Iranian embassy is right next door to the Canadian embassy.
The building that was hit is literally in the middle between the embassy of Iran and the Canadian embassy. For Israel to go for such a strike there’s possibly a senior target. pic.twitter.com/qHvr540cxF
The Mezzeh area of Damascus is also lined with restaurants, malls, and bars — and also is home to an important military airport and some key government facilities.
There’s a lot of daily foot traffic at the Iranian embassy too, given that Damascus has long been a Shia pilgrimage spot and sees a constant influx of Iranian visitors.
An Al Jazeera correspondent, Zeina Khodr, has highlighted international law and norms regarding banning aggression against countries’ sovereign diplomatic sites in the following…
“Killing of top Iran Quds Force commander in Damascus is a major blow … but Iranian media says bldg destroyed was part of Iranian consulate – Israel hit a diplomatic mission which should enjoy immunity – Israel has crossed red lines – how will Iran react?“
This now opens up the possibility that Tehran could strike back at Israel’s embassies and consulates abroad, in yet more worrying and unpredictable escalation.
Moon of Alabamawrites, “Israeli officials in embassies around the world will now be forced to limit their movements in the general public as they are the most likely targets of revenge strikes.”
