Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, European Council President Charles Michel, U.S. President Joe Biden, Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Italy's Prime Minister Mario Draghi, French President Emmanuel Macron, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and German Chancellor Angela Merkel pose for a group photo at the G7 summit, in Carbis Bay, June 11, 2021. Patrick Semansky/Pool via REUTERS
WNU Editor: The above picture came from this photo-gallery .... World leaders and activists descend on Cornwall for G7 summit (Reuters).
6 comments:
If those characters are the future, we are screwed
Dark pants, coat, white shirt, tie. Dark pants, coat, white shirt, tie.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.
So many leaders at the latest G-7 meeting, including those from Germany, France and Canada, seemed simply eager to move past Trump this week; so much so that they greeted Biden like an old friend even when he wasn’t.
As the world leaders walked along St. Ives Bay just before the summit began, French President Emmanuel Macron, who had never met Biden before, put his arm around him and the two walked arm and arm. They engaged in a brief but animated conversation that included talking about ways to make democracies more effective for the middle class, one of Biden’s favorite topics.
“Being able to meet Joe Biden is obviously important because he stands for the commitment to multilateralism, which we were missing in recent years.” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel, one of Trump’s favorite targets, just after she arrived at the summit Friday.
Even British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, closer to Trump than any other G-7 leader, declared that everyone is “absolutely thrilled” to see Biden and called their meeting “a breath of fresh air.” Later when reporters asked if that comment was a criticism of Trump, the prime minister's spokesperson said it was simply a reflection of their shared interests of security and climate change.
Some of the camaraderie in England could be chalked up to world leaders simply practicing the diplomatic art form of overt flattery. But much of it, experts say, is the outcome of international relations finally returning to a state of norm after four years of intense whiplash. The leaders may not have uttered Trump’s name out loud but his presence was felt.
“There's no way of describing our friends' relief at the change of administration. And not just because it isn't Donald Trump anymore,” said Stephen Sestanovich, a former National Security Council and State Department official. “It’s that the alliance has a backlog of real problems to address. The Biden administration wants to talk about how to develop cooperative responses to them in a way that the Trump administration couldn't ever be serious about.”
In the United States, political polarization has checked efforts to enact even modest federal climate change legislation for decades. Out of frustration, one might even say desperation, some activists have looked to the world of private investing and major corporations—yes, even oil companies—to press a climate change agenda. And those efforts have been somewhat successful. On the one hand, there are now reasonably large investment funds that, through their investment criteria, in effect take resources away from companies that have poor environmental track records and reward those who have better records. On the other hand, activists have also purchased stock in some of the major polluters and used their status as shareholders to push shareholder resolutions and fight for seats as outside members of the boards of directors. Remarkably, a third activist was just elected to the Exxon board.
This strategy should now be extended to the fight to preserve democracy in the United States. All across the United States, Republican majorities in state legislatures are pushing to restrict ballot access, and even to politicize (in their partisan favor) how disputes over the outcomes of close elections will be resolved. Distinguished political scientists see the United States as being on the verge of slipping from a flawed but real democracy to a nation where power will reside in an essentially anti-democratic (small d), even authoritarian party, regardless of what the majority of Americans think and desire. Of course, the Biden administration and the Democratic leadership in Congress are trying to enact federal legislation that would override anti-democratic legislation at the state level. But the odds of such legislation actually being enacted are slipping by the day. And if it is not enacted soon, state-level restrictions on ballot access and state-level gerrymandering could ensure Republican control of Congress as a minority party for years to come.
So far, corporations have been relatively quiet about the fact that the United States, at the hand of one of two major political parties, may be on the verge of losing its democratic system of government. It is true that Delta and Coca-Cola expressed their disappointment over Georgia’s adoption of an anti–voting rights law, and Major League Baseball went further, moving its All-Star Game out of Georgia. But there continues to be relative silence from major corporations around voting rights, even as bills restricting voting edge toward passage in dozens of states. That quiet is explicable. Big business and the Republican Party have had a long, close relationship, and the majority of CEOs probably are (or until recently, were) Republicans. More to the point, CEOs care about making money, and especially their companies’ short-term profitability and stock performance, and so it makes sense for them to try to avoid alienating Republican leaders in Mar-a-Lago, Congress, and the state legislatures.
Which is why corporations must be pushed to take a stand. Both through “democratically responsible” investment funds and shareholder activism, investors can push corporations to state loudly for all to hear which voting measures they approve and which they denounce. Investors could push for corporations to issue “democracy” impact statements, which would detail the corporations’ political contributions, relevant lobbying efforts, and other measures that affect the fight for preserving democracy in the United States. Investors might push corporations to commit not to make direct or indirect campaign contributions to any politician or state party that supports anti–voting rights legislation, or federal candidates who oppose measures that would protect democracy such as the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Admittedly, determining which investor demands on corporations would be productive in terms of the fight for democracy is not straightforward or obvious. But that is all the more reason why the effort to make those determinations needs to begin right now.
Liar
Lol agreed that seemed to be a copy paste from a local Democrat activist mail, ie liars
Who would believe those election thieves, those terrorist sympathisers anything anymore? If you vote Democrat, you might as well straight up tell me you're a sex offender like Fred.
They're all the same. Pedos, druggies, marxists, columnist writers and app developers. Fck them all.
I still say we should hang the Democrats who were involved in the election theft and used the false positives of the too high PCR cycles to push for last minute unconstitutional mail in ballots with no oversight(and if that wasn't enough then went on to harass poll watchers and deny them meaningful access)
They're thugs, election fraudsters,apat in the face of democracy and then told you it just rains because ohh the courts didn't want to touch it, while their terrorists burned down city blocks and threatened judges and everyone who came forward
They must be hung for this.
Nothing else will suffice or democracy in the west has fallen
There must be a penalty for the terror and election manipulation they pushed
And death is the only remedy for such high crimes
Hang them!
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