Thursday, December 02, 2021

Iraq snapshot

 Thursday, December 2, 2021.  The electoral commission releasing their final tally (their final tally) does not mean the results are official and far too many idiots at media outlets are revealing yet again that journalism degrees these days are nothing but glorified studies majors.  We'll deal with the reality of what happens next, the need for Anthony Fauci to clear his desk and much more.


So now the election count is released by the electoral commission (barring any rulings by the judiciary).  And it's all happiness in Iraq, right?


MEMO reports:


The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the ruling party in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq, yesterday said it was objecting to the final results of the parliamentary elections which were held on 10 October.

"After the announcement of the final election results, it became clear to us that two deserved seats legally entitled to two candidates from our party were taken away in Erbil and Nineveh provinces," said KDP Spokesperson Mahmood Mohammed in a statement.

Mohammed noted that the KDP's political bureau would hold a meeting to "discuss this illegal act."


Okay, so the KDP in Kurdistan is unhappy but others are fine, right?  IRAN INATNERATIONAL reports:


Protesters in Baghdad on Wednesday rejected the final results of Iraq's parliamentary elections, which were announced by the electoral commission a day earlier.

The protesters, mainly supporters of Shiite factions backed by Iran, continued to level unsubstantiated claims that the vote had been rigged.

"We will continue our protest until they change the results and bow to our demands," said protester Ali Jawad.

The electoral commission confirmed Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr as the biggest winner in last month's poll, securing 73 out of Parliament's 329 seats.


There are other examples but the point is that tensions continue and nothing has been resolved.  These also aren't the final results.  Not yet.  These are the official results released by the electoral commission.  These are not final until the federal judiciary looks at them and certifies them.  After that, per the Constitution, the Parliament has tend days to convene their first assembly and to declare someone prime minister-designate.  That person, per the Constitution, then has 30 days to form a Cabinet.  


A month wasted on counting and there is still no prime minister.  


But, hey, Iraq has all the time in the world, right?


It's not like they're facing any upcoming obstacles, right?


Mina Aldroubi (THE NATIONAL) reports:


Iraq's Tigris and Euphrates rivers could run dry by 2040 because of declining water levels and climate change, a government report said on Thursday.

Over the years, the construction of dams in upstream Turkey, Syria and Iran has choked off some of the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates on which Iraq depends.

Climate change is contributing to temperatures increases and erratic rainfall, pushing the fear of water shortages in Iraq to new levels, it said.


The country made $7 billion in oil sales in November alone.  That generates a lot of money, it also harms their own environment (and the world's).  You can trumpet the 'increase' in date trees all you want but that's meaningless -- especially when they don't have enough water for their farming industry, but it you'd not noting the reality that's coming and if you're not addressing it, you're faling your people.  (Iraq's not alone in that.  The US government has falied its people with regards to climate change.)


Sinan Mahmoud writes like an idiot at THE NATIONAL.  Again, the results are not final.  They do not become final until the judiciary reviews them and confirms them.  That's the process.  One of the few that has been consistently followed in Iraq's post-invasion elections.  He doesn't understand a great deal.  For example:


The Shiite Co-ordination Framework, made up of Al Fatah, State of Law and other parties renewed their rejection of the results, accusing the IHEC of manipulation, despite the EU and UN saying the poll was well-managed.

“We categorically reject the current election results,” the group said. “It is clear now and without any doubt that the Elections Commission had prepared these results before against the will of the Iraqi people,” it added.

Their demands are now beyond recounting the votes.

“We reiterate our firm stance, which is based on documents and proof that there has been widespread manipulation in the elections results,” it said.

“We are committed to continue our lawsuit, which we have filed at the Federal Court to annul the elections,” the group added.


"Despite the EU and the UN saying the poll was well-managed."


Huh?


What lunatic writes that about Iraq?  Iraq sturggles right now, in war, the whole country is suffering, because of the EU and the UN.  Where the hell do you get off with the 'despite' as though Iraq's supposed to trust bodies that helped destroy their country.  The UN can 'at least' note that they didn't sign off on the invasion (which the Secretary-General of the UN at the time said was illegal) but they immediately signed off on the occupation that came from the illegal invasion.  They did so yearly.


No Iraqi person owes trust to either the EU or the UN.  


You don't build trust by destroying a country.

You don't build trust by sticking with people who put your agenda at risk.  I can remember people within Bill Clinton's first presidential administration believing he waited too long to ditch both Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood as Attorney General nominees.  But nearly a year into his term as president, Joe Biden's still sticking by Donald Trump's Anthony Fauci.  He -- Joe -- has no political captal to expend.  He is diverting it into maintainging Fauci who is a lost cause.  Fauci's numbers are only going to get worse because he's a liar.  Do this, no do that, no  do this, no do that.  They didn't have a real plan from the start so some fumbling was always going to be an issue.  But it's gone beyond that now.  And it's time for a clean slate.  Fauci needs to go.  If Republicans take over the House in next year's mid-terms, look for a number of peopl ein the administration to leave and to begin explaining to the press that they told Joe that it was time for Fauci to go, that every week defending a political appointee meant the appointee wasn't helpful to the adminisration.  


Pepe Escobar (ASIA TIMES) has a book review worth reading -- RFK Jr. on Fauci.  I know and like Robert.  I'm providing a link and may do an excerpt in another snapshot but I'm feeling sick -- fever -- this morning.  I was hoping the workout would break it but it didn't.  So I'm winding down.  We were going to end on Fauci by noting an article Glenn Greenwald's published at his SUBSTACK page (is it page, I don't know and I'm not being sarcastic.)  At SUBSTACK, Leighton Woodhouse writes:

By now you’ve surely heard about Anthony Fauci and his laboratory beagles, but in case you haven’t, it goes like this: For forty years, Fauci, as the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has funded gruesome experiments on animals. Beagles in particular are one of the favored species for these experiments, because of their docile and people-pleasing nature, which makes for less hassle for the humans who subject them to pain and suffering. In one of these NIAID-funded experiments, in Tunisia, sedated beagles’ heads were put into mesh bags with swarms of starved sand flies, who fed on the live dogs.

The other thing you may have heard is that the story is just another right-wing conspiracy theory. You may have heard this from The Washington Post, from any of a number of self-proclaimed “fact checkers,” or maybe even from the globally renowned Beacon of Honesty David Frum of The Atlantic.

I’ve been reporting on this story for the past few weeks. In fact, I’ve been reporting it as closely as anyone, if not more so. It’s been an extremely educational experience for me, but not because I was unfamiliar with the industry of animal experimentation, or NIAID’s leading role within it. What’s been educational is seeing up close and first-hand how the mainstream media constructs and deploys a brazen misinformation campaign.

First of all, just to get this detail out of the way: the story is true. As head of NIAID, the second biggest institute within the National Institutes of Health, Anthony Fauci has spent billions of dollars over four decades funding scientific experiments on animals, many of them stomach-turning. NIAID does not deny this. In fact, the published scientific papers that describe these heinous experiments routinely credit NIAID and NIH as their funders, and sometimes as direct collaborators. You can look them up yourself: here are just a few of them.

Of the numerous horrific experiments on dogs funded by agencies and budgets controlled by Fauci, there’s only one that is in dispute: the one in Tunisia. That is the experiment which involved placing sedated beagles’ heads in mesh bags with swarms of starved sand flies, which feasted on the live dogs in order to transmit to them a parasite that carries a disease called “leishmaniasis.” The scientific paper that described the results of that experiment, published on July 15, originally credited NIAID as a funder.

But after this ethical monstrosity was publicized and denounced by an anti-animal testing group specializing in a building left/right coalitions — the White Coat Waste Project, which, as Glenn Greenwald reported in this space two weeks ago, became the target of a Washington Post hit piece as punishment for denouncing Fauci — this particular experiment created a minor media sensation and a major headache for NIH. In the wake of that recent controversy, the paper’s authors — just three weeks ago, on November 11 — suddenly retracted their statement about NIAID funding. In wooden language that reads like a hostage note, they now claim that when they said that NIAID had paid for this experiment, it was by accident. 







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