As President Joe Biden’s catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan comes to an end after 20 years, the Taliban is declaring victory and humiliating him by painting Taliban flags on the blockades in front of the former U.S. embassy.
A week previously, men were selling Taliban flags outside the entrance to the embassy. Now, huge murals depicting the terrorist logo are proudly and victoriously displayed in front of what was once American ground.
SAINT-SAUVEUR, QUEBEC — A phony war on guns.
Back in March, one of the main groups lobbying for stricter gun controls declared that Justin Trudeau was no longer welcome to attend their activities commemorating the École Polytechnique feminicide.
Trudeau had often been a speaker at these very moving events held in memory of 14 women who were killed because they were women.
An American mom and her three children made a perilous overland trip to a neighboring country to escape the Taliban after being left behind by Joe Biden’s state department. The state department immediately took credit for the rescue operation.
A key question arising from the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan is their relationship with their long-time ally, al-Qaeda.
Al-Qaeda is bound to the Taliban by a pledge of allegiance – or “bay’ah” – which was first offered in the 1990s by Osama Bin Laden to his Taliban counterpart Mullah Omar.
The pledge has been renewed several times since, although it has not always been publicly acknowledged by the Taliban.
Under the 2020 peace deal with the US, the Taliban agreed not to allow al-Qaeda or any other extremist group to operate in areas under their control. They reiterated this vow days after the takeover of Kabul on 15 August.
But they do not appear to have publicly rejected al-Qaeda either.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson had some serious accusations to level at the U.S. military for lying about the “illusion of progress” in Afghanistan for nearly two decades.
As the catastrophe in Afghanistan continues to unfold in the wake of the disastrous military pullout, many have placed the blame squarely on President Joe Biden. Carlson, however, lashed out at the Pentagon for what he asserted was 20 years of lies on his show, Tucker Carlson Tonight.
Some Canadians really, really, really dislike Justin Trudeau.
We have seen this anger manifest in large protests — sometimes ugly, vulgar and unruly — across the country at Trudeau’s campaign events.
Canada aims to block Chelsea Manning from entering country
A decade after Chelsea Manning revealed U.S. state secrets about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, officials in Ottawa are seeking to permanently block her from entering Canada.
A tribunal hearing to determine Ms. Manning’s admissibility – meaning, her legal ability to enter Canada – is scheduled to take place on Oct. 7.
His decision to call a snap election has backfired disastrously
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is fighting for his political life. His decision to bring down his minority government and call an early election has seriously backfired. His Liberals are behind in the polls to the Conservatives, and are sinking fast.
Many Canadians are furious about voting during Covid-19. They’re irritated with Trudeau’s wasteful spending on expensive programmes like a national carbon tax and childcare plan. But above all, they’re tired of the smug, know-it-all attitude of this sire of political royalty (his late father also served as PM) who, before politics, had accomplished next to nothing in life.
In the past 12 months, courts across Ontario have withdrawn or stayed 85 per cent of drug possession charges in the system before they ever reached trial, according to public data analyzed by CBC Toronto.
By comparison, 45 per cent of such charges were dropped in 2019, prior to the pandemic.
The data — which spans July 2020 to June 2021 — reveals inconsistent patterns in various regions across Ontario in how prosecutors have dealt with a backlog of cases caused by COVID-19 disruptions, while Canada’s politicians move closer toward decriminalization.
It also comes a year after a 2020 directive, asking federal Crowns to avoid prosecuting drug possession charges.
Gun violence is up I wonder if there’s a link? Fact check: is gun violence rising in Canada?
… Criminal gun violence has risen in Canada — and by a fairly significant margin, according to Statistics Canada.
From 2009 to 2019 criminal use of firearms increased 81 per cent, the agency reported. 2019 saw a nine per cent increase over the previous year.
This includes not just discharging a firearm, but also pointing it — for example, as part of a bank robbery.
And the COVID-19 pandemic did not do much of anything to reverse the trend.
“They’re scared for their lives.”
Canadian citizens left stranded after airlifts out of Kabul ended two weeks ago are quickly losing hope, particularly as allies continue evacuating their citizens via another city.
Today there are 564 new cases of #COVID19. 434 cases are in individuals who are not fully vaccinated or have an unknown vaccination status and 130 are in fully vaccinated individuals.
Today’s numbers will be available at 10:30 a.m. at https://t.co/ypmgZbVRvn.
— Christine Elliott (@celliottability) September 7, 2021
Long weekend undercount I suspect.
Patients frustrated, concerned as some Ontario doctors slow to return to in-person appointments
Michelle Sadowski says she’s fed up talking to her one-year-old son’s pediatrician over the phone about his persistent cough and cold symptoms.
Because of COVID-19 restrictions at the clinic, they’ve not been allowed to see his doctor in-person for months, said Sadowski, a fully vaccinated Toronto resident who works from home. She’s been told it’s too risky, even if she and her son Avery get cleared with a negative COVID-19 test result.
After half a dozen phone-call appointments, she ended up taking him to St. Joseph’s Health Centre’s kids clinic at the end of July. After a two-hour wait there, doctors did a full examination and determined he had a double ear infection.
What does Justin Trudeau do for an encore?
Much of his media availability in Welland, Ont., on Monday was devoted to belittling Erin O’Toole.
It is a sign of how rattled the Liberals are that Trudeau invoked the trifecta of progressive hobgoblins — anti-vaxxers, anti-choicers and climate deniers, all of whom, Trudeau claims, are pulling O’Toole’s strings.
“He can’t even convince his party that climate change is real,” Trudeau said, conjuring up the vote at the Conservative policy convention in March, where delegates rejected the statement that “climate change is real” and the party is “willing to act.”
A rocky start in the polls for Justin Trudeau’s Liberals has been compounded with intense and vitriolic protests in different parts of Ontario.
The crowds, which have been seen holding signs protesting vaccines and COVID-19 measures have often spewed insults and obscenities towards Trudeau, Liberal supporters and media. At times, they’ve followed him along the campaign trail, but Trudeau said the constant pressure from the outspoken minority hasn’t changed his outlook.
As Australians suffer under the heavy boot of another government-imposed total lockdown, the Mount Druitt Police Area Command in Sydney held a “Wear It Purple Day” pride event in celebration of the Cult of LGBT.
Circulating photos show law enforcement officials densely packed inside a building in direct violation of their own orders not to congregate. They ate cake and cupcakes and partied it up while the people were confined to their homes under threat of punishment.
