The Common Ills: Iraq's healthcare and corruption and a talking entry

Sunday, June 25, 2023

Iraq's healthcare and corruption and a talking entry

Maher Nazeh (REUTERS) reports that Iraqis are having to turn to ''cheaper natural remedies'' on healthcare -- such as herbs -- due to the Iraq War destroying everything including healthcare:

Iraq's healthcare system, once one of the best in the Middle East, has been wrecked by conflict, international sanctions, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and rampant corruption.

Although public medical services are free of charge, a lack of medicines, equipment and adequate services mean citizens often need to turn to the more expensive private sector.

In recent years, Sabah has seen more herbal centres open in the capital, Baghdad. There are now 460 establishments with a permit to sell herbal medicines, up from 350 in 2020, according to his database.

Corruption continues throughout Iraq -- not just in the healthcare system. Will there be any real reforms? Mohammed Shia al-Sudani is only the latest prime minister of Iraq to promise to end corruption. People are being fired -- State of Law insists that this all about politics and has nothing to do with corruption. Today, another official fell. Sinan Mahmoud (THE NATIONAL) reports:

A senior Iraqi official in charge of postwar reconstruction has been relieved of his duties on suspicion of corruption.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani dismissed Mohammed Al Ani, the head of the state-run fund in charge of rebuilding areas damaged by the war with ISIS on Sunday, a government spokesman said.

Mr Al Ani’s termination following suspected corruption is the first for a senior government official since Mr Al Sudani took office in late October.

New content is up at THIRD:

Thank you to Nola who e-mailed regarding Ava and my piece to say we left something out in a specific paragraph. We did. Thanks for catching that. We've added this: "(She never would, and in 2008, would vote Democrat, promote Barack Obama and apparently never look back at life as she crossed over to ON THE NEUTERED SIDE.)" I'm sure longterm community members knew exactly who we were writing of before the parenthetical was added but, yes, it does nail down who we're referencing.

What happened to her?

I have no idea. We used to try to promote her and other Greens. We still promote the Michigan Party -- which does actual work. But ON THE NEUTERED SIDE really did sour a lot of us on the Greens.

If you remember it was a husband and wife dedicated to building the Green Party.

That's what they said. But the minute they discovered Barack Obama -- the wife more than the husband -- they stopped caring about every issue and were all about getting him elected and then covering for him. Issues they cared about -- such as closing Guantanamo -- suddenly no longer mattered.

When THE COMMON ILLS started, I didn't want to be a gatekeeper. I believed we needed more voices not less voices. And I've tried to live that here. But by the time Barack was in the White House, I stopped trying to help Green bloggers out with links because they'd all sold out to be Barack supporters.

In 2004, the Green Party's official position was that they were the kid sister of the Democratic Party. That's what you are when you don't run a real campaign.

That decision harmed the party in so many ways. It cost them ballot access. It refused to build on the huge gains of 2000. And the rank-in-file saw their spirit crushed as their party leaders refused to be a real party.

The 'safe state' strategy did not stop the Democrats attacks on the Green Party. The attacks continue to this day. It was a huge mistake for a political party that had built up so much in 2000 to then announce in 2004 that you should only vote for them if your state was 'safe' and going to go to the Democratic Party.

That's not how you run a political party.

A number of you are e-mailing because you were outraged by Jill Stein invoking Margret Flowers' name. It was outrageous. After Jill led the attacks on Margert and her late husband in 2020 for Jill to go on a program and start acting different? She can fool others because no one really pays attention to the Green Party.

I'm not saying that they shouldn't, I'm just saying that they don't.

And they're not covering it now. I may pick that up in the snapshot tomorrow or later this week. They are hyping Cornel. As Ava and I noted:

Which is why you should be questioning the hype machine. What the hell has Cornel ever done to rate any kind of coverage? Nothing.

But for some reason, the YOUTUBERS who have ignored The Green Party are suddenly obsessed with him and promoting him like crazy. Where was that attention when Will Lehman was running to be the president of the UAW and when Will was raising real issues about union leadership betraying the workers?

Katie Halper, THE VANGUARD, DUE DISSIDENCE, Jimmy Dore, THE CONVO COUCH, USEFUL IDIOTS, et al, not one of them -- not one damn one -- bothered to mention Will, let alone invite him on as a guest.

Cornel's useless and a waste of time. And you know that because these same people -- who claim to care about workers -- couldn't be bothered with Will Lehman but can't stop shoving Cornel down your throat.

For a Green Party candidate, this hype is unparalleled.

And that's your first clue that he's not going to accomplish anything. Emma Goldman famously pointed out, "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." And if a candidate had a chance of changing anything, they'd bury them. They'd bury them and ignore them, the way these YOUTUBERS ignored Will Lehman.

Edward e-mailed to say he's supporting Marianne Williamson and questions the motives of the campaign staff that spoke to us. They spoke to us because one of them know us and because Marianne's waffling on her upcoming 'fireside chat.' This is the one that's supposed to clarify where she stands on transgender issues specifically. But she's waffling and still deluded by comments online for people who would never support her. People used to make fun of Bill Clinton when he was president because of polling. I could understand him -- or anyone -- tailoring their plan a bit to fit the shape of the polling. Not saying I agree with it, but I could understand it. I also think it's true that it was one way of listening to the American people. Marianne has gone beyond that. She's fallen into a trap of believing that there are these people out there who are going to support her if she doesn't do this and she doesn't do that and blah blah blah.

It's why her campaign sucks. She's refusing to be Marianne and she's coming off both indecisive and inauthentic. The three we spoke to want her to get the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. They believe in what she could be. But they are struggling to convince a candidate that she can find support if she stands for what she believes in.

Is it Wednesday that she's doing the fireside chat? I'm tired, my head aches, I'm working on four hours sleep since Saturday morning and I'm hungry. I think it's Wednesday. At any rate, this really is make it or break it for Marianne. If she's authentic and true to herself, she's going to re-energize those working for her. They're rooting for her to pull this off. If she does, we will applaud her here.

But, again, she's been hedging on this and talking about maybe addressing something else instead and . . .

She's not winning supporters from the right. They're not coming over. More to the point, they're not going to help her in a Democratic Party primary or caucus. Many states have those events closed to members only. Second off, if they're right-wingers, there are probably other politicians they need to support in other races so they're not going to re-register as Democrats just to vote for her in a primary. The group really doesn't exist but pretend they do, you're still left with the reality that she has no support from them.

"Troubles for RFK Jr.? Abortion and The First Amen..." resulted in a few remarks. Bill wants to know why we didn't include Robert in the piece at THIRD. Do you know how long it took to write that? We were supposed to be applauding SECRET INVASION (check it out on DISNEY+). This was supposed to be, after weeks and weeks of covering news, a return to just an entertainment piece. That's what Ava and I are supposed to be doing at THIRD. When we do the news pieces, we do them for a week or two and then go back to entertainment to lower expectations and because entertainment were supposed to be THIRD's drawing card. That was decided the first time on the first edition. Jim's the one who wanted TV. He said walk past any dorm room, walk through any student lounge and people are watching TV. Ava and I didn't see the point. The first two or three pieces were group pieces that we all wrote together. But the reality was that they were huddled around the computer -- or a legal pad one week -- and seriously writing away and pitching sentences and Ava and I were rolling our eyes and tossing off one liners. Jim's noted repeatedly that it was those tossed off remarks that readers responded to and that's why it became Ava and my beat (it's the third or the fourth piece that we write it just ourselves). We didn't want to cover TV.

Jim was right, it was what people responded to. TV takes up a lot of life in all segments of the population. By juxtaposing idiot celebrities -- of questionable talent -- calling their not-so-special a "tour of duty," we could make points in it that would register while they might not in straightforward piece ("TV: Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey Reporting for Two Hours of Self-Love"). We could do fictional pieces -- where we injected ourselves into the taping of the show or treated the show as real life -- and brought in War Resisters reaching an audience that otherwise might not be aware of them. When IVAW held the Winter Soldier event, for six weeks leading up to that, we tried to think of the most eye-ball catching topics and shows and, in the middle of those pieces, we would post the IAVW poster announcing the Winter Soldier event.

Some of our most political pieces are not seen as such because you're laughing while you're reading it and isn't this a silly show and --

We reach an audience with those that wouldn't be reached otherwise. People who show up each week to see what outrageous thing we're about to say about a new drama or sitcom. We also have people who are very political reading. But they're going to get the information anyway -- hopefully. They don't need our space to discover it.

I think we said more about commercialism and branding and selling out in "TV: 4 Days in 7th Hell" than we could have in a straight piece. I think we made strong points about feminism -- and about bad writing broadcast on TV -- in "TV: Aftermath leaves an aftertaste" then we could have otherwise. These aren't necessarily my favorite pieces but they're the ones are coming to mind right now.

I'm very glad that we have covered LGBTQ+ issues and that we laid ground work before and after "TV: Exploding a stereotype" to address how films, early on, created the stereotype of gay so that no one would think, for example, Gary Cooper was sucking a d**k. He's not flouncing on the screen, he can't be like those gay men! Tell it to Anderson Lawler (Gary's lover).

Most weeks, our aspirations are greater than what we end up writing, but that's how it goes.

We came online at a time when women in films and on TV were being destroyed. Can anyone, to this day, explain the attacks on Meg Ryan from entertainment writers and what purpose they served? Go back and look at that crap and grasp just how toxic and sexist it was -- and sadly, at least half of it was coming from female writers.

We have always made a point to call out the sexism that fuels The Water Cooler Set and leads them to chase down some bad soap opera with male leads while attacking anything that a woman or -- gasp! -- two or more women star in.

I was glad when, our first year of writing, a friend who had been a child actor took us aside and said she wished we wouldn't write about child actors. She cited that week's piece. We responded we had praised the actor (it was actually two actresses playing sisters). She said yes but if we're covering a show where we're not impressed with the actors, we're not going to mention them (she knew we wouldn't trash kids) so that lack of praise would still register. She had a point. We agreed with her and immediately stopped noting children in our reviews.

There are enough problems a child has, we don't need to add to it.

Otherwise? I don't care. And there are people who will not speak to me -- I'm thinking of a friend who had a brief '00s sitcom that crashed and burned and that he insists to this day was cancelled because of our review. Our piece on Anne Heche's show did get ABC to move it on the schedule and give it a second season, I know that. The piece and the comments were making to ABC execs at the time. But I don't know that we're the reason X's show got cancelled. He thinks we are. I think the fact that he can't get work should be more pressing to him. I think the fact that he entered into a lavender marriage is the reason his acting is so poor today. He's acting straight and married on the set of any project when he's gay and on top of that performance he has to layer another one?

And there are degrees of being in the closet. Lily Tomlin likes to point that out and I hear her point. I say she wasn't out until 2000 and she shoots back that people in the industry knew in the seventies because she wasn't playing straight woman in search of a man and meet my assistant Jane Wagner on any set. She's absolutely right. She did not hide at work, she did not pretend Jane was her friend. She was very open on any set that Jane was her lover and partner.

But a 40 something year old man who no longer has any shot at stardom still needing to pretend to everyone that he's straight? I mean, he's been at my home many times and if a producer -- I'm thinking of one in particular -- drops by the party, he immediately walks off from his male lover. He has even acted as though he doesn't know the guy -- his lover of many years who he brought to my party. That kind of deep closeting? I don't see how it helps your art or your soul.

Anyway, let's wind down. Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Cornel's Crackpot Cracker Parade" went up Saturday night. New content at THIRD: