Author: Blazingcatfur

‘War-enabling, not war-winning’: how are drones affecting the Ukraine war?

Shot after shot pounded into the Russian missile battery hidden by the lighthouse on Snake Island, a Black Sea rock 22 miles (35km) from the Ukrainian coast. The edited video, released by the Ukrainian military, showed the strike and its aftermath – all taken from a Turkish-designed Bayraktar TB2 drone.

Until then, evidence of the TB2 – a remotely piloted killer drone with a range of up to 190 miles – had largely disappeared from the conflict. The assumption was that the two dozen or so that Ukraine had bought from Turkey had been shot down and Ankara, not wanting to upset Russia, had declined to supply more.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Ukraine - Russia"

Patrick Brown says social conservatives would have a place in a party led by him

Conservative Party leadership candidate Patrick Brown says social conservatives would have a place in a party led by him but that he stands firm on his views on topics such as abortion.

In an interview on CTV’s Question Period, Brown pointed to his time in provincial politics when social conservatives were elected while he was at the helm of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inConservative Party

Muslims riot & demand police release two suspects arrested after Christian student was stoned to death and her body torched in Nigeria

Hundreds of people in Nigeria’s northwestern city of Sokoto demonstrated Saturday over the arrest of two students following the murder of a Christian student accused of blasphemy, residents said.

In the early morning of Saturday, Muslim youths took to the streets of the city, lighting bonfires and demanding the release of the two detained suspects despite the earlier deployment of policemen to maintain order, residents said.

The irate mob retreated downtown where they attempted to loot shops belonging to Christian residents but were dispersed by security patrol teams, said another resident.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inUncategorized

Zelensky hails his country’s Eurovision win and vows to hold next year’s event in Mariupol

President Zelensky has vowed to hold Eurovision in Mariupol next year after an outpouring of support from the European public propelled Ukraine to victory – as Britain’s Sam Ryder earned a shock second place.

Britain surprisingly topped the jury vote and led for most of the night before Ukraine were awarded a mammoth 439 points in the public vote.

The war-torn nation ended on 631 points while the UK finished second with 466 points. Spain finished third with 459 with Sweden fourth on 438.

They expect us to accept the subsidy of our “enemy” through the purchase of their oil & gas while our tax dollars foot the bill for weapons to fight them.

In return they offer us “Eurovision.” Do I have that right?

Flood of weapons to Ukraine raises fear of arms smuggling

President Joe Biden is expected to sign in the coming days a $40 billion security-assistance package that will supercharge the flow of missiles, rockets, artillery and drones to a war-torn Ukraine.

But what remains unclear is Washington’s ability to keep track of the powerful weapons as they enter one of the largest trafficking hubs in Europe.

Ukraine’s illicit arms market has ballooned since Russia’s initial invasion in 2014, buttressed by a surplus of loose weapons and limited controls on their use.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Bread and Circuses", "Ukraine - Russia", WTF?

Buffalo white supremacist, 18, threatened a school graduation shooting last year and was given psychiatric treatment – but still legally bought three guns: Classmates reveal he acted strangely, wore hazmat suit to school for a week and scared them with ‘Hitler-esque’ political views

A teenage white supremacist who murdered 10 people at a Buffalo, NY threatened to shoot a classmate at his high school graduation last year.

Officials at the Susquehanna Valley High School brought in New York State Police to investigate Payton Gendron, 18, of Conklin, NY, in June of 2021 after he made statements that he would shoot fellow students.

A year later he ended up shooting 13 people – 10 of them fatally – during an attack motivated by his hatred for black people at a Top Market supermarket in Buffalo. The two victims so-far named are retired cop turned store security guard Aaron Salter and shopper Ruth Whitfield, an 86 year-old grandmother.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Mass Shooting"

Former FBI Agent May Be Prosecuted Over Lies About Trump Investigation

The falsehoods that former FBI agent Peter Strzok told about the government’s investigation into former President Donald Trump points to potential legal trouble, according to Kash Patel.

“I think he’s got big trouble when it comes to, from a prosecution perspective,” Patel said on his EpochTV show “Kash’s Corner.”

Patel, a former federal prosecutor who helped uncover the origins of sketchy claims about Trump, reached the conclusion after reviewing newly released notes taken during a 2017 meeting.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inTrump Derangement Syndrome

Democrats Borrow Castro Slogan for Their Outreach to Latino Voters

It’s no secret that the Democrats are in trouble with Latino voters in the run-up to the midterm elections. Polling from last month showed that the president’s approval ratings are at their lowest among Hispanic voters. The Democrats’ border crisis, their leftward shift on cultural issues, and the economy have all prompted Latino voters to break toward the GOP.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inDemocratic Party

How Western dupes help propagate murderous Palestinian lies

The mainstream media generally choose to believe the Palestinians, even though they routinely lie about Israel. These lies are weapons of war, deployed to incite violence and mass murder.

(JNS) A Palestinian Arab journalist with Al Jazeera, Shireen Abu Akleh, was shot dead this week in a firefight between Hamas and the Israelis in the West Bank city of Jenin.

Western news outlets initially reported uncritically the Hamas claim that the Israelis had shot her, eagerly regurgitating Al Jazeera’s assertion that the Israelis had “assassinated” her “in cold blood.”

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inIsraeli - Islam Conflict

Orwell’s Humor

The British writer confronted totalitarianism with determination but also with wit and irony

We don’t easily think of George Orwell as a comic writer. We also don’t think of him principally as a writer of novels, though he wrote six, including Animal Farm and 1984, the books that earned him enduring fame. The novel as a form claims a degree of irresponsibility or disinterestedness inconsistent with our idea of the man who created Room 101.

Orwell’s two comic novels of the 1930s, Keep The Aspidistra Flying (1936) and Coming Up For Air (1939), remind us of how essential the satiric impulse was to his anti-totalitarianism. And though they were published only three years apart, they show his progression, as England prepared for war with Germany, toward the dire seer of 1984.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inGeorge Orwell

On her last day, Jen Psaki lies about Abbott’s baby formula

When news of the baby formula shortage first became widely known, one of the main causes, we were told, was that Abbott, the company that manufactures the formula, had put tainted formula onto the marketplace, killing two infants and forcing the FDA to shut down its plant. And indeed, that’s exactly what Jen Psaki blamed during her final White House press conference before heading to MSNBC. Abbott, however, pushed back hard, with facts supporting something Psaki knew or should have known: a federal investigation has shown it’s innocent of the charge.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inDemocratic Party

Meet the former Nazi rocket scientist who all too accurately saw the future

As well as serving in the SS and a second act as a Nasa engineer, Wernher von Braun wrote a Martian sci-fi novel with a prescient twist…

I recently read (and greatly enjoyed) V2, Robert Harris’s absorbing second world war thriller about British attempts to locate and destroy the base in the Netherlands from which Hitler’s “Retaliation Weapon 2” – those devastating rocket-powered bombs aimed at London – were launched. Harris is famous for the meticulous research that underpins his plots and V2 is no exception. For me, a particularly interesting aspect of the novel was his portrayal of Wernher von Braun, the German aerospace engineer who was the leading figure in the development of Nazi rocketry and who was snaffled by the US (with a large number of his technical associates) to enjoy a splendid second career as the mastermind of the US space programme.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inOur World

A Woke Richard III Will Truly Prove a Villain

Why wokes want to cancel Shakespeare’s villains.

The outgoing artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company has announced that from now on only disabled actors will be allowed to play Richard III. In a woke world where vice presidents and Supreme Court justices are chosen based on their skin color and gender, to “prove” a hunchbacked villain, you must be a hunchback or at least have something wrong with you.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Peak Woke"

Why are Putin’s propagandists so bad at their jobs?

The Soviet Union had a powerful PR machine; today’s Russia less so

During the Cold War, the Soviets would place defectors from the West under house arrest as soon as they arrived in Russia. The assumption was that, as soon as they realized what a dump the USSR was, they would try to sneak back home. And they were probably right. Still, it’s a credit to the Soviet propaganda machine that they showed up in the first place.

Back then, Russia did a great job of marketing itself. They paid top dollar to seduce high-ranking scientists and intelligence officials, while young radicals lined up to do the Kremlin’s bidding. Their disinformation was second to none.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Ukraine - Russia"

Top oligarch is secretly recorded saying Putin ‘has blood cancer’

Vladimir Putin is ‘very ill with blood cancer’, a Russian oligarch has claimed according to a new report, amid on-going speculation about the strongman’s health.

An audio recording of the oligarch’s comments was obtained by a Western venture capitalist and shared with New Lines magazine, the publication said.

In it, the oligarch – who has close ties to the Kremlin and named only as ‘Yuri’ to protect his identity – claimed a number of the health problems Putin is believed to be suffering from are linked to him having blood cancer.

Putin has no blood.

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inUncategorized

Colby Cosh: Supreme Court follows the science (uh, oh) in ‘automatism’ ruling

For once, the Supreme Court’s Friday payload won’t have us all talking about scary political divisions and intra-justice sniping. The court delivered a 9-0 decision on the fate of Section 33.1 of the Criminal Code, which explicitly eliminated the defence of “automatism” for intoxicated persons who commit unlawful acts of violence. To go over the relevant history in as brisk a fashion as possible…

Share
by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCanada, WTF?