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Early Canada election call backfires: Trudeau trailing in polls

David Ljunggren
OANN
Fri, 03 Sep 2021 17:34 UTC
justin trudeau
© REUTERS/Carlos Osorio
Canada's Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau makes an announcement inside the Sunwing Airlines hangar during his election campaign tour in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, September 3, 2021.
Canada's Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau finds himself behind in polls ahead of a snap election he called hoping his management of the COVID-19 crisis would propel him to victory.

Trudeau called the Sept. 20 election last month, two years ahead of schedule. At the time, his Liberals were well ahead and looked likely to regain the majority in parliament they lost in 2019. His main rival, Conservative leader Erin O'Toole, has repeatedly attacked him for calling a vote during the pandemic.

The latest polls by Nanos, Ekos and others show Liberal fortunes have faded as voters have grown fatigued with Trudeau, 49, who has been in power since 2015. One Liberal strategist said on Friday the early-vote call had backfired as it was seen as "wrong" and "greedy" by electors.

Comment: Hopefully Canada will take this opportunity to send ultra-woke soyboy Trudeau back to some obscure community college campus to teach a [fill-in-the-blank] 'studies' class. His leadership has been disastrous for Canada. It may just happen:





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Black Magic

Jen Psaki, brass-necked hypocrite: How far is Biden's official mouthpiece willing to go to protect her flailing boss?

Damian Wilson
RT
Sat, 04 Sep 2021 17:16 UTC
psaki
© Reuters
White House Press Secretary Psaki holds the daily press briefing at the White House in Washington
Being White House press secretary is hard. Particularly hard when your boss seemingly can't remember what he said last week. Even harder when he's caught trying to push a false narrative onto another world leader.

It must have something to do with all those TV lights, the undivided attention of the audience and the sheer power of being the intermediary between the President of the United States and the world's press that turns perfectly ordinary people into power-crazed monsters prepared to say or do anything to keep mud from sticking to their employer.

Comment: Par for the course:

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Info

Former Australian PM accuses Scott Morrison of leading country into 'cold war' with China to become US' 'fawning acolyte'


RT
Fri, 03 Sep 2021 16:24 UTC
keating morrison
© Scott Barbour/Getty Images; REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
(L) Paul Keating; (R) Scott Morrison
Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating has accused current leader Scott Morrison of pushing the country into a "cold war" with China and damaging relations with Beijing in a "fawning" effort to please Washington.

In an interview with the Australian Financial Review, Keating argued that the Morrison government's confrontational stance with China was absurd, given that Australia "is a continent sharing a border with no other state" and "has no territorial disputes with China."

Keating pointed out that China is "12 flying hours away from the Australian coast," yet the current government, "through its foreign policy incompetence and fawning compulsion to please America, effectively has us in a cold war with China." Keating served as prime minister and leader of the Australian Labor Party between December 1991 and March 1996.

Comment: See also:

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No Entry

Internet shutdowns: The new authoritarian weapon of choice?

Issie Lapowsky
protocol
Wed, 01 Sep 2021 00:00 UTC
prison wall
© Sigmund/Unsplash
A new report released Wednesday by Access Now and Jigsaw documents internet shutdowns.
Over the last decade, governments worldwide have intentionally shut down the internet at least 850 times, with a whopping 90% of those shutdowns taking place over just the last five years.

What's behind this troubling trend? "More people are getting online and getting access to the internet," said Marianne Díaz Hernández, a lawyer in Venezuela and a fellow with the nonprofit Access Now. "As governments see this as a threat, they start thinking the internet is something they need to control."

These staggering statistics come from a new report released Wednesday by Access Now and Jigsaw, a division of Alphabet that focuses on addressing societal threats with technology. The report documents the history of internet shutdowns over the last decade, the economic toll shutdowns take on the countries that impose them and what governments and the broader business and civil society community can do to stop what has fast become a widespread and grave human rights violation.

Felicia Anthonio leads Access Now's #KeepItOn campaign, which has been documenting internet shutdowns since 2016. "Internet shutdowns don't ensure stability or resolve crises that are happening," Anthonio said. "It's actually endangering people's lives."

Comment: Perhaps the Cyberpolygon exercises were in "preparation" for just such a time when a partial shutdown (or reconfiguration) of the internet may be implemented - and justified - by a cyber false flag attack. Too bad the author didn't include that possibility in her article.

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Cardboard Box

Afghanistan: Drug Trade and Belt and Road

Peter Koenig
Dissident Voice
Tue, 31 Aug 2021 00:00 UTC
opium afghanistan
All flags are on half-mast in the US of A. The cause is the 13 American soldiers killed in this huge suicide bombing outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on Thursday, 26 August.

As it stands, at least 150 people - Afghans, including at least 30 Taliban, plus 13 American military - were killed and at least 1,300 injured, according to the Afghan Health Ministry.

The Islamic State (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the bombing via Amaq Media, the official Islamic State (ISIS) news agency. The perpetrators, the message says, were members of the ISIS-Khorasan, or ISIS-K.

As reported by RT, US military leaders knew "hours in advance" that a "mass casualty event" was planned at Kabul airport. However, accounts from the troops in harm's way suggest that nothing was done to protect them or the airport. See here.

RT further reports: "The bombing provoked the US into launching two drone strikes, one targeting an alleged "planner" and "facilitator" with the group responsible, and another supposedly wiping out "multiple" would-be suicide bombers but reportedly annihilating a family and children alongside them.
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Clipboard

130 retired generals, admirals demand resignations from Milley and Austin over Afghanistan disaster

Ryan Saavedra
The Daily Wire
Thu, 02 Sep 2021 00:00 UTC
Milley
© Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley
The list of retired admirals and generals demanding resignations from Secretary of Defense (SECDEF) Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) Mark Milley has grown significantly in the last few days, going from under 90 just a few days ago to ballooning to 130 by Thursday.

The retired admirals and generals said that both Milley and Austin need to resign "based on negligence in performing their duties primarily involving events surrounding the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan."

The letter noted the numerous U.S. citizens and Afghan allies, including the man who helped rescue then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) in 2008 when his helicopter was forced to land in a dangerous area in Afghanistan due to severe weather, who had been left behind by the administration when they pulled out of the country earlier this week.

The Flag Officers said that Milley and Austin should have strongly pushed back on Biden's plans and, if Biden refused to heed their warnings about what would happen, they should have immediately resigned and made a public statement about the matter.

The letter continued:

Comment: Strong wording emphasizes the depth and breadth of this fiasco as seen by those qualified to judge.

See also:

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Target

Biden wants an end to US foreign adventures, but multi-billion dollar death & destruction industry still has him in its grip

Glenn Diesen
RT
Fri, 03 Sep 2021 11:03 UTC
BidenSoldiers
© AP/Getty Images/John Moore/KJN
US President Joe Biden • US soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan
The two-decades long US occupation of Afghanistan has ended in humiliating defeat, with President Joe Biden seemingly betraying his globalist liberal-international instincts by saying Washington won't again pursue nation-building.

With Kabul falling before even American troops could get out, let alone those Afghans unfortunate enough to have put their lives on the line to support them, Biden sought to defend his unilateral withdrawal.
"As we turn the page on the foreign policy that has guided our nation the last two decades, we've got to learn from our mistakes. This decision about Afghanistan is not just about Afghanistan. It's about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries."
The US, it seems, has sworn off foreign intervention, for the time being. The change, if it holds up, couldn't be more drastic. America was at the height of its power when it invaded Afghanistan in 2001, but now, 20 years later, the age of global hegemony has evidently come to an end.


Comment: Or has it just gone 'underground'? As they say, leopards don't change their spots.


Comment: Who knows 'what Biden wants'? He's a pass through, the unelected sticker face for the public.

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Pirates

Taliban fighters upset, feel betrayed that US military left non-working helicopters: report

Greg Norman
Fox News
Thu, 02 Sep 2021 00:00 UTC
Taliban Helicopter
© AFP Getty Images
Taliban member inspects a damaged helicopter at Kabul airport.
Taliban fighters are feeling angry and betrayed Wednesday after discovering that Afghan National Army helicopters abandoned at Kabul's airport have been rendered inoperable by departing U.S. troops, according to a report. A U.S. Department of Defense spokesperson told Fox News on Wednesday:
"We disabled/demilitarized that equipment at Hamid Karzai International Airport prior to our departure."
An Al Jazeera reporter who toured a hangar on the military side of the airport said in a video that the terrorist group
"expected the Americans to leave helicopters like this in one piece for their use. When I said to them, 'why do you think that the Americans would have left everything operational for you'? They said because we believe it is a national asset and we are the government now and this could have come to great use for us."
Meanwhile, the Taliban are hoping to get the commercial side of the airport reopened for flights in the coming days, Al Jazeera reports.

Comment: Well, that decision is being raked over the coals by more practical-minded (and outspoken) individuals:
On Tuesday, Donald Trump said Washington should demand that the Taliban return each and every piece of American military hardware or crack down on the militant group.

Former US President Donald Trump has shared a video of the Taliban holding a military parade in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar to celebrate the end of the American troop exit from the nation.

The short clip, published on Trump's Telegram page on Thursday, showed what looked like US-made armoured vehicles, part of the American military hardware that was captured by the Taliban following its takeover of Afghanistan on 15 August.

The ex-POTUS wrote in Thursday's post:
"There is nothing disabled about the equipment that the United States gave to the Taliban. Just more made up lies!"
He was apparently referring to Monday's statement by General Kenneth F. McKenzie, the head of US Central Command, who said that American troops disabled armoured vehicles, aircraft, and weapons systems that they abandoned at the Kabul Airport before the remaining American servicemen boarded the last flights out of Afghanistan.
"We demilitarised those systems so that they'll never be used again. We felt it more important to protect our forces than to bring those systems back. [...] They'll never be able to be operated by anyone again."
Chief Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, for his part, said the only US equipment left operable at the airport was
"a couple of fire trucks and forklifts so that the airport itself can remain more operational going forward. [The Taliban] can inspect all they want. They can look at them, they can walk around, but they can't fly them. They can't operate them. We made sure to demilitarise, to make unusable, all the gear that is at the airport — all the aircraft, all the ground vehicles."
The claims came after Trump called on Washington to press Taliban fighters to immediately return the $85 billion worth of US military equipment the militant group seized after they came to power in Afghanistan on 15 August.
"If it is not handed back, we should either go in with unequivocal military force and get it, or at least bomb the hell out of it."
Shortly after the fall of Kabul, several videos were shared on social media appearing to show what looked like Taliban fighters posing next to UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters and apparently taking a joyride in one.
Do they not work? Or, was disablement a faux caveat created to head off political and public outrage, provide lucrative replacement contracts for the MIC and cover Joe Biden's a**? (Meanwhile, the Taliban thumb their nose and turn to China.)

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Attention

Kim Jong Un orders tougher measures to fight climate change, COVID-19

Thomas Maresca
UPI
Fri, 03 Sep 2021 05:02 UTC
Kim Jong-un
© EPA-EFE/KCNA
North Korea leader Kim Jong-un
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called on officials to tighten COVID-19 prevention measures and to improve damage control for extreme weather caused by climate change, state media reported on Friday.

Kim led a politburo meeting of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea on Thursday, state-run Korean Central News Agency reported. The isolated country has been struggling economically while facing food shortages due to a prolonged border closure and flood damage from typhoons.

At the meeting, Kim said that protecting against the effects of climate change was
"more important than anything else such as river improvement, afforestation for erosion control, dike maintenance and tide embankment projects. Disastrous weather is getting ever more pronounced worldwide and our country is also lying vulnerable to its danger."
North Korea has seen its crops severely impacted by a series of typhoons over the past two summers as well as a heatwave and drought this year. In June, Kim acknowledged that the food situation was "getting tense."

Comment: See also:

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Arrow Up

Taliban celebrates in Kabul after claiming it has captured Panjshir province, resulting in full control of Afghanistan


RT
Fri, 03 Sep 2021 16:54 UTC
taliban
© Afghanistan Reuters/Stringer
Taliban forces at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan
Celebratory gunfire has erupted over Kabul amid reports that the Taliban has defeated the Panjshir Valley 'resistance'. The latter's commander earlier rejected the claims.
Tracers streaked across the night sky on Friday evening local time, reminiscent of celebrations on Tuesday following the departure of the last US airplane from Kabul. There were different reports as to the occasion, however, with RT's senior correspondent Murad Gazdiev hearing both talk of victory in Panjshir and the arrival of the Taliban's leader.
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