Sunday, November 13, 2022

Australia is a failing government, climate change and corruption in Iraq

Is there a more embarrassing and shameful government in the world than in Australia?  The UK has already gotten one of its citizens freed from an Iraqi prison in the last months.  Now?  BBC NEWS reports: 

A construction engineer who spent two months in custody in Iraq over a debt conviction in Qatar has been freed.

Brian Glendinning, 43, from Fife, did not know he was on an Interpol list as a wanted fugitive until he was detained in Basra on his way to a new job.

His family last month called on the UK government to intervene.

Campaign group Detained in Dubai said Mr Glendinning was released on Sunday and is expected to return home to Kincardine within days.


That's two in the last few months.  But the pathetic government of Australia can't do the same for its citizens.  Julian Assange remains a prisoner all these years later in the UK with plans to hand him over to the US.  And then there's Robert Pether.  Jessica Bahr (SBS NEWS) reports:


The wife of an Australian man being held in an Iraqi jail has spoken of her fears he won’t survive the ordeal.

Robert Pether has been detained in Iraq since April 2021. He has been locked in a 28-man cell for 19 months.

Mr Pether's wife Desree told SBS News her husband had lost 42 kilograms during his detention.

"To look at him now, it's like he's aged 40 years ... it's just absolutely heartbreaking," she said.

"It's like watching him die slowly and listening to him die slowly and he's not well, he keeps getting sick."


Australians should be toppling their government right now because it refuses to carry out its primary duty: To protect its citizens.






The Iraqi government is also failing (as is the US government).  The Iraqi people are living in a toxic land and they endure a government that refuses to take action despite Iraq being identified as one of the countries that will be the most harmed by climate change.  Owen Pinnell (BBC NEWS) reports:


Far removed from the world leaders making climate pledges at COP, are people like Ali Hussein Julood, a young leukaemia survivor living on an Iraqi oil field co-managed by BP. When the BBC discovered BP was not declaring the field's gas flaring, Ali helped us to reveal the truth about the poisonous air the local community has to breathe.

I first saw videos shared on Twitter of burning skies and clouds of black smoke over people's houses in Iraq's oil fields in 2019, and learned that this was a common procedure known as gas flaring - burning off the toxic excess gas that is a by-product of oil drilling.

We discovered through satellite data that Rumaila in Basra, southern Iraq, is the world's worst offender for gas flaring. Gas flaring is not only a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions, it is also known to emit benzene - which heightens the risk of cancer, particularly childhood leukaemia.

Dozens of people we spoke to living in five different communities near oil fields like Rumaila, told the same story - that they had a close relative or a friend who was suffering from cancer, often leukaemia. 

One of those was Ali, then 18 years old, whose father had sold everything in his house to raise money for his son's cancer treatment in Turkey. Ali said that the cancer hospital in Basra was full of people like him who lived near oil fields. Rumaila, home to several thousand people, has been given the nickname "the shadow town" by locals, because it is cut off and lacking in basic services. Ali and his friends call it "the cemetery".

"We'd be playing football, then we'd have to run inside, because of the clouds of smoke suffocating us and oil raining from the sky," Ali told us.

"When I told the doctor [in Basra Children's Cancer Hospital] I lived in this area he said: 'This is the main reason for your illness.'"


And RUDAW reports:

Severe drought has taken its toll on the wetlands of Iraq's southern province of Dhi Qar, turning them into a barren desert and threatening them with extinction.

Walking towards the little boat that he used to use for fishing in the Hammar Marshes south of Dhi Qar, Abu Hussein, a man in his fifties, is deeply worried about the drying up of the waters of the marshes, and the livelihood of his family of more than ten members.

The family's sole breadwinner, Abu Hussein told Rudaw that he ponders leaving the region in order to secure his livelihood and his children elsewhere, calling on the government to take measures to reduce drought and provide water.

Hundreds of families used to live in the Hammar marshes in Dhi Qar, but they migrated after these marshes turned into a barren desert due to drought and climate changes.ports:


Climate change isn't making the Iraqi government take action, leukaemia isn't making them take action.  What will?

Apparently nothing.  They can't even hold officials accountable for stealing public money.  Sinan Mahmoud (THE NATIONAL) reports:


The head of Iraq's Commission of Integrity, the country's official anti-corruption body, submitted his resignation on Sunday as a wave of scandals rock the country.

Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani quickly accepted the resignation and picked judge Haider Hanoon Zayer as his replacement.

Judge Alaa Al Saadi didn’t give the reasons for his decision to step down, but alluded to pressure from political parties.

“Giving up this post is a relief to the one in charge and an emancipation from the heavy and perilous responsibilities that cause problems with different parties inside the executive authority or the blocs which support their members inside the legislative authority,” Mr Al Saadi said.

He said that he faced a smear campaign from “media arms linked to the influential parties that have sought to manipulate public opinion against all serious efforts to fight corruption and to protect public funds”.

The latest development came as authorities investigate a number of major corruption scandals involving the theft of billions of dollars.


Daniel Stewart (360 NEWS) adds:


Rampant corruption plagues all levels of the Iraqi state, which ranks 157th out of 180 countries in Transparency International's corruption perception index, and official figures released last year estimate that more than 400 billion euros have disappeared from state coffers since the regime of dictator Saddam Hussein was overthrown in 2003.

The theft was announced in October by Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar, who explained that an investigation by the Finance Ministry, the portfolio he headed until his resignation this week, had revealed that "a specific group," without giving details, had made off with 3.7 trillion (with a 'b') Iraqi dinars, some 2.5 billion euros, in a national tax authority fund at Rafidain bank.

The revelation of the theft led Jabbar, accused by the United States of "large-scale corruption to accept bribes for the award of oil contracts and operations in Iraq" to lose his previous post as finance minister following a motion of censure in the Iraqi parliament.

According to documents collected by the Kurdish agency Rudaw, the money was stolen through five companies from the account of the General Tax Commission by cashing 247 checks issued by the tax directorate.


Neocon Michael Rubin (1945) offers:


In 2019, Iraqis were willing to give reform a chance. In 2023 or after, they may conclude they cannot work within the system. Whereas in 2019, Abdul-Mahdi lost his position, if there is a Tishreen 2.0 Uprising, then the casualty will be the entire political class.

The question Iraqis and Iraqi politicians should now ask is, if the political class continues to loot the country and resist reform, where will the politicians flee to escape the revolution?

That Iraqi politicians keep a foot outside Iraq is an open secret. When the United States returned sovereignty to Iraq, former administrator L. Paul Bremer installed Ayad Allawi as interim prime minister. Allawi was a man of great ambition and very much favored by the State Department and Central Intelligence Agency, but he was also fundamentally lazy. He much preferred to campaign among Americans and the British than in the streets of Iraqi cities or villages. During the Maliki era, Iraqis told a joke about how Maliki confiscated Allawi’s green zone pass but Allawi did not notice for seven months, since he was so busy in London. This may be unfair to Allawi; he would just as likely split his time in Amman, where many other former Baathists reside.

As for former Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, London would be the choice. Surprisingly, Kadhimi may favor Beirut over the British capital. 


Kat's "Kat's Korner: Robbie Williams re-evaluates his own work on XXV" went up this morning.  The following sites updated:




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