Vaccine rates have varied widely between the individual service branches. In July, before Austin’s announcement, the Navy led the way with more 70 percent of its personnel fully vaccinated. At the low end, fewer than 60 percent of Marines met that criteria.
In the age-old tradition of large lumbering bureaucracies and armies and reporter stake-outs, this was an excruciating weekend of ‘hurry up and wait’. Their only shelter in the dusty and brutal Afghan sun was the red white and blue canopy of a self-serve gas bar. Maybe ten families who had completed the path to Canadian citizenship were told by government of Canada text to come to this spot late Friday with the promise of a Canadian Armed Forces flight waiting on the nearby airport tarmac.
h/t CC
Several impounded dogs due to be rescued by a shelter have instead been shot dead by a rural council in NSW under its interpretation of COVID-19 restrictions, alarming animal activists and prompting a government probe.
Bourke Shire Council, in the state’s north-west, killed the dogs to prevent volunteers at a Cobar-based animal shelter from travelling to pick up the animals last week, according to council’s watchdog, the Office of Local Government.
h/t Mauser98
Pope Francis has a terrific idea for how to bring peace to Afghanistan, and it’s basically the same solution he offers for every problem under the sun: dialogue. Yes, of course. The Taliban are killing and mutilating women and hunting down Christians because no one has bothered to sit down and talk with the poor dears. Never mind that American representatives were in discussions with the Taliban for over a year in Doha long before the Afghanistan debacle. Apparently that wasn’t the right kind of dialogue, which, if we have now, will fix everything.
Not wanting to date a trans person is transphobic 😂 pic.twitter.com/l5FSuo8oOj
— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) August 20, 2021
Richard Burgon, a member of the British Parliament for the far-Left Labour party and Secretary of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs, demonstrated Tuesday that the Left’s commitment to the redistribution of wealth is indefatigable: He declared that what the West really needs to do now is start forking over money to the Taliban. Burgon tweeted: “The crisis in Afghanistan is the result of 20 years of disastrous military intervention. Just as in Iraq & Libya, backing US-led invasions led to a huge loss of life. There is no military solution in Afghanistan. The focus now should be on reparations and supporting refugees.”
Forces across the UK add a splash of colour to their fleet to encourage people to report racist, homophobic and transphobic incidents
Police are replacing patrol cars with “hate crime cars” to encourage people to report incidents such as social media comments.
Deputy Chief Constable Julie Cooke said that the cars painted with the police insignia and rainbow designs are now “part of our vehicle fleet” and will be driven daily by officers on patrol.
However, critics have said that forces should instead focus on policing “real” issues such as knife crime and rape, with the latest figures showing poor prosecution rates.
… What better way to destroy the United States than by opening its borders to illegal immigrants; surveilling its citizens; inflating its currency; ignoring its laws; demoralizing its police; undercutting its energy independence; issuing arbitrary, contradictory, and unnecessarily restrictive policies regarding public health; and fomenting strife along the lines of party, class, and race? Our governing elites seem to believe that Americans deserve to be punished. But of all the things that the Biden administration has done to crush the American spirit, none is more damaging than the president’s cruel abandonment of the people—and especially the women and girls—of Afghanistan.
20 years is a long time with nothing to show for it. An Army of 300K surrendered without a shot to an army of 70K. The Afghans do bear responsibility, but yes a pity that more innocent blood will be shed.
Nordelta is Argentina’s most well-known gated community: an enclave of spacious homes for the rich amid a dreamy landscape of lakes and streams north of Buenos Aires.
But environmentalists question its very existence because it is built on the wetlands of the Paraná, the second most important river in South America after the Amazon.
Now, however, nature is fighting back against Nordelta’s well-heeled residents.
In recent weeks, the community has been invaded by capybaras, who have destroyed manicured lawns, bitten dogs and caused traffic accidents.
I’m with the giant rodents.
With President Ashraf Ghani’s hasty flight from Kabul, we are now witnessing the fall of the second of five regimes that label themselves “Islamic Republic” in just over two years.
The first to fall was the Islamic Republic of the Sudan and what we have left are Islamic Republics in Pakistan, Iran and Mauritania. If we include the Islamic State created in parts of Iraq and Syria a few years ago and still lingering as a bad smell, we might conclude that, despite Taliban’s latest success, the label “Islamic” is not as invulnerable as some suggest.
The difference is that in Sudan the Islamic Republic was replaced by a timid, though no less sincere, attempt at democratization while the Islamic Republic in Afghanistan signals the return of the Islamic Emirate or a more radical version of Islamism.
A couple of weeks ago the big question surrounding what was then a still to be announced federal election campaign was whether or not Liberal leader Justin Trudeau would be re-elected with a minority or whether he’d secure the majority he clearly covets.
Thousands of people have been scrambling to flee Afghanistan after the Taliban seized back control of the country, almost two decades after they were ousted by a US-led coalition.
The surge in numbers trying to leave comes on top of the 2.2 million refugees already in neighbouring countries and 3.5 million people left homeless within Afghanistan’s borders as a result of ongoing conflict and political instability.
I’m still trying to grasp an entire nation’s armed forces negotiating its surrender in advance to the “enemy.”
It’s fair to suggest the rank and file of the armed forces were representative of the Afghan people in general though perhaps not its elites.
I am curious to find out if the “Canadian citizens” in Afghanistan were like the “Lebanese Canadians” who used us a passport of convenience.
High-efficiency masks up to six times better at filtering aerosols than cloth, surgical masks: Canadian study
… The researchers found that R95 masks were able to filter out 60 per cent of exhaled aerosols, and KN95 masks could filter out 46 per cent.
On the other hand, cloth masks and surgical masks only filtered out 10 per cent and 12 per cent of exhaled aerosols, respectively.
These are the only masks I have used.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed “incidents” of Taliban violence against Americans heading to the Kabul airport to flee Afghanistan .
Austin said Sunday there have been “some tough encounters with [the] Taliban,” just two days after President Joe Biden denied Americans were having trouble getting to the airport.
