Are we going to see another Middle East war?
For our first show in “Straight from the Sky” in 2020, we present to you a very good friend, Presidential Assistant for the Visayas Michael Lloyd Dino. It is our first replay of this show and therefore he appears as the first guest for 2020.
Basically, we talked about the problems of Cebu and the Visayas for 2019. He specifically mentioned the Malasakit Center, which has now been turned into a law. We also talked about the political situation where his political allies with Pres. Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte won their electoral positions. This is something we are proud to talk about.
Then Dino talked about infrastructure development and emphasized that my pet project, the parallel road to Escario Street, has finally caught the attention of NEDA and DPWH and will be funded this year. There are many other infrastructure projects we talked about.
So watch this very interesting show with Dino on SkyCable’s channel 53 at 8 p.m. with replays on Wednesday and Saturday same time and channel. We also have replays on MyTV’s channel 30 at 9 p.m. Monday and at 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. on Wednesday and Friday.
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It is sad to note that the start of the new year, we heard the news that Ninez Cacho Olivares, founder and editor-in-chief of the Daily Tribune who for years fearlessly crusaded against corruption in government, has gone to the great beyond. She was a partner of mine as a mainstay columnist in The FREEMAN until she moved to run the Daily Tribune. I really don’t know what happened to her and why she passed away. I only learned that her remains were cremated last Saturday.
A funeral mass will be held today Monday, January 6, at 9:30 a.m. at the Capilla de Santuario de San Antonio in Forbes Park. We ask our readers to please pray for the repose of her soul.
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It is just the start of 2020, when we learned that the US military used a drone to kill top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani at Baghdad’s international airport, thus heightening regional tensions and prompting archenemy Teheran to vow revenge. Of course, we’d like to know what triggered this assassination of Iran’s top general. As we double-checked with BBC (no, I no longer trust CNN to give us proper news), a pro-Iran mob this week apparently laid siege to the US embassy in the Iraqi capital. Shades of the Iran hostage-taking 41 years ago, where Iranian military surrounded the US Embassy wall in Baghdad.
Yes, we haven’t forgotten what happened to the US Embassy in Teheran then when militant students seized 66 American citizens and held 52 of them hostage in one of the biggest crises in the Middle East. The crisis took place during the chaotic aftermath of the Iranian Islamic revolution of 1978-79 when Al Khomeini overthrew the shah of Iran or the Pahlavi monarchy. Apparently, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi had always been close to the US administrations and the Islamic revolution was not anticipated by the administration then of Pres. Jimmy Carter.
It was on February 14, 1979, about a month after the shah had fled Iran, that the US Embassy was attacked and briefly occupied by Islamic revolutionaries. In the past, no government has ever tried to take over any embassy, as it is considered the territory of that country. What the Iranian Islamic revolutionaries did was insult any foreign government within Iran. We cannot forget this episode thanks to the movie “Argo” about that hostage-taking incident. Of course, the US has better intelligence these days, so when the possibility that another hostage-taking incident could happen, the US made their move.
No less than US president Donald Trump confirmed both Soleimani and his deputy chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis were killed in what it said was a “US strike that targeted their car on the Baghdad international airport road.” They were on a convoy belonging to the Hashed al-Shaabi, an Iraqi paramilitary force with close ties to Iran. Soleimani headed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force foreign operations arm and also served as Iran’s top general inside Iraq. At this point, we expect a dramatic response from Iran. So will 2020 lead us to another Middle East war? Abangan!
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