The Weather Report - week ending 15.09.2017

the weather in Baghdad this week will be partly cloudy with some sun and about 45 degrees C (or 113 F) in the shade. there are slight winds - up to 9 mph which should feel like… invisible hellfire. don’t breathe in when the wind blows, dearest Baghdadians, or your lungs could burst into flames. it will drop to a heavenly 28 degrees tomorrow morning at 0500, briefly, but then it’s going to be another perfect day in Baghdad! :-D

meanwhile, elsewhere:-

in Europe: the UK is to start naming storms. British storms are harder to sell than their American cousins, and currently seen as “unfriendly” or “difficult to relate to” due to this namelessness. it is hoped by giving the storms names we can learn to accept each storm as an individual, for what it really is and not just what society has told it to be. storm sexuality is still unclear but they are “free to identify however they want to” according to a guy we asked in the corridor. some NGOs and a couple of think tanks however claim this could be just another political ploy, this time surrounding an abuse of storm rights, or stormabuse. they accuse the government of attempting to take advantage of storms, after providing no support or aid leading up the storm-naming and subsequent party of destruction. the ECJ confirmed that a storm should “be nameless should they wish to be” but pledge their on-going support for the “right of a storm to be recognised should it get big enough”.

going back to the Middle East: Qatar and Saudi Arabia are officially “not talking”. normally this would mean war, but arabs don’t like fighting directly because wars are hot, messy and best fought with/by mercenary armies. they - the mercenaries - are all busy at the moment, so instead each has changed their Facebook status to “it’s complicated” and “single” respectively. Qatar are back on the arabic naughty step after briefly getting back in the room at the end of last week as it looks like the “but whose terrorists are they?” question seems to be tipping towards “theirs” again after the recent “ours” swing. some commentators now believe it might not really matter who’s terrorists they are - as they both seem to be killing the same innocent people. individually, and in an unprecedented “coincidence", all governments involved on both sides insisted this not to be the case.

over in America: all news is officially on hold "because hurricanes”. for a country that officially denies climate change but extol the existence of a very real God, you would think 4 hurricanes, an 8.2 magnitude earthquake, a tsunami and widespread devastation on a scale the USA has never seen before was a pretty clear message. The fact the only other major storms (there are 2 of them) are in south-east Asia, basically at US army bases, seems to be thoroughly lost on the Presidential Team. the White House emphatically rule out any possible link (and in doing so confirm that they are in fact very closely related).

lastly, in Asia: following the “man-made” earthquake (read: really big fucking bomb) they set off last week, global sanctions have had the unfortunate effect of fast-tracking the North Korean nuclear program rather than slowing it down. it was actually, seriously, demanded that Kim & co. agree to just give up and dispose of, safely and at HUGE national cost, all their nuclear “stuff”. and their intercontinental ballistic missile program. and probably most of their soldiers, submarines, tanks… basically fully disarm. and if they do then we PROMISE that everything is going to be OK. otherwise, it could be like Iraq - where there weren’t even any nuclear weapons - and we will have to come and kill your Saddam Hussein; and bomb your country back to the stone-age; and set-up a no-fly zone. instead, take a lead from the disarmament of Libya - when Ghadaffi began dismantling its nascent nuclear program in 2003 and, because he did that, in 2011, we, well, we killed him. but not before bombing Syria back to the stone-age and setting up a no-fly zone. the difference between these two examples should be obvious. unless you’re a terrorist.

have a sunny weekend,

HA