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Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality

Welcome to the Neno's Place!

Neno's Place Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality


Neno

I can be reached by phone or text 8am-7pm cst 972-768-9772 or, once joining the board I can be reached by a (PM) Private Message.

Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality

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Established in 2006 as a Community of Reality

Many Topics Including The Oldest Dinar Community. Copyright © 2006-2020


    An American report: The heat has reached the level of "injustice" over Iraq... The soles are melting

    Rocky
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    An American report: The heat has reached the level of "injustice" over Iraq... The soles are melting Empty An American report: The heat has reached the level of "injustice" over Iraq... The soles are melting

    Post by Rocky Fri 12 Aug 2022, 8:19 am

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    Severe temperatures have paralyzed Iraq, shutting down the exhaustive power grid as authorities extend public holidays to protect employees from temperatures as high as 125 degrees Fahrenheit. 
     
    Iraq ranks fifth in the list of countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, and is warming faster than most parts of the world. Nearly 20 years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, the country is ill-equipped to deal with the tension. 
    In the southern governorates of Basra, Dhi Qar and Maysan, the authorities said (last Saturday) that the electricity network was cut off for the second day in a row, which led to millions of homes being plunged into darkness during the harsh night. Food spoilage in refrigerators. Parents put their kids in the car and drove for hours - the air conditioning in their cars was the only way to keep them cool.  
     
    By Sunday morning, the governor of Dhi Qar, one of Iraq's poorest regions, said that the official holiday for state employees would be extended until the religious day of Muharram begins on Tuesday, "due to the noticeable rise in temperatures."  
     
    Ten months after cleric Moqtada al-Sadr won the largest number of seats in parliamentary elections here, politicians from the country's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish blocs are locked in a bitter fight over the shape of the new government. As a result, no budget was passed and major spending decisions were put on hold. 
     
    But just as most Iraqi provinces are likely to see temperatures of 120 degrees (Fahrenheit) or higher this week, the electricity grid isn't the only faltering public service, however. 
    Agriculture and fishing, two mainstays in the country's attempts to move away from dependence on oil revenues, are being hit by drought.  
    Doctors say overwhelmed hospitals are treating cases of heat stroke or breathing difficulties that may have been exacerbated by toxic fumes in the air.  
     
    On the streets of Baghdad last Sunday, young boys were distributing water from ice boxes, shielding their faces from the sun with sweat-drenched scarves. The veteran traffic police said their work is getting harder.  
    “I did it 16 years ago," Falah Nouri, 37, said as he rested on a dilapidated pier on the banks of the Tigris River. "It's not just the sun. It's the fumes and how the concrete heats up under our feet."  
     
    He said his soles were burnt and that he was wearing shoes that his doctor had recommended as a result. “He wants me to take a vacation, but how do I get a vacation?” said the policeman angrily.  
     
    In the middle of the day in many neighbourhoods, there was one noise missing from the usual noise: the sound of construction.  
    Although day laborers often continued their construction boom in Baghdad throughout the summer, this time it was sweltering hot. 
     On the usually green Abu Nawas Street, a construction worker seemed obsessed with the heat as he receded on a dry tree. There was no shadow in sight.  
     
    With government power systems faltering across Iraq, sites ranging from state ministries to family homes rely on privately run backup generators and an army of operators running in hot, dark trailers around the clock to keep them going.  
     
    But this poses its own risks. Experts say they run on diesel fuel, release toxic fumes into the air, and customers are forced to pay exorbitant prices for electricity to unaccountable and often corrupt business owners who own the machines. 
    In the Zaafaraniya neighborhood in southeast Baghdad, Habib Abdul-Kadhim, 49, can barely hear his voice above the quivering roar of his newborn. "We're melting here!" He cried. "Me and 40 million other Iraqis, we are melting."  
     
    It was scorching hot inside his small office, and the fumes seemed to create a kind of film through his eyes, he said.  
     
    Everywhere the region was suffering. On the wall of his office, the lists of families now burdened with debt to their electricity supply were growing longer. Inside his home, his newborn grandson, Adam, was crying as he struggled to breathe.  
     
    "Every year we think things can't get any worse, but then summer surprises us," Abdul-Kadhim said. He looked exhausted. 
     
    In the summer months, Baghdad's heat only subsides when a dust storm rolls in, covering the city with particles of sand and wind-softened earth as Baghdad's green belt dries up. This summer, thousands of people have been hospitalized with breathing problems as a result. There is not much doctors can do.  
     
    “We give them hydrocortisone and some time out of the storm,” Saif Ali said on a recent day, the beds in his emergency room still sandy from his patients' feet. "It gets worse every year."  
     
    Iraq's combination of rising temperatures and water shortages caused by climate change, mismanagement, and reduced flows from the top have caused disruptions in the past. In the south, conditions have forced families to migrate from their farmland to the cities, where tensions with the long-running population have been rising amid dwindling resources. 
    In Basra, where residents prepared to spend another Sunday night without electricity, pollution and toxic waste contaminated the entire city's water supply in 2018, causing more than 100,000 people to be hospitalized with abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhea.  
     
    Large protests ensued, but the authorities crushed them with deadly force.  
     
    Across Iraq, small demonstrations take place every week denouncing poor services in the face of the sweltering heat. 
     In the Iraqi marshes - some of which are now shattered by layers of dirt instead of the silvery ponds where the Garden of Eden is said to have stood - a banner for protesters last month was an expression of misery.  
     
    "If you ask me about the condition of my land, I will tell you," the letter read. Drought, poverty, forced migration and violence. 
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