Egyptian Government Corruption Seems Alive & Well

Coat of Arms of Egypt, Official version. Government Website (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Unfortunately for the Egyptian people, one official that was good at rooting out such corruption has been fired from his job.  Webzine Al-Monitor is reporting that Hisham Geneina, the head of the Accountability State Authority (ASA) has been relieved of his job by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Apparently Geneina's former deputy has his boss's job.

Many were expecting this decision months before its issuance, given the fierce campaign waged against Geneina due to statements he made to Egyptian daily Al-Youm Al-Sabea in December 2015, which claimed that the cost of corruption had reached 600 billion Egyptian pounds (around $76 billion) in 2015. These statements stirred a nationwide controversy in Egypt.
Consequently, Sisi formed a commission tasked with investigating these claims, headed by the chief of the Administrative Control Authority and assisted by Badawi, deputy head of the ASA, in addition to three representatives of the Ministries of Interior, Planning and Finance.

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Iraqi Government Corruption Scandal - Reportedly the World's Worst

Huffington Post has done some great investigative journalism, (good to see some organizations still doing some) in conjunction with The Age and Nick McKenzie, Richard Baker, Michael Bachelard and Daniel Quinlan, on a huge Iraqi corruption scandal involving the Iraqi government.
Heck, even the Ayatollah Sistani has issued a fatwa against the Iraqi government, vis-a-vi this corruption.

It's a great read:

There was little about the man walking through Heathrow Airport to show he held secrets that could bring down some of the most powerful men in Iraq.
Moustached, olive skinned, hair receding, eyes sharp. His name was Basil Al Jarah. His British passport showed he lived in Hull, an unremarkable town in the north of England, but it bore the stamps of a frequent traveller: London, Baghdad, Basra, Amman, Paris, Istanbul, Kuwait.
Basil Al Jarah was an oil industry fixer. But had authorities known his true business, they might have taken a far keener interest in the man waiting for a plane to Amman in 2011. Because by that stage, Al Jarah and his employer, a Monaco-based company called Unaoil, had cultivated an astonishing web of influence in the upper echelons of Iraqi power – all based on the simple expedient of bribing the right man at the right time.
As tens of thousands of secret emails reveal, Al Jarah and Unaoil were at the heart of a global bribery operation funded, sometimes wittingly, by dozens of US, British, European and Australian multinationals. These firms paid huge sums to Unaoil. In return, Unaoil used its friends in high places to win billions of dollars worth of government contracts.

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Syria's Bashar Assad - Secular Government

Bashar and Asma al-Assad, President and first-wife of Syria. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Opinion

The government of Bashar Assad was/is a secular government, and the various ethnic groups and religions got along quite well. This of course would change if the western supported rebels win the civil war. The country would be far less democratic and subject to Sharia, which is brutal in it's punishments meted out.

Our western governments are quite mad to be supporting the Gulf Arab states who support extremist Islamic ideology called Wahabism.

Another thing our western press often neglect to mention, when talking about the Assad government - His wife, the 1st lady of Syria is a Sunni and many government ministers are too.

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Russia's Military Upgrading Quite Successful

Russia's Modern Military Showcased in Syria

With the Russian Air Force's recent successes in Syria, the Russian Federation has served notice that their aerospace forces aren't to be trifled with.

Today, reading an article on Sputnik, I was impressed with some of the remote controlled combat vehicles the Russian Army was showcasing. Here is one in action courtesy of Sputnik News:

read story on Sputnik.
Pretty impressive. Western analysts are considerably impressed on how fast and accomplished the Russian Federation has been able to upgrade. Since NATO is aggressively expanding to the Russian Federations borders, I'm sure a new arms race is inevitable.

The Military Industrial Complex's on both sides will be happy I'm sure.

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