Author: Blazingcatfur

Russia compares sanctions to war as UK says Putin preparing to send 1,000 mercenaries to Ukraine

Vladimir Putin’s main spokesman has said that sanctions on trade and oligarchs were akin to “total war” against Russia, and that the west has pushed the Kremlin “into the corner” with Nato expansion, as officials prepare for the resumption of peace talks with Ukraine on Tuesday.

Dmitry Peskov said in an interview on American television that the punitive sanctions levelled against Russia were “quite unfriendly” and made the country feel as it were at war with the US and its western allies.

The interview came amid more claims from UK and Ukrainian military intelligence that Russia’s war effort is in serious trouble.

As the Russian and Ukrainian sides were due to meet in Turkey for a new round of negotiations, the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) said Russia was expected to bolster its flagging war effort by sending more than 1,000 mercenaries from the private Wagner military group into eastern Ukraine as the Kremlin continues to suffer heavy losses.

UK seizes first superyacht in British waters

The UK has seized its first superyacht in British waters as part of sanctions against Russia.

The £38m yacht, named Phi, is owned by an unnamed Russian businessman, but the government said its ownership is “deliberately well hidden”.

Transport secretary Grant Shapps said the move was “a clear and stark warning to Putin and his cronies”.

The UK has already introduced a raft of sanctions against Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.

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

Oscars: Ugly gowns, old faces, and bad behavior

Remember Cary Grant? Spencer Tracy? Fred Astaire? Clark Gable? Gene Tierney? Grace Kelly? Olivia de Havilland? Audrey Hepburn?

Hollywood and its Academy Awards ceremonies were once was amazingly elegant.

Now, with the Oscars showing us Will Smith walking up on stage to punch announcer Chris Rock for making fun of his wife’s bald head, they’ve become kind of wretched. The Oscars this year showed just how far the movie idols and their Hollywood juggernaut have fallen.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inHollywood

Taliban bars government employees without beards from work

KABUL, March 28 (Reuters) – Afghanistan’s Taliban has instructed all government employees to wear a beard and adhere to a dress code or risk being fired, three sources told Reuters, the latest of several new restrictions imposed by the hardline Islamist administration.

The sources said representatives from the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice were patrolling the entrances to government offices on Monday to check that employees were in compliance with the new rules.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Islamophobia"

A Civilizational War?

Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin may or may not have Vladimir Putin’s ear, but his philosophy of Eurasianism is worth understanding.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is said to have been motivated by various strategic calculations: fear of NATO expansion, concern over Ukraine’s westward drift, and Moscow’s confidence in its own oil heft and economic reserves. But this analysis risks overlooking the civilizational aspect of Vladimir Putin’s fateful decision. For the current conflict involves not only Ukraine but also a broader showdown between East and West. Instead of the Soviet Union, the U.S. is facing a Eurasian continent, with Russia as its soul. In geographic space, Eurasia covers the former Soviet empire, excluding the Baltic states, as well as Mongolia and parts of northwest China. And within this territory resides a great civilization—a Russian civilization—that represents the one true alternative to the decadent, globalized West.

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

Why China Won’t Break With Russia Over Ukraine

The Chinese authorities are confronting serious problems over Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. On the one hand, the closeness of relations between Beijing and Moscow is at its highest level in years. As far as Beijing is concerned, Russia’s importance stems from its role as a supplier of raw materials and its value as a geopolitical ally in the confrontational relationship with the United States thrust upon China during Donald Trump’s presidency. Foreign Minister Wang Yi expressed the situation in the famous formula in January 2021, when he stated that Sino-Russian strategic cooperation had no limit, no forbidden zones, and no ceiling. A year later, China and Russia reinforced this political line in a joint statement adopted during a visit by President Vladimir Putin to China, in which, for the first time, Beijing associated itself clearly with Russia’s demands to halt the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) expansion, as well as calling on the organization, jointly with Moscow, “to abandon its ideologized cold war approaches, to respect the sovereignty, security and interests of other countries, the diversity of their civilizational, cultural and historical backgrounds, and to exercise a fair and objective attitude towards the peaceful development of other States.”

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"China - Communist Slave State", "Ukraine - Russia"

Russia is dying out – Putin is terrified by his nation’s demographic crisis

“One hundred and forty-six million [people] for such a vast territory is insufficient,” said Vladimir Putin at the end of last year. Russians haven’t been having enough children to replace themselves since the early Sixties. Birth rates are also stagnant in the West, but in Russia the problem is compounded by excess deaths: Russians die almost a decade earlier than Brits. Their President is clearly worried that he’s running out of subjects.

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

The tragic folly of lockdown

Data on excess deaths show that countries that locked down hard fared no better than those that didn’t.

Throughout the pandemic, the media have eagerly compared Covid statistics between different countries. But such comparisons are often deceptive.

Take, for example, the use of Covid case counts. These depend not only on the number of people infected but also on the amount of testing performed. While useful for evaluating whether cases are increasing or decreasing within a particular country, they are deceptive when comparing countries. If we truly wanted to know, it would be easy, through random seroprevalence surveys that measure the proportion of people with antibodies. But not all governments have been eager to conduct these surveys, while some scientists have even got into trouble for doing them.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"China eats weird animals disease"

Armageddon?

 

In the light of the political standoff and exchange of threats between Russia and the U.S. over the Ukraine quagmire, there is now considerable anxiety that an Armageddon scenario may have become a possibility.

A president who demonstrably suffers from an alarming degree of advancing cognitive derangement does not inspire confidence, to put it mildly, in his ability to manage national affairs, whether domestically or globally. Many regard him as a puppet controlled by his “handlers,” whoever these shadowy figures may be—his secretary of State, his inner circle, his financial backers, or his wife in a bizarre reprise of the Edith Wilson presidency when Woodrow Wilson fell severely ill. But this arrangement does not lessen the peril.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Joe Sleazebag Biden"

Biden contradicts aides and reaffirms his call for Putin’s overthrow

President Biden contradicted his own staff Monday by insisting he did not regret or retract his call from over the weekend for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be removed from power in response to his invasion of Ukraine.

“I’m not walking anything back,” the president told reporters at the White House. “The fact of the matter is I was expressing the moral outrage that I felt.”

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Ukraine - Russia", WTF?

‘Openly Queer’ Is Not A Thing, And Other Thoughts On The Depraved Oscars

Will Smith physically assaulted a man during Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony, yet that was probably the least bizarre thing to happen all night.

What’s truly weird is that Smith, in the presence of our most virtue-signaling elites, wasn’t escorted from the premise in handcuffs. Indeed, after he struck comedian Chris Rock across the face on stage, he returned calmly to his seat, enjoyed the rest of the evening, and even got a round of applause as he accepted an Oscar for “Best Actor.”

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inHollywood