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When climate envoy John Kerry visited China last week, senior Chinese officials emphatically rejected Biden’s proposal to deal with climate cooperation as a freestanding issue, apart from other, more contentious matters.

Axios

Inside Biden’s latest call with China’s Xi Jinping

Biden’s testing personal diplomacy after a frosty start to U.S.-China relations.

Trying to follow US politics from a distance can be challenging because there are so many questions and so few answers.

• Is California a national bellwether?
• Is the full court press in CA a sign of strength or weakness?
• Can the progressives buy their way to victory with the infrastructure bill?
• At what point does the economy rival the pandemic as an issue? When does the clamor for freedom break even with the desire to feel safe?
• Can Biden use the pandemic to beat down the states?

Having done away with term limits in 2018, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong is pushing what some observers describe as a mini “revolution”, curbing the excesses of capitalism and shedding negative cultural influences of the West.

Reuters

Analysis: Unleashing reforms, Xi returns to China’s socialist roots

When Xi Jinping took command of the Communist Party in late 2012 and proclaimed “only socialism can save China”, it was largely ignored as the perfunctory mention of an antiquated slogan – not to be taken literally in a modern-day, market-powered economy.

The dominant narrative became that “we are at war.” When at war, everyone has to follow orders. If a platoon is ordered to go right and some soldiers explore maneuvering to the left, they are shot as deserters. Scientific skepticism had to be shot, no questions asked. The orders were clear.

Tablet

How the Pandemic Is Changing the Norms of Science

Imperatives like skepticism and disinterestedness are being junked to fuel political warfare that has nothing in common with scientific methodology

Days after China sent US climate envoy John Kerry home empty handed, Beijing has given Alok Sharma, the COP26 President and the UK’s senior climate official, the same message: China won’t cave in to Western demands, plunging Joe Biden’s and Boris Johnson’s Net Zero agenda into doubt.

GWPF

UN climate summit COP26 in trouble as China rebuffs UK

Days after China sent US climate envoy John Kerry home empty handed, Beijing has given Alok Sharma, the COP26 President and the UK’s senior climate official, the same message: China won’t cave in to Western demands, plunging Joe Biden’s and Boris Johnson’s Net Zero agenda into doubt. Beijing has tol…

The Biden administration is taking aim at major meatpackers, charging that “pandemic profiteering” is squeezing consumers and farmers alike, with a few companies that dominate the industry raking in record profits.

Bloomberg

White House Blasts Meatpackers for ‘Profiteering’ on Groceries

The Biden administration is taking aim at major meatpackers, charging that their “pandemic profiteering” is squeezing consumers and farmers alike, with a few companies that dominate the industry raking in record profits.

Two coal-fired generators had to be fired up yesterday to meet Britain’s electricity demands, in a move that usually happens only in winter.

London Times

National Grid turns to coal after wind fails

Two coal-fired generators had to be fired up yesterday to meet Britain’s electricity demands, in a move that usually happens only in winter.Coal power still acc

France’s top court on Tuesday overturned a decision by a lower court to dismiss charges brought against cement giant Lafarge for complicity in crimes against humanity in Syria’s civil war.

AFP

France’s Lafarge loses ruling in Syria ‘crimes against humanity’ case

France’s top court on Tuesday overturned a decision by a lower court to dismiss charges brought against cement giant Lafarge for complicity in crimes against humanity in Syria’s civil war.

An Aug. 27 essay that circulated online in both the official Xinhua news agency and the state-controlled People’s Daily newspaper is being viewed by some analysts as a sign China could soon return to the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s …

Washington Times

Chinese media accuse U.S. of biological warfare

The Chinese Communist Party has stepped up a war of words against the U.S., airing direct accusations that Washington engaged in biological warfare against China.

“This is a road map to the high-risk research that could have led to the current pandemic,” said Gary Ruskin, executive director of U.S. Right To Know, a group that has been investigating the origins of Covid-19.

The Intercept

New Details Emerge About Coronavirus Research at Chinese Lab

More than 900 pages of materials related to US.-funded coronavirus research in China were released following a FOIA lawsuit by The Intercept.

Men are abandoning higher education in such numbers that they now trail female college students by record levels.

WSJ

A Generation of American Men Give Up on College: ‘I Just Feel Lost’

The number of men enrolled at two- and four-year colleges has fallen behind women by record levels, in a widening education gap across the U.S.

Tiffany France thought her son would receive his diploma this coming June. But after four years of high school, France just learned, her 17-year-old must start over. He’s been moved back to ninth grade.

WJLA

The good news: he’s doing better than many.

City student passes 3 classes in four years, ranks near top half of class with 0.13 GPA

BALTIMORE (WBFF) – A shocking discovery out of a Baltimore City high school, where Project Baltimore has found hundreds of students are failing. It’s a school where a student who passed three classes in four years, ranks near the top half of his class with a 0. 13 grade point average. NE…

New at the Belmont Club. China has the Woke over the Climate Change barrel.

Does China Really Believe in ‘Climate Change’?

What if China doesn’t buy the Woke’s most cherished value?

Among the expertise being brought on include those who have looked extensively in cell reprogramming

Daily Mail

Jeff Bezos and Yuri Milner fund anti-aging start up

Billionaires Jeff Bezos (left) and Yuri Milner are funding biotechnology startup Altos Labs with the goal of using cell reprograming to discover anti-aging techniques.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Thursday that the U.S. is taking the variant, dubbed Mu, “very seriously,” but that it hasn’t taken an extensive hold in this country.

CBS

Health officials “keeping a very close eye” on COVID-19 Mu variant

The World Health Organization has dubbed Mu a “variant of interest,” but the U.S. says it is not “an immediate threat” for the time being.

I wrote about Hungnam at the Belmont Club 2 weeks ago. If You Can’t Say ‘Retreat, Hell,’ at Least Retreat Well

As Afghan Refugee Crisis Unfolds, Survivors Recall ‘Miracle’ Evacuation

The U.S. military evacuated 91,000 people out of a North Korean port in 1950. By some estimates, it was the single largest wartime refugee evacuation in American history until Afghanistan.

This wasn’t just a territorial battle, a fight over the land of Afghanistan. It was also a cultural clash. It was a war between one side that has very strong beliefs and is more than willing to die for them, and another side that doesn’t know what it stands for anymore and would rather avoid risk and self-sacrifice if at all possible. I’ll leave you to decide which of these is the Taliban, and which the US.

Brendan O’Neill

This is worse than Saigon

America’s humiliation in Afghanistan confirms that the woke West is utterly incapable of standing up for itself.

The top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee said Sunday the Taliban is blocking a half dozen planes with American citizens and permanent residents, as well as Afghan interpreters, from departing Afghanistan, accusing the militant group of holding the flights “hostage.”

Forbes

Top House Republican Says Taliban Holding 6 Planes With Americans, Afghans ‘Hostage’

Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, says “zero” Americans have left the country since U.S. troops withdrew.

Beijing has rebuffed American calls to make more public pledges on climate change before a UN climate summit in November, insisting it should follow its own plan rather than bowing to US pressure, according to a person familiar with the two countries’ negotiations.

SCMP

China ‘tells US envoy John Kerry it will follow its own climate road map’

Source says the sides did not reach agreement and China has its own plans on climate matters, after talks Beijing describes as ‘candid, in-depth and pragmatic’.

The attacker, a known supporter of Islamic State, was shot dead by police.

BBC

New Zealand supermarket stabbing: Government to toughen anti-terror laws

The Auckland attacker has now been identified as Sri Lankan Ahamed Aathil Mohamed Samsudeen.