A recent viral video shows a man in San Francisco riding a bike through Walgreens, filling a garbage with merchandise, and sailing out of the store with a security guard and store employee standing helplessly by. Another viral video shows a thief jumping over a counter and then leaving on a scooter while a TV crew does a story on shoplifting. Such scenes have become so common in San Francisco that retail chains are applying new rules to their operations in the city.
More than 1,000 Afghan soldiers have fled to neighbouring Tajikistan after clashing with Taliban militants, officials have said.
The troops retreated over the border to “save their own lives”, according to a statement by Tajikistan’s border guard.
Violence has risen in Afghanistan and the Taliban have been making significant gains, particularly in the north of the country, in recent weeks.
The surge coincides with the end of Nato’s 20-year military mission.
The Olympics in Tokyo this year is set to be the most political yet, and the games haven’t even started.
Top Biden allies including former Treasury secretary Jacob Lew and National Security Council official Kurt Campbell have done work for a nonprofit funded by companies like Facebook and Disney that is known for working closely with Chinese officials and Communist Party front groups.
WASHINGTON (AP) — As the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks approaches, victims’ relatives are pressing the courts to answer what they see as lingering questions about the Saudi government’s role in the attacks.
A lawsuit that accuses Saudi Arabia of being complicit took a major step forward this year with the questioning under oath of former Saudi officials, but those depositions remain under seal and the U.S. has withheld a trove of other documents as too sensitive for disclosure.
Watching video footage of angry radicals tearing down statues of both Queen Victoria, Canada’s founding monarch, and Queen Elizabeth II, our reigning monarch, outside the Manitoba Legislature is an overwhelming experience.
US Representative Cori Bush exercised her liberties as an American and member of Congress to contend that, as the nation celebrates Independence Day, it continues to occupy stolen land and deny freedom to black people.
“When they say that the 4th of July is about American freedom, remember this: The freedom they’re referring to is for white people,” Bush said Sunday on Twitter. “This land is stolen land, and black people still aren’t free.”
Ont. reports 170 new COVID-19 cases today, 1 death
Ontario is reporting fewer than 200 new COVID-19 cases today for the second time in the past week.
Provincial health officials logged 170 new infections on Monday, down from 213 on Sunday and 210 last Monday.
Vaccine passports ignite debate over privacy vs. public health
As a steadily rising number of fully vaccinated Canadians emerge from hiding to test the gradual return to pre-pandemic normalcy, a conundrum looms: what to do about those who, for whatever reason, haven’t had a shot?
Striking the proper balance between public health and personal freedom, and figuring out whether one must be relinquished to protect the other, will become increasingly key as the country reopens.
Virtually any article by CBC can be considered gov’t propaganda.
There was an editorial last week in The Free Beacon positing that due to anti-Semitism within its ranks, the Democrat party will mimic the electoral defeat of England’s Labor Party, which is similarly plagued by anti-Semitism. The Ilhan Omar–Ocasio-Cortez–Tlaib trio, as well as many members of various Democrat congressional caucuses, are open enemies of Israel’s existence and redolent with anti-Semitic pejoratives. The Beacon’s theory is that just as Jeremy Corbyn’s Labor Party was shunned by Jews and many in the public, thereby losing the last election to the Tories, so will Democrats lose to Republicans in 2022. Nancy Pelosi in the House and Chuck Schumer in the Senate, though themselves not anti-Semitic or anti-Israel, continue to allow this anti-Semitism in their party, and Pelosi goes farther by publicly and proudly embracing the Squad and especially Omar.
Will it come to pass in North America? Not so sure about that.
China’s genocide against its Uyghur ethnic minority in Xinjiang, also known as East Turkestan, presses on. Up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other minorities have been detained in extrajudicial “re-education camps” where deaths, torture and political indoctrination take place. This genocidal campaign seems now specifically to be targeting Uyghur intellectuals. Hundreds have been taken into internment camps, disappeared or died in custody. Among them are professors, journalists, medical researchers, doctors, actors, poets, publishers, writers and students. They are often subjected to harsher prison sentences, as well as death sentences. Many are missing.
Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism sheds light on today’s socially isolated world.
Can we understand the extensive range of draconian measures designed to contain the Covid-19 pandemic as being, in some way, totalitarian?
By any historical standard, these measures were certainly hugely repressive. Although they varied from region to region, and nation to nation, in many cases they amounted to a system of mass house arrest. People were often forbidden to leave their homes, except under the most stringent conditions. And when they were allowed out, there were often strict limits on how far they could travel, what they could do and when they had to return.
Almost daily, we get an email from one of our readers informing us that they usually like satire but, this time, we’ve gone too far. They go on to explain that whatever we’d just skewered is off limits and should be left alone. They demand apologies and, in some cases, retractions. They want us to take it back.
Rabbi Shlomo Noginski was stabbed 8 times outside a Jewish day camp in Massachusetts. The attacker, Khaled Awad, an Egyptian immigrant, had threatened him with a knife and a gun, and tried to force him into a van. When Rabbi Noginski fought back, he was stabbed 8 times. He survived and has been released from the hospital.
Western civilization may not be perfect, we haven’t seen anything like it anywhere else in human history
‘Western civilization would be a good idea,’ joked Mahatma Gandhi, one of its most successful pupils. We are accustomed to hearing what is wrong with Western civilization: racism, sexism, colonialism and (gasp) capitalism. The world would be a kind of utopia, we are told, if only we could purge these sins from our societies. But if Western civilization is evil, what is the alternative? Four other -isms vie for our attention.
Since initial reports of the coronavirus outbreak in late 2019, America has witnessed a rapid and unprecedented transformation within nearly every aspect of mainstream society. At work, many Americans settled into their new daily routines of working from home, hunched over computer screens for hours of caffeine-supported Zoom calls frequently followed by app-delivered box dinners. In elementary schools throughout the country, young children began growing accustomed to wearing masks while sitting in socially distanced cubicles to learn about the dangers of hugging, shaking hands, or breaking social distancing protocols…
