Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills): Grab bag

Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Grab bag

First up, Corey Hart video.

That was recently released. I thought he had retired when he gave his farewell concert but it appears not. I'll try to check regularly for any new videos and note them here.

Now I'm noting Elaine who wrote "The Motels" -- again, I thought The Motels were done. Nope, they're still recording and touring.

I was asked about reviews. There are two albums I want to review right now. One is Harry Styles new album HARRY'S HOUSE which I love. I meant to review it this weekend but, honestly, I hung out at the pool too long one day. I had fun and got sun (vitamin D!) but I was wiped out and ended up grabbing a room at C.I.'s and just laying down for a few hours.

Hopefully this weekend I'll be able to get something together.

Closing with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Tuesday, May 31, 2022. No accountability from the press, no vision from the politicians.

Azhar Al-Rubaie (ALJAZEERA) reports:

raqis are still waiting for the country’s politicians to form a government, almost eight months since parliamentary elections took place in the country, with political elites unable to find an agreement.

Popular Shia religious leader Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Sadrist Movement emerged as the biggest party in the October elections with 73 out of 329 seats, has been working to try to put together a coalition, but is still unable to do so.

In al-Sadr’s way is a rival Iranian-backed bloc, the Coordination Framework Alliance (CFA), which is the political umbrella for the largely Shia Popular Mobilisation Forces militia.

The CFA has boycotted parliamentary votes for a new president a number of times, on the basis that an agreement with the Sadrists that ensures the CFA will have a say in who is nominated for the presidency was needed first.

To be clear, it's not just that group standing in Moqtada's way. The Shi;ite cleri has managed to pull together only 180 MPs. He needs 220 to form a government.

That clause was included in Iraq's Constitution because it was thought that if you weren't able to pull together enough MPs to form a government, if you weren't able to cajole, horse trade, swap, make deals, etc, how would you ever be able to govern if your slate claimed the post of prime minister.

October 10th elections were held. The western press quickly rushed to hail Moqtada as a "king maker" when he was no such thing, when nothing in his past indicated he could be any such thing and when all events have demonstrated that he's not any such thing.

Some day the western press might admit they were wrong. More likely not. Accountability is a feature of a functioning press and we don't have that.

THE DAILY BEAST, for example, has apologized to a store owner. They said they made a mistake.

No, they didn't make a mistake. They lied. In October and November of 2020, we repeatedly pointed out ("Harped on" -- one or two e-mails claimed), that Hunter Biden's laptop was not stolen.

We repeatedly went over how a repair shop was not a storage business. How if you did not pick up your item -- let alone pay for it -- it became the property of the store. We cited case law and we went over this repeatedly.

Didn't appear that anyone else wanted to touch it. Not even Glann Greenwald who cvered the laptop repeatedly wanted to cover it. I have no idea why.

Yes, I do, Glenn's not trained in journalism.

That's his excuse.

Anyone who knew journalism knew how important this detail was.

The laptop needed to be covered.

If it was stolen property -- it wasn't -- then outlets would refrain from covering it. They can't cover it.

THE DAILY BEAST underrstood that point. So they intentionally lied and did so repeatedly to confuse the issue and to keep the laptop from being covered.

There was never anything in case law that made the laptop stolen. I don't believe THE DAILY BEAST respects the law but I do know they understand it.

It was not a mistake, it was a lie.

And now that they're being sued, they want to, all this time later, amend a two-year-old report to claim that they were mistaken.

No.

They lied.

They made unfounded charges against the repair shop owner and they should be punished in a court of law. They have attorneys on retainer and they knew what they were doing.

Another attack took place yesterday on a base in Iraq with US troops.

US President Joe Biden knows it took place and he knows what he is doing -- putting the lives of US troops in danger by keeping them on the ground in Iraq while pretending the Iraq War is over.

How much is the country willing to pay to keep Joe in office? At present, it appears he's leading the nation into a recession with some economic experts fearing it might be the equivalent of the Great Depression.

Are we willing to go along with that?

He was never fit for the presidency. Even if you ignored (or more likely wrongly slimed) Tara Reade, he was never fit. And now his mental dceline is taking the entire country down with him.

Maybe Nancy Pelosi can help us? Oh wait, she's busy with her drunkard husband who was so stupid that he thought he could still drive at 82 and that he could drive drunk.

As Iraqi politicians dither about forming a government, that country suffers. The Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) has been showing up in Iraq for weeks now -- in southern Iraq and the Kurdistan. NDTV notes:

This year Iraq has recorded 19 deaths among 111 CCHF cases in humans, according to the Word Health Organization.

The virus has no vaccine and onset can be swift, causing severe bleeding both internally and externally and especially from the nose. It causes death in as many as two-fifths of cases, according to medics.

"The number of cases recorded is unprecedented," said Haidar Hantouche, a health official in Dhi Qar province.

A poor farming region in southern Iraq, the province accounts for nearly half of Iraq's cases.

In previous years, cases could be counted "on the fingers of one hand", he added.

Transmitted by ticks, hosts of the virus include both wild and farmed animals such as buffalo, cattle, goats and sheep, all of which are common in Dhi Qar.

WION adds, "According to medics, the virus causes severe bleeding both internally and externally and especially from the nose. As many as two-fifths of the cases die." Gillian Duncan (THE NATIONAL) notes the virus first spread to Iraq in 1979 and "There is currently no approved vaccine for this disease." Jay Hilotin (GULF NEWS) notes that the World Health Organizations has identified the most likely people to get infected as "farmers, slaughterhouse workers and veterinarians — people mainly get infected via ticks on livestock" and quotes WHO stating, "Human-to-human transmission can occur resulting from close contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected persons." AFP states that death will be the outcome in two-fifth of all cases. RUDAW notes that the Iraqi government allocated 1 billion Iraqi dinars on Saturday to address the virus -- that's approximately $683,000 in US dollars. No, that's not a lot of money. Regarding northern Iraq, RUDAW reports, "Health committees were formed in three Kurdish cities to combat the Congo fever, officials from the areas told Rudaw on Sunday amid an outbreak of the virus in Iraq’s southern provinces. Formed in Sulaimani, Duhok, and Halabja, the committees are advised to quarantine suspects of the virus and to send their blood samples to Baghdad to confirm their infection."

Congo Fever is not the only problem facing Iraq. NEWS.AM reports:

At a time when global wheat prices have risen sharply because of the conflict in Ukraine, Iraqi farmers say they are paying the price for the government's decision to cut irrigation of farmland by 50 percent, AP reported.

The government took this step amid severe water shortages caused by high temperatures and drought, as well as continued water withdrawals by neighboring countries from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. All of these factors have resulted in severe water shortages for wheat production.

The roblems come as desertification is a major problem in Iraq. Dler S. Mohammed (KURDISTAN 24) reports:

Iraq is losing a staggering 100,000 donums (about 10,000 hectares) of agricultural land per year, the Iraqi Ministry of Agriculture announced on Saturday.

The Director-General of Forests and Desertification Directorate of the Iraqi Ministry of Agriculture Rawiya Al-Azawi announced on Saturday that Iraq has been losing approximately 100,000 donums of agricultural lands per year to desertification for the past decade.

She warned that this phenomenon would hugely impact the ministry's agricultural plan and revealed that the ministry has proposed establishing a special fund for combating desertification.

Al-Azawi pointed out that increased desertification is due to global warming and climate change, which has reduced rainfall. She added that Iraq's geography makes it more vulnerable to global warming.

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Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills)

Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Grab bag

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