U.S. climate envoy Kerry tells Chinese leaders: climate not about politics
SHANGHAI, Sept 2 (Reuters) – U.S. special climate envoy John Kerry said he had urged Chinese leaders to reach for the “highest ambition” in order to curb temperature rises, saying the climate crisis was not about politics.
Senior Chinese diplomats told Kerry during his visit to China that the issue of climate change could not be separated from the broader political disputes between the two sides.
We’ve been hearing a lot of speculation that the Afghan debacle is more than it seems – that rather than being a typical outcome of activity by some of the dumbest, most ill-informed, and most blinkered individuals ever to occupy places in the U.S government, it is instead a dark, convoluted conspiracy aimed at some goal sinister beyond words.
Some of this is from the usual suspects who see conspiracies every time a cat falls out of a tree, and some by more reputable people. The core concept here can be expressed simply: “There has to be something else going on. Nobody could be that stupid.”
Sirhan Sirhan’s parole is a story of doubly silly decisions to hollow out the criminal-justice system.
Last Friday, two California parole board commissioners recommended release for Sirhan Sirhan, convicted a half century ago of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy—then a senator and presidential candidate. Two of Kennedy’s eight living children—one of whom, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is a conspiracy theorist who maintains that someone else shot his father—supported the ruling. It also received the tacit endorsement of Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón, the “progressive prosecutor” whose policy is never to send one of his attorneys to parole hearings.
A conspiracy theory spreading online says the whole internet is now fake. It’s ridiculous, but possibly not that ridiculous?
If you search the phrase i hate texting on Twitter and scroll down, you will start to notice a pattern. An account with the handle @pixyIuvr and a glowing heart as a profile picture tweets, “i hate texting i just want to hold ur hand,” receiving 16,000 likes. An account with the handle @f41rygf and a pink orb as a profile picture tweets, “i hate texting just come live with me,” receiving nearly 33,000 likes. An account with the handle @itspureluv and a pink orb as a profile picture tweets, “i hate texting i just wanna kiss u,” receiving more than 48,000 likes.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was publicly condemned on Thursday after arguing that mandatory Covid-19 vaccination actually advances civil liberties instead of compromising them.
In an article for the New York Times – which the ACLU posted on its official Twitter account – ACLU National Legal Director David Cole and colleague Daniel Mach defended vaccine mandates by claiming that the right to bodily autonomy is overruled when others are put at risk.
Performative anti-capitalism won’t change anything
Extinction Rebellion’s latest poster is a classic of the genre: a skeletal figure sits on a tree stump, holding a distortion of the group’s trademark hourglass logo. The text at the bottom is a variation on a slogan I have come to know very well: “Act Now, Before Because It’s Too Late”.
Afghanistan has fallen to the Taliban and American forces are withdrawing. As with such ventures, this has resulted in tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees fleeing their own country. And as night follows day, this has also resulted in calls by many American individuals and organizations to bring in as many of those refugees as possible, because we “owe” it to the Afghans.
To hear such claims, one would think that these many thousands of refugees will immediately become part of America, sharing our values and ideas, and contributing to our communities.
OTTAWA – Four party leaders went head to head in the first televised debate of the federal election campaign Thursday night, kicking off the discussion with a vigorous back-and-forth about the COVID-19 pandemic and health care.
The French-language debate on TVA, one of Quebec’s most-watched networks, comes at the midpoint of the campaign and could prove crucial to the outcome on Sept. 20.
Sounds like the usual BS.
If someone had told you in September 2001, as the Twin Towers fell and people in the Pentagon perished, that on the 20th anniversary of this atrocity America would be contemplating aligning with the guys who helped to do it, you would have thought them insane. And yet here we are, fast approaching 20 years since that grim, apocalyptic day, and a US military chief is saying it’s ‘possible’ his forces will work alongside the Taliban. Yes, the same Taliban that hosted Osama bin Laden as his minions were plotting 9/11. The same Taliban whose ties with al-Qaeda have actually deepened over the past two decades – as a recent UN report said, the Taliban and al-Qaeda are now closely bonded by ideological sympathy and intermarriage. That Taliban. That al-Qaeda, essentially. This is who America’s military chiefs are fluttering their eyelashes at.
Joe Biden came into office inheriting the war in Afghanistan. But unlike previous presidents, he inherited a war that was relatively quiescent by Afghanistan standards, involved few American troops on the ground, and was in a phaseout due to an agreement his predecessor had struck with the Afghan government and the Taliban. Under that deal, the U.S. would remove its troops by May 1, 2021, if the Taliban and Afghan government met certain conditions.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Dr. Kathleen Hicks has an op-ed published in The Hill titled “Addressing Racial Disparities in the Military Justice System” last night. The level of tone-deafness coming for the Biden administration cannot be understated. The only reason for such timing for a piece like this from the Pentagon right now is to serve as a distraction from the reporting on the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal. It is shameful.
There is nothing inevitable about elections – anything can happen, as we have seen over the past three weeks.
But as sure as snow melts in spring, the Liberals are going to lose this election unless they can change its trajectory.
A special constable who lost a leg in an accident has described his doctor as a “legend” for writing to the council after he was rejected for a blue badge.
Ben Perry’s right leg was amputated in 2018 after he was hit by a car.
However, when it came time to renew his blue badge, he said he was told he did not qualify and was told to supply more evidence of his disability.
In a letter, shared by Mr Perry on Twitter, his doctor told the council his leg was unlikely to “re-grow”.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford insisted on Wednesday that the province’s new vaccine passport system is “a temporary tool that we won’t use any longer than we have to.”
This makes it sound like people will only have to show their vaccination paperwork for a short period of time.
🚨 A man is told by police he will be ARRESTED for wearing a MAGA hat: pic.twitter.com/MTOa005WzZ
— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) September 2, 2021
