Wretchard.com

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.

1. Supreme Court abortion decision;
2. Joe Manchin
3. Bad jobs report
4. Afghanistan disaster

Analysis: Supreme Court and Joe Manchin tighten Biden’s political straitjacket

Both the premise and promise of Joe Biden’s presidency and a possibly brief Democratic grip on Washington are suddenly on the line, as the legacy of past electoral disappointments and harsh realities of power suddenly converge.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid on Thursday claimed Beijing was “ready to invest in and reconstruct” Afghanistan as he set out hopes that China would provide a gateway into global markets

Telegraph

Taliban declare China their closest ally

Group’s spokesman says Beijing is ‘ready to invest in and reconstruct’ Afghanistan

The billionaire entrepreneur matched the heights of America’s tech legends but failed to heed warnings that Chinese leader Xi Jinping still called the shots

WSJ

Jack Ma’s Costliest Business Lesson: China Has Only One Leader

The billionaire entrepreneur matched the heights of America’s tech legends but failed to heed warnings that Chinese leader Xi Jinping still called the shots.

Former British soldier, Ben Slater’s, mission to evacuate 400 Afghans via a third country has failed. His staff have been turned away at a land border. Slater called on the Foreign Office to help his staff escape after ‘complete disaster’ at border

Taliban arrests former British soldier as 400 Afghans he is trying to evacuate are turned away at border

Ben Slater called on the Foreign Office to help his staff escape after ‘complete disaster’ at border

The court’s order, which rejected an emergency request by clinics and abortion-rights advocates, marks a turning point in the legal battle over abortion rights and comes the day the Texas ban went into force. While not a final ruling on the measure’s constitutionality, the court’s action validates, at least temporarily, a novel attempt by Texas lawmakers to insulate antiabortion legislation from court challenge.

The unsigned order came on a 5-4 vote, with most of the conservative justices in the majority.

WSJ

Supreme Court Declines to Block Restrictive Texas Abortion Law

A new measure, known as the fetal-heartbeat law, bars the procedure after about six weeks of pregnancy. Abortion providers had sought to prevent it from taking effect.

The Taliban has mobilized a special unit, called Al Isha, to hunt down Afghans who helped US and allied forces — and it’s using US equipment and data to do it.

NY Post

Taliban kill squad hunting down Afghans — using US biometric data

The Taliban has mobilized a special unit, called Al Isha, to hunt down Afghans who helped US and allied forces — and it’s using US equipment and data to do it.

“What gulag?” I said.

“The construction crew,” he said: the men in blue jumpsuits from China. Their barracks were straight out of a Russian novel, he said, puffing on a cigarette. Didn’t I know I was living smack in the middle of a huge story?

Politico

Meth, Vanilla and ‘Gulags’: How China Has Overtaken the South Pacific One Island at a Time

What’s happening in Tonga is a microcosm of China’s expanding global influence and why the United States is losing ground fast.

This is in keeping with the strategies of presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump of reducing U.S. forces in the Middle East in order to minimize risk. Trump, however, increased the United States’ air defense capabilities in the region after Iranian drones struck a Saudi oil facility in 2019. The Biden administration’s withdrawal appears to be driven by the need to deploy these weapons in other regions. Thus, the question is where are these weapons going, and has something happened to make the transfer necessary? It is difficult to believe that the transfer is designed for near-term threats, since the pending public transfer of significant defensive weapon systems might force a potential enemy to speed up the initiation of war, to get first strikes in before the weapons are installed.

George Friedman

US Withdrawal From the Middle East | Geopolitical Futures

The United States is withdrawing air defense capabilities from several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait and Jordan, with most of the

Roger Simon writes:

In a sense, the current governor and the editor of the state’s most prominent paper are correct, this recall election is about values. But are they the values of a rich class ….

Elder Versus Newsom: Two Radically Different Views of the Soul of America

Commentary LOS ANGELES—Sunday evening I was standing in an excited crowd at a Long Beach fundraiser for Larry …

“And he’s still alive.”

In the call, Biden offered aid if Ghani could publicly project he had a plan to control the spiraling situation in Afghanistan. “We will continue to provide close air support, if we know what the plan is,” Biden said. Days before the call, the U.S. carried out air strikes to support Afghan security forces, a move the Taliban said was in violation of the Doha peace agreement.

Reuters

Exclusive: Before Afghan collapse, Biden pressed Ghani to ‘change perception’

In the last call between U.S. President Joe Biden and his Afghanistan counterpart before the Taliban seized control of the country, the leaders discussed military aid, political strategy and messaging tactics, but neither Biden nor Ashraf Ghani appeared aware of or prepared for the immediate danger …