Hello all, from Siena, one of the most beautiful cities in the world. I’m spending the night here before heading out tomorrow with a friend to make a pilgrimage, more on which tomorrow. Meanwhile, Ross Douthat’s column today makes for extremely sobering reading. He writes that America looks like a declining empire – an observation that I have heard again and again over the last eight days from worried European conservatives…
Our nation’s senior-officer educational institutions no longer teach warfighting—and that must change.
We must reckon with the hard truth that the United States has lost another war. Though errors made by policymakers certainly played a part, our military lost in Afghanistan because it no longer knows how to fight and win wars. This wasn’t because our military professionals lack will or effort but because they have forgotten the real purpose for which militaries exist. Nowhere is this truer than in America’s war colleges—the schools our nation established to teach officers how to fight and win wars. The plain fact is that these schools no longer teach warfighting. This may sound incredible—even unbelievable—but it is true.
In the aftermath of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, there’s going to be a refugee crisis. The Taliban’s reign will be brutal, but that’s only the start of Afghanistan’s problems. As Andrew Stuttaford explained on August 24, the Afghan economy is going to collapse, and it threatens to undo all of the gains in the standard of living the country made over the past 20 years.
Many who oppose allowing Afghan refugees to resettle in the United States wonder why they don’t go live in other Muslim countries instead. After all, they argue, refugees would be able to assimilate better in countries more similar to the one they are leaving, and the U.S. wouldn’t have to support any new people as they adjust to a completely different culture — win-win.
The first time I heard about ivermectin was from my doctor early on in the Era of Covid-hysteria. The United States still had a functioning President, we had yet to arm the Taliban or give them lists of Americans and Afghan ‘allies’ they might want to execute, and a vaccine against the worst scourge since the Black Death was, if the experts were to be believed, years, maybe decades away.
Of course, the experts weren’t to be believed. Donald Trump’s Manhattan Project approach to getting a vaccine developed in record time bore fruit. Pfizer had the first vaccine ready to go before the 2020 election, but selflessly waited until just after the election to make the announcement. They, and the other drug companies in on Operation Warp Speed, have been playing the opening bars of Pink Floyd’s song ‘Money’ nonstop at corporate headquarters ever since. Everyone must be vaccinated, twice (plus boosters) at government (i.e. taxpayer) expense immediately and forever.
Let’s say you used to be the popular kid who got invited to all the posh parties? When you walked by, everyone would stage whisper (so you could hear) how marvelous your wardrobe was.
They all wanted selfies with you. They texted their friends so say they’d seen you – almost shook hands with you. Everything you did seemed so “woke,” so “2015.”
Unfortunately there are just enough voters to give the national embarrassment called Trudeau a second minority.
Trudeau’s bus has just been swarmed. It is blocked from the front and both sides. pic.twitter.com/RztUktkXU9
— Annie Bergeron-Oliver (@AnnieClaireBO) September 5, 2021
When I wrote Escape from Portland, it was a little ahead of the curve. But not by that much.
You’ve got a real problem when a local real estate blog is writing about the “Mass Exodus from Portland.”
The Portland Tribune notes that, “Portland now ranks 66 out of 80 in national commercial real estate markets.”
ROME, Italy — Pope Francis launched an appeal for Afghan refugees Sunday, calling for prayers and generous reception of those seeking asylum.
“In these agitated moments that see Afghans seeking refuge, I pray for the most vulnerable among them,” the pope told the crowds gathered in Saint Peter’s Square for his weekly Angelus address.
“I pray that many countries will welcome and protect those who seek a new life,” the pontiff continued. “I also pray for internally displaced people to have the necessary assistance and protection.”
After days of question about his party’s gun policy, Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole said Sunday he would maintain a Liberal ban on ‘assault-style’ firearms if he forms government.
“I want to make my position on firearms perfectly clear. First, the ban on assault weapons will remain in place. Second, the present ban on a number of other firearms that were reclassified in 2020 will remain in place,” he told reporters in Vancouver.
At a French-language debate on Thursday, O’Toole said he would maintain a ban on assault weapons.
A gaffe perhaps but not a mortal one.
More… O’Toole flip flops on firearm promise, says ban on ‘assault-style’ guns will stay
Federal employees who do not comply with vaccine mandates “will face consequences,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has warned, exercising political muscle and flagrantly backtracking on his original promise that Canadians could make up their own minds about whether to take the Covid-19 injections. So far, the threat against the unvaccinated has not provoked the depth of backlash we’ve seen in countries such as France and Greece. But the risk of “consequences” applies equally to the public at large, as Dr. Denis Rancourt of the Ontario Civil Liberties Association makes clear in his compelling A Letter to the Vaccinated, following upon his earlier A Letter to the Unvaccinated.
The first letter, reviewed in an earlier article for The Epoch Times, presented a premonitory overview of government COVID policy.
Menstrual Equity Now!
Period poverty affects trans men the most pic.twitter.com/m28XNnvIYp
— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) September 3, 2021
The summer of 2021 has seen a spike in violent crimes, especially murder in Democratic cities across the country, a predictable result of progressives’ calls for defunding of the police. Yet the ABC, CBS, NBC evening news programs have barely covered this dangerous crime wave as they’ve devoted less than an hour of coverage (58 minutes, 15 seconds) in three months (June 1-August 31) to the ongoing crime sprees in 15 Democratic-run cities.
Obviously the liberal media don’t want to embarrass President Joe Biden with stories about out-of-control violence that he’s done essentially nothing to stop.
CHICAGO — At least 47 people have been shot, two fatally, across Chicago since Friday evening, including several children.
They may have to nuke Chicago.
If some of these unidentified craft actually did turn out to be controlled by some extraterrestrial intelligence, do we have a plan in place as to what we would do next? Nelson was rather blunt about it. The answer is no.
A child safeguarding expert who faced vilification after raising concerns about the safety of children undergoing treatment at a London NHS gender identity clinic has won an employment tribunal case against the hospital trust.
Sonia Appleby, 62, was awarded £20,000 after an employment tribunal ruled the NHS’s Tavistock and Portman trust’s treatment of her damaged her professional reputation and “prevented her from proper work on safeguarding”.
Appleby, an experienced psychoanalytical psychotherapist, was responsible for protecting children at risk from maltreatment.
As the world tries to absorb the shock of Taliban’s return to Kabul, officials in Western democracies are launching a debate on how to deal with the new masters of Afghanistan.
So far the main theme in this debate seems to be a desire to recognize the gun-toting “religious students” as the legitimate government of that long-suffering land. However, to ward off charges of appeasing a terrorist group, Western officials set a number of conditions before the implied recognition is granted. French President Emmanuel Macron, on a visit to Baghdad, has set four conditions while British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has unveiled four conditions of his own.
