Tuesday, October 18, 2022

Graham Elwood, Joe Biden can't do a press conference and Fetterman's wife is hurting his campaign

Starting with Graham Elwood.



I know he covered the Julian Assange demonstration in London and I think he may be on a comedy tour too.  But I have missed his daily videos.


New topic -- 

So Joe Biden can't even hold a press conference.  Did you see this:


Republican lawmakers reacted to a report that first lady Jill Biden was upset that nobody tried to stop President Biden’s last solo press conference nine months ago.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that, following the president’s latest solo press conference in January where he did not follow then-press secretary Jen Psaki’s cue to wrap it up, the first lady tore into top White House officials demanding to know why no one intervened.

Several GOP lawmakers shared their thoughts on the report with Fox News Digital, with Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., quipping Jill "knows a train wreck when she sees one."

[. . .]

Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., told Fox News Digital: "The American people put Joe Biden in office and deserve to hear directly from the president himself. Our country does not operate under surrogates in Chief."

"If Joe Biden is not able to perform his duties as president and talk to the American people on a regular basis, then he should not be running the greatest country in the world. The American people deserve answers. Not from his staff, not from his press team, but from the President of the United States," Van Drew continued. 



Never heard of Jeff Van Drew until today and doubt that we'd agree on many things but we do agree on that.  If you're not up to a press conference, you're not up to being president.  And let me weigh in on Fetterman, I am in 100% agreement with Ann (see her "Gisele Fetterman is becoming the main reason not to vote for her husband").  And this is not ableism.  This is someone started running for an office and had a setback.  We need to know how severe the setback is -- or voters in his state need to know.  And it would be the same thing if he just went blind.  If he filed blind, no problem, we know what he can do.  But if a month before the election, he went blind?  That's a life changing event and we need to know how healthy he is, how he's coping and whether he's up to the job.  When your circumstance changes, people have every right to question.  And if his wife had kept her mouth shut, I never would have weighed in.  Didn't weigh in last week and wasn't planning to.  But for his wife to attack that NBC journalist is just outrageous.


Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


Tuesday, October 18, 2022.  The world watches as Joe Biden continues to persecute Julian Assange, a historic discovery takes place in Iraq and the missing billions continue to raise eyebrows.




Dear Home Secretary Braverman and Attorney General Garland,

We, a group of over 300 doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists and other health care professionals from more than 35 countries, are deeply concerned that the ongoing extradition threatens not only the health of Julian Assange, but also the health of our democracy. For the sake of both, we implore you to drop the charges and release Mr. Assange from Belmarsh prison immediately.

In calling for Mr. Assange’s freedom, we join the ever-growing chorus of protest [1], including the thousands of people around the world [2] who demonstrated on October 8, 2022 against Mr. Assange’s detention in the UK and his attempted extradition to the US.

The threats to Mr. Assange’s health are the cumulative result of extraordinarily cruel, unusual, degrading and inhuman conditions imposed on him. This includes:

  • more than ten years of arbitrary detention, with extended periods of solitary confinement in a high security prison despite never having been convicted of a crime;
  • character assassination campaigns in the media;
  • a relentless persecution that systematically violated the rule of law and due process, and had little basis in fact, as documented by the former UN Rapporteur on Torture;
  • illegal surveillance in the Ecuadorian embassy which included the video recording of his legal and medical consultations [3]; and
  • being targeted in plans of the CIA to kidnap and assassinate him [4].

In addition, Mr. Assange has faced the firepower of at least three US government entities involved in the effort to extradite him, including the Department of Justice overseeing the attempted prosecution, the CIA conducting illegal surveillance and drawing up plans for kidnap and assassination, and the FBI overseeing and greenlighting computer crimes in Iceland committed by a hacker in a scheme to falsely implicate Mr. Assange, as corroborated by the government of Iceland [5].

Adding to the stress of a lawless persecution, Mr. Assange has also lived with the knowledge of the impossibility of a fair trial if extradited to the US. The public interest served by the publications in question (including the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs) was overwhelming and helped bring the catastrophic war in Iraq to a close. Yet, perversely, public interest may not be considered in prosecutions under the Espionage Act. In addition, no national security defendant has ever been acquitted in the Eastern District of Virginia, where Mr. Assange would be tried [6].

These conditions are collectively tantamount to psychological torture, as assessed by the former United Nations Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer [7], and other medical experts in the field, including Professor Duarte Nuno Vieira [8] and Dr Pau Pérez-Sales [9].

As health care professionals we have an ethical obligation to denounce torture where we see it, and to seek to end it. That is why we have called for an end to the persecution of Julian Assange since our founding three years ago, and why we again call for an end to his extradition once and for all.

The psychological torture resulting from these abuses has been grinding down Mr. Assange’s mental and physical health for over a decade. This has generated not only the risk of suicide, which would be further aggravated by the brutal conditions in US prisons. It also increases the risk of physical illnesses like cardiovascular disease, known to increase under conditions of psychological stress [10]. Confirming these concerns, Mr. Assange has already experienced a mini-stroke, which occurred on the first day of his extradition hearing in the UK High Court.

Compounding these health injustices, Mr. Assange was reported to have tested positive for Covid-19 on October 8, 2022. Given his chronic lung ailment, Mr. Assange may be at increased risk of serious illness resulting from Covid infection. In addition, Mr. Assange’s mental health is placed at further risk by the solitary confinement he has been forced to endure since his positive Covid test.

It is a travesty that a remand prisoner never convicted of a crime is languishing in Britain’s most notorious high security prison, when he shouldn’t have been imprisoned in the first place. The critical nature of Mr. Assange’s physical and psychological health underscores the need for his immediate release from prison. Only then can he receive the independent, high-quality, consistent health care which he requires, and which cannot be provided in a high security prison. Releasing Julian Assange will also bring to a close a case that is damaging press freedom across the globe and judicial integrity in the UK and the US.

For all these reasons, we request that you urgently intervene to end the extradition process and ensure Julian Assange is promptly released.

We look forward to hearing from you and would be grateful for a prompt response in light of the serious and urgent subject matter. Please address your reply to info@doctorsforassange.org.

Yours sincerely,

Doctors for Assange

Doctors for Assange is a group of over 300 medical professionals from 35 countries formed in October 2019 to voice concerns about the health of Julian Assange and to condemn the violations of his right to health, to doctor-patient confidentiality and to be free from torture.

Doctors for Assange. End torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange. The Lancet 2020; 395: e44–45. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30383-4

Doctors for Assange. The ongoing torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange. The Lancet 2020; 396: p22-23. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31444-6

References:

[1] Reporters without borders lead a coalition of 16 organisations in urging the Home Secretary to urgently intervene in Assange extradition https://rsf.org/en/uk-rsf-leads-coalition-16-organisations-urging-home-secretary-suella-braverman-urgently-intervene

[2] Thousands surround the British parliament on 08/10/2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMJfU4QL1Fw

[3] US agencies spying on Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfWoIAsIn6Y

[4] CIA plans against Wikileaks https://news.yahoo.com/kidnapping-assassination-and-a-london-shoot-out-inside-the-ci-as-secret-war-plans-against-wiki-leaks-090057786.html

[5] Key witness in Assange case admits to lies in indictment https://stundin.is/grein/13627

[6] Melzer, Nils (2022) The trial of Julian Assange, published by Verso Books

[7] Nils Melzer confirms psychological torture of Julian Assange at a session of the UN https://youtu.be/UGqVx_L-Y7M?t=267

[8] Professor Duarte Nuno Vieira is Full Professor (of Forensic Medicine, Forensic Sciences, Ethics and Medical Law) at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Coimbra (Portugal) and at the Faculty of Health Sciences of the University of Beira Interior. https://www.uc.pt/fmuc/pessoas/docentes/DNVieira; https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Duarte-Vieira

[9] Dr Pau Perez-Sales is a psychiatrist and director of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid‘s Post-Doctoral Degree in Mental Health in Political Violence and Catastrophe. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pau_P%C3%A9rez-Sales; https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Pau-Perez-Sales

[10] Clinical study on the correlation between psychological stress and systemic inflammation as a major factor for cardiovascular disease https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36115323/




Julian's 'crime' was revealing the realities of Iraq -- Chelsea Manning was a whistle-blower who leaked the information to Julian.  WIKILEAKS then published the Iraq War Logs.  And many outlets used the publication to publish reports of their own.  For example, THE GUARDIAN published many articles based on The Iraq War Logs.  Jonathan Steele, David Leigh and Nick Davies offered, on October 22, 2012:



A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.
Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters and civilian killings in the Afghan war.
The new logs detail how:
• US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.

• A US helicopter gunship involved in a notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender.
• More than 15,000 civilians died in previously unknown incidents. US and UK officials have insisted that no official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081 non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.

The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee's apparent death. 







Because the machine of this modern Leviathan was exposed by Julian and WikiLeaks, the machine demands revenge. The United States has undergone a corporate coup d’etat in slow motion. It is no longer a functioning democracy. The real centers of power in the corporate, military,  and national security sectors were humiliated and embarrassed by WikiLeaks. Their war crimes, lies, conspiracies to crush the democratic aspirations of the vulnerable and the poor, and rampant corruption here and around the globe were laid bare in troves of leaked documents. We cannot fight on behalf of Julian unless we are clear about who we are fighting against. It is far worse than a corrupt judiciary. The global billionaire class, who have orchestrated a social inequality rivaled by pharaonic Egypt, has internally seized all of the levers of power and made us the most spied upon, monitored, watched, and photographed population in human history. When the government watches you 24 hours a day, you cannot use the word liberty. This is the relationship between a master and a slave.

Julian was long a target, of course. When WikiLeaks published the documents known as Vault 7 which exposed the hacking tools the CIA uses to monitor our phones, televisions, and even cars, he and journalism itself was condemned to crucifixion. The object is to shut down any investigation into the inner workings of power that might hold the ruling class accountable for its crimes, eradicate public opinion and replace it with a cant fed to the mob.

I spent two decades as a foreign correspondent on the outer reaches of empire in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and the Balkans. I am acutely aware of the savagery of empire, how the brutal tools of repression are first tested on those Frantz Fanon called the wretched of the earth. Wholesale surveillance, torture, coups, black sites, black propaganda, militarized police, militarized drones, assassinations, wars.

Once perfected on people of color overseas, these tools migrate back to the homeland. By hollowing out our country from the inside through deindustrialization, austerity, deregulation, wage stagnation, the abolition of unions, massive expenditures on war and intelligence, a refusal to address the climate emergency, and a virtual tax boycott for the richest individuals and corporations, these predators intend to keep us in bondage, victims of a corporate neo-feudalism, and they have perfected their instruments of Orwellian control. Tyranny imposed on others is now imposed on us.

From its inception the CIA carried out assassinations, coups, torture, and illegal spying and abuse, including on that of US citizens, activities exposed in 1975 by the Church Committee hearings in the Senate and the Pike Committee hearings in the House. All these crimes, especially after the attacks of 9/11, have returned with a vengeance. The CIA is a rogue and unaccountable paramilitary organization with its own armed units and drone program, death squads, and a vast archipelago of global black sites where kidnapped victims are tortured and disappeared.

The US allocates a secret black budget of $50 billion a year to hide multiple types of clandestine projects carried out by the National Security Agency, the CIA, and other intelligence agencies, usually beyond the scrutiny of Congress. The CIA has a well-oiled apparatus to kidnap, torture, and assassinate targets around the globe, which is why, since it had already set up a system of 24-hour video surveillance of Julian and the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, it quite naturally discussed kidnapping and assassinating him. That is its business.

Senator Frank Church, after examining the heavily redacted CIA documents released to his committee, defined the CIA’s covert activity, and I quote, as “a semantic disguise for murder, coercion, blackmail, bribery, the spreading of lies, and consorting with known torturers and international terrorists.”

All despotisms mask state persecution with sham court proceedings. The show trials and troikas in Stalin’s Soviet Union, the raving Nazi judges in fascist Germany, the denunciation rallies in Mao’s China. State crime is cloaked in a faux legality; judicial farce. Julian is extradited and sentenced. And given the Lubyanka-like proclivities of the Eastern District of Virginia – This is a near certainty – It means that those of us who have published classified material, as I did when I worked for the New York Times, will become criminals

It means that the iron curtain will be pulled down to mask the abuses of power. It means that the state, which through special administrative measures, or SAMs, anti-terrorism laws, and the Espionage Act have created our homegrown version of Stalin’s Article 58, can imprison anyone anywhere in the world who dares commit the crime of telling the truth. We are here today to fight for Julian, but we are also here to fight against powerful subterranean forces that, in demanding Julian’s extradition and life imprisonment, have declared war on journalism. We are here today to fight for Julian, but we are also here to fight for the restoration of the rule of law and democracy.

We are here today to fight for Julian, but we are also here to dismantle the wholesale Stasi-like state surveillance erected across the West. We are here today for Julian [applause], but we are also here to overthrow – And let me repeat that word for the benefit of those in the FBI and Homeland Security who have come here to monitor us: overthrow… The corporate state and create a government of the people by the people and for the people that will cherish, rather than persecute, the best among us.



An Iraqi-American excavation team has unearthed a monumental rock-carving relief in a major archaeological site in the northern city of Mosul.

The carvings were found at Mashki Gate, or Al Maska in Arabic, one of the monumental gates for the old city of Nineveh, the imperial capital and most populous city of the Assyrian Empire.

The reliefs date back to the era of the Assyrian King Sinharib who reigned from 705 to 681 BC, Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage director Dr Laith Majid Hussein said on Monday.


Meanwhile, the theft of over 2 billion euros remains a scandal in Iraq.  ANF NEWS reports:

A huge corruption scandal is looming in Iraq: unknown persons have stolen the equivalent of almost 2.6 billion euros from the Iraqi tax authorities' account. The theft was announced by Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul-Jabbar at the weekend and has since been confirmed by Prime Minister-elect Mohammed Shia al-Sudani.

Jabbar said an investigation by the Treasury Department, which he headed until his resignation this week, found that "a certain group," without specifying details, had the money stolen from an IRS bank fund at Rafidain Bank.

Earlier, the Iraqi Treasury released a document showing the alleged theft. The letter caused a stir: it shows that the money had been withdrawn between September 2021 and August 2022. It was deposited using 247 checks into the accounts of five different companies and withdrawn immediately. Rafidain Bank said it had nothing to do with the theft. Its job was limited to "disbursing the General Tax Administration's bonds in its branches after verifying the validity of their issuance," according to the largest Iraqi bank, which also has branches in Cairo, Beirut and Abu Dhabi.



UN Special Representative for Iraq Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert has urged authorities to recover $2.5 billion that was embezzled from the tax authority, the latest corruption scandal to rock the country.

The case was revealed on Saturday by Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar, who ordered an investigation when he was acting finance minister. Documents related to the investigation have been leaked to the media.









Winding down, we'll note this Tweet from Billy Eichner.









Not sure where else it will be available -- it'll be announced on the BROS site later today -- but AMAZON has it for rental -- $19.999 -- and iTunes has it for $19.99 rental and $24.99 to purchase. 


Isaiah's latest THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "The Ladies Of THE PEW" went up yesterday.  
The following sites updated:








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Monday, October 17, 2022

Are they out of ideas?

Monday, Monday -- can't trust that day.  Isaiah's latest THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "The Ladies Of THE PEW."


theladiesofthepew



THE NEW YORK TIMES reports, "Republicans enter the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress with a narrow but distinctive advantage as the economy and inflation have surged as the dominant concerns, giving the party momentum to take back power from Democrats in next month’s midterm elections, a New York Times/Siena College poll has found."  From THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER:



Former President Barack Obama recently pointed out that Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot with their obsession with Donald Trump and the various legal issues surrounding him. They have deluded themselves, as a party, into believing that the rest of the world is as obsessed as they are with Trump, whatever legal battles he faces, and the January 6 committee. In reality, nobody cares about any of this stuff. At all.

Most people don't even know what's happening in that committee. And they certainly don't care about the lawsuits being filed in New York.

"We spend enormous amounts of time and energy and resources pointing out the latest crazy thing he said, or how rude or me and some of the Republican candidates behaved," Obama said on a recent podcast. "That's probably not something that, in the minds of most voters, overrides their basic interests: can I pay the rent? What a gas price is? How am I dealing with child care?"

Obama is completely right. If Democrats don't listen to him, they are going to be slaughtered in the coming midterms.



On this, Barack is right.  And the Democratic Party better grasp real damn soon that running on a 'platform' of "We're not Donald Trump" really isn't enough.  Not by a long shot.


Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Monday, October 17, 2022.  Barham Salih has another public hissy fit, $2.5 billion disappears from the Iraqi government, the western press struggles with anogognosia psychosis, and much more.


Let's start off with the press' anosognosia psychosis.


Last week, US President Joe Biden yet again wrongly stated that his son Beau Biden died in Iraq and the press has been itself into pretzels trying to insist that the emperor had clothes on.  No, he didn't.  He has a break with reality and needs to be removed from office.


Beau did not die in Iraq and the more you humor Joe, the more of a whore you look like.  Even if you want to argue that the cancer Beau died of resulted from exposure to burn pits in Iraq, Beau still didn't die in Iraq.  He left Iraq in 2009 and he died in 2016.

 


He came back to the US and won another term as attorney general in Iowa. It was that second term that enraged many when he let a predator walk.  From WIKIPEDIA on Dupont heir Robert H. Richards IV:


In 2009, he entered a guilty plea and was convicted of raping his 3-year-old daughter,[1][5][6][7][8][9] after the girl reported the abuse to her grandmother.[4] Instead of serving out his eight-year prison sentence, the sentencing order signed by Delaware Superior Court Judge Jan R. Jurden said that the "defendant will not fare well" in prison and thus the eight-year sentence was suspended.[5][7][9][10] Delaware Public Defender Brendan J. O'Neill expressed surprise that Jurden would use such a rationale to avoid sending Richards to prison.[5][7]

In 2010, allegations were made that Richards had also molested his son beginning in December 2005 and continuing for two years.[1][6][4] Police and prosecutors investigated but did not find sufficient evidence to pursue charges.[6] Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden later defended the sentencing of Richards to probation, claiming there was a strong chance of the prosecution losing at trial making a plea bargain necessary.[11] Although Richards was ordered by Jurden to go through in-patient treatment at a Massachusetts facility, he has failed to do so.[12][11]

In 2014, Richards' former wife, Tracy Richards, filed a lawsuit seeking damages for the abuse of his daughter.[1][5][8][9][10] The lawsuit also claims that the polygraph tests Richards took in April 2010 during his probation supported allegations that he had molested his son.[1][6][4][8][9] These reports were provided to Jurden.[11] In April 2014, Superior Court Judge Richard F. Stokes denied Richards' request to seal the court files, stating that the proceedings were open to the public and this was a First Amendment issue.[12] By the end of June 2014, it was reported that a sealed confidential settlement had been reached on the lawsuit.[13]

Critics questioned if Richards's wealth and prominence led to unfair preference in the legal system.[7][14] The case was compared to Ethan Couch, whose "affluenza" defense infamously earned him probation for killing four people while driving intoxicated.[14]


That's nothing to be proud of.  Wonder where Beau learned that it was okay to let a predator off scott free?  


We're not done with the psychosis of the press.

What can we do with Clemence Michallon?  Not shoot her with a camera -- have you seen that nose and chin/  Like many a looks-challenged person, she sought out print media and now she writes garbage for England's INDEPENDENT newspaper.  It's not really independent.  For all the whoring in the early '00s about that paper, the reality is they weren't calling out the Iraq War. In fact, their leading columnist -- a Tony Blair obsessed writer -- was calling for the war.  Clemence isn't that damaging -- but almost.  Her latest garbage -- and remember, this is a British paper -- includes this:



It remains unclear what part of that call Fox News thought was so richly deserving of a call-out. Was it the very human fact that Hunter Biden, like tens of thousands of Americans, found himself struggling with substance abuse – a fact he and his family have addressed openly multiple times, including when Hunter detailed his road to sobriety in his 2021 memoir? Or was it that Joe Biden – the US president, the commander-in-chief – dared speak to his son with genuine love and sentiment? Or was it a bit of both?
[. . .]

It’s a well known fact in the world of substance abuse advocacy that substance abuse is a disease, not a moral failing – not that you would know it watching Fox News. We’re all vulnerable to it. Almost 92,000 people died of drug overdoses in the US in 2020, and they are now the leading cause of accidental deaths in the country. How could anyone think that a president responding with open love and compassion to his son’s struggles is in any way shameful? If anything, I hope it might make others feel less alone, and possibly provide them with a template to communicate their own support to their own loved ones.


For those of you who feel you can't enjoy it because it's the awful INDEPENDENT (they have a war with the online world -- the US-based DATALOUNGE is only one of many sites fighting back), please note the link goes to YAHOO's re-posting of their bad article.

What do you say to someone as stupid as they are ugly?


'This is mocking people with addiction issues!'

Actually, you stupid idiot, it's not.  First off, accountability.  Rigorous honesty.  Don't write another damn word about substance abuse advocacy until you know something about recovery.
  
Hunter's never gotten honest.  And the press didn't demand that he do so.  I'm not even talking about the laptop and about how he sold access to his father -- which is illegal -- and how Joe knew about it all along (they had shared accounts, buy a damn clue if you're still in denial).  I'm talking about his behaviors.  I'm talking about prostitutes.  I'm talking about illegal activities.  

And not only is Hunter not practicing rigorous accountability, when these issues pop up, trash like dog-face Clemence show up to insist that discussing these details, raising them, is awful and hideous.  I pointed out here how wrong this was years ago and it's still going on and it's still wrong.  

He has nothing to do with his child.  His parents (Joe and Jill) have nothing to do with his child.

It's not Navy Joan's fault that she was conceived during one of Hunter's never-ending benders.  

If Clemence wants to act concerned, how about showing concern for a true innocent.  Navy Joan is a Biden.  She gets nothing from that family.  They refuse to invite her to activities.  Her grandfather is the president of the United States and this family is getting away with slighting her on the world stage.  It's outrageous.  Even with that big nose on her face, Celemence should be able to see that.

But instead she wants to pretend she understands addiction when she doesn't understand a damn thing.  It's outrageous when people like her try to speak to this issue without knowing anything.  See Ruth's "Jill Biden is a lousy grandmother" for more on the topic of Navy Joan but start asking yourself what type of person you really are if you're choosing to pretend that it's normal for this little girl to be rejected by the Biden family?  If you really think that it is, you're sicker than Celemence. 



And, buy a clue, Hunter is still active in his disease.  Any counselor would have made clear to him that he shouldn't get married until he had significant sobriety under his belt.



He is not going to meetings and he's relapsing as we speak.


AFP reports:


Iraqi authorities are investigating the "theft" of $2.5 billion from the tax authority, officials said Sunday, in the latest corruption case to hit the country. 

State news agency INA reported Saturday that an internal probe by the finance ministry found the money had been withdrawn from the agency's account at a state-owned bank.


Iraq has one of the most corrupt governments in the world -- as ranked by Transparency International.  The Iraqi people suffer and the government rips everyone off.  Over and over.  REUTERS notes:

Local media have published a document from the tax authority showing the money had been withdrawn between September 2021 and August 2022.

It had been transferred to the accounts of five companies using 247 cheques, and immediately withdrawn from those accounts.

 “Who are the real owners of these companies?” asked Iraqi political analyst Sajad Jiyad on Twitter. “Who authorised these cheques to be given to the companies? How did it go undetected for a year, and which politicians are complicit?”

Ihsan Ismail, the recently discharged acting finance minister, pointed to a ‘specific group’ in a statement, without elaborating.



Ismaeel Naar and Sinan Mahmoud (THE NATIONAL) report:

Iraq’s prime minister-designate Mohammed Shia Al Sudani vowed on Sunday to act against corruption after authorities announced nearly $2.5 billion was embezzled from the account of a government agency.

The Iraqi Integrity Commission announced it was opening an investigation into the theft of 3.7 trillion dinars, while confirming that the case is currently before the judiciary.

The amount was stolen from the General Tax Authority's trust account held by a branch of the Rafidain Bank, according to the Iraqi finance ministry.


He's going to act against corruption?  They've been saying that since Nouri al-Maliki in 2006.  So far, it's just been words.  Maybe that won't be the case with Mohammed Shia al-Sudani?  Time will tell.



Mustafa remains the 'caretaker' prime minister at present and he is in charge, it happened on his watch.  But, again, it's happened on everyone's watch. 












Dropping back to Friday's snapshot:

It took a year and three days after the election, but Ira finally announced a new president yesterday.  The moment was not without drama.  ALJAZEERA reports, "Rashid replaced fellow Iraqi Kurd Barham Saleh as head of state after the two-round vote in parliament on Thursday, winning more than 160 votes against 99 for Saleh, an assembly official said. Saleh reportedly walked out of the parliament building as the votes were tallied."  Saleh finally leaves.  He wasn't content to be president of Iraq, he tried to ignore the Constitution during his tenure and elevate the position of president to that of prime minister.  A complicit foreign media helped him out -- in part to make it appear Iraq was more stable than it actually was.  

Saleh's hissy fit might make some believe that Abdul is from a different political party.  Nope.  PUK. 

Barham Saleh continued his public hissy fit after the announcement.   KURDISTAN 24 reports:

President Latif Rasheed officially assumed his duties in Baghdad on Monday in the absence of his predecessor Barham Salih.

In a formal ceremony held in Peace Palace in Baghdad’s Jadiriyah neighborhood, the 78-year-old president was inaugurated as the 10th president of the country.

The national anthem was played as President Rasheed inspected the Guards of Honor. First Lady Shanaz Ibrahim Ahmed took part in the presidential inauguration as well.


THE NATIONAL also notes Salih's hissy fit, "Mr Salih, who received 99 votes in both rounds, did not attend the handover ceremony."



Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "House Reject, House Mess and House Dunce" went up Friday, "Take A Moment To Enjoy The PEW" went up Saturday and "Enjoy THE PEW" went up Sunday.  The following sites updated:


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