Author: Blazingcatfur

Invading Ukraine Will Not Meet Russia’s Expectations

 

Has the Cold War returned with a vengeance? Some expert commentators seem to think so. Russia’s mobilization of over 100,000 troops near Ukraine’s borders this winter has led the United States and some allied NATO countries to threaten economic and political sanctions, including those specifically against the Kremlin’s leadership. Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and destabilization of eastern Ukraine since then has created uncertainty as to how far President Vladimir Putin might be willing to go, either in the way of scaled-up political pressure backed by military power, or in the worst extreme, an actual large-scale invasion with ambitious objectives, including possible regime change in Kiev. Several prognosticators and some Russian officials also assume that, should Russia decide to initiate a major military operation against Ukraine, the result would be a veritable walkover, with Ukrainian forces unable to offer more than a feeble and temporary resistance against overwhelming Russian combined ground, air, and naval forces.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inRussia, Ukraine

CAIR Doubles Down on ‘Illegal Surveillance’ Charges

The Islamist group has expanded its bogus accusations and is asking the Department of Justice to investigate its critics.

Ever since the Ohio headquarters of the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR) went public in December with accusations that Steven Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) was illegally surveilling the Ohio Muslim community, CAIR has driven the public narrative with the assistance of a gullible and ignorant media.

Like a fox demanding an investigation of the henhouse, CAIR sent a letter to the Department of Justice on January 31, calling for it to “launch an investigation to determine whether Steve Emerson or IPT broke any federal civil rights statutes or criminal laws by targeting the Muslim Community.”

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Islamophobia", Islam, Islam and violence, Islamization of the West, USA

Keeping the Lights On

If the U.S. power grid is taken off line for weeks or months, people will die. Many people.

For most of human history, to attack an enemy required placing yourself in danger as well.

Soldiers met soldiers on the battlefield. Archers were vulnerable to return volleys. Artillery to artillery. Air strikes to flak from ground forces, or to direct dog fights.

As the tech of war advanced, sooner or later one side’s new advantage would end up empowering the other side as well, all the way up to strategic missile nuclear threats and the development of missile defense systems in the latter part of the 20th century.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEMP Attack

The great populist revival

Restrictive Covid measures have stirred another wave of anti-establishment revolt.

When Joe Biden was elected US president, it was supposed to mark the end of the great populist revolt of MAGA-hats and Brexiteers. Normal service, if a little battered, was to be resumed.

Yet a year later, normal service has not resumed. Major world cities are now wracked by protest movements outside the mainstream. And they are often met by repressive police violence.

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

The Decline and Fall of the Hollywoke Empire

A love that should have lasted years — but Hollywood had to wear out its welcome.

It is painful to watch an art form die, especially the most popular one in history. Cinema has enthralled more people, across every stratum of society, than all others combined. In just over one hundred years, works by past masters — Hitchcock, Ford, Hawks, Wilder, Welles — and living ones — Spielberg, Lucas, Coppola, Lynch — continue to attract billions, including folks who can’t tell a da Vinci from a van Gogh. With an appreciative audience still awaiting, Hollywood might have outlasted the Roman Empire. But like Rome, it is rotting from the inside, sacked by leftist hacks who could never have built it. And like a modern Gibbon, media critic Christian Toto picks apart the spoils and spoilers of moviedom in his incisive, indispensable, yet breezy new book, Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inHollywood

How the Left betrayed the Truckers

The convoy is despised by those who should support it

They call it “The Honkening”. Ottawa, Canada’s capital city, is currently being besieged by a novel kind of protest. Honkening is a fairly appropriate name for what’s going on. Thousands of truckers have driven to the capital, and barraged the city with the noise of truck horns creating a cacophony of sound. Elsewhere, on the border between the United States and Canada, truckers, farmers and cowboys have blockaded traffic.

As the protests enter another week, Ottawa’s mayor has declared a state of emergency. Jim Watson described the truckers — ostensibly protesting against Canada’s harsh Covid mandates — as “out of control”. Watson sees anarchy; the truckers fulminate against Covid authoritarianism. But this battle is really about working-class discontent.

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

Israel and America are drifting apart

Our interests have diverged as even the Israeli prime minister recently acknowledged

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has revealed what members of his country’s national security elite have been chatting about behind closed doors for quite a while.

“The United States has been, and will always be our best friend,” the Israeli PM said in a speech delivered before the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) at Tel Aviv University. Then came the big “but”: “Washington has its own set of interests, which we must honestly admit do not always overlap with ours.”

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inIsrael, USA

Truck Trudeau

Hereditary rule is the most risible – and the most loathsome.

In the dead of winter, thousands of Canadians have been streaming into Ottawa, led by a massive convoy of truckers protesting draconian Covid mandates that have harmed their ability to earn a living. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau refused to meet with the protesters and slammed the freedom convoy as “an insult to memory and truth.” Fils Justin thus invites memories of himself and Trudeau père.  

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"China eats weird animals disease", Justin Trudeau - Pissant

Political leaders clash as trucker convoy remains in Ottawa

Political divisions were on display within the governing Liberals and the Conservative opposition Wednesday as downtown Ottawa remained choked by an anti-vaccine mandate protest and two provinces started moving to lift COVID-19 restrictions.

The government faced growing pressure Wednesday to provide a concrete pandemic endgame after a Quebec MP broke ranks and accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of trying to “demonize” people who have legitimate criticisms of the way the pandemic is being managed. He also called for a clear road map detailing how federal pandemic restrictions will be lifted.

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

‘Freedom Convoys’ hit France as protesters waving Canadian flags set off for Paris to demand an end to Covid restrictions

Protesters gathered in southern France on Wednesday for what they say will be a ‘freedom convoy’ that will converge on Paris and Brussels.

The group is demanding an end to COVID-19 restrictions, and is inspired by protesters who have blocked a key Canadian border crossing, prompting a state of emergency being declared in the country’s capital of Ottawa.

About 200 protesters assembled in a parking lot in Nice, on France’s Mediterranean coast, with many displaying Canadian flags in a nod to the truckers in Canada who are protesting their own government’s COVID-19 restrictions.

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

Members of Justin Trudeau’s party turn on him for handling of trucker protest

OTTAWA, ONTARIO — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s handling of the nationwide truckers’ protest against vaccine mandates prompted a lawmaker from his own party to resign late Tuesday after accusing Trudeau of deliberately dividing people.

Liberal Quebec MP Joel Lightbound, widely considered a calm and credible third-term Liberal, said he was speaking for many in his party who believe it’s time to end the bad blood between Trudeau and the truckers. The prime minister, who was in quarantine last week after contracting COVID-19, has said he won’t budge or meet with the truckers. The truckers say they aren’t going anywhere until their demands are met.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"China eats weird animals disease", Justin Trudeau - Pissant

How are Gulf countries coming to terms with their history of slavery?

Modern slavery is still widespread in the Arab states of the Gulf region, where millions of migrant workers are forced to work under grueling conditions with little or no pay.

The“kafala” system, for example, a practice still common across much of the region’s countries, allows employers to hire unskilled workers from places like Africa and South Asia. In return, workers give up their passports and the possibility to leave the country or change jobs without permission from their employers.

But the region’s record of benefiting from forced labor isn’t a recent development. Traditional slavery, where people were kidnapped and sold as slaves far from home, was still legal and practiced in large parts of the Gulf region as late as the 1970s. 

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Islamophobia", Islam, Islam and slavery, Islam and violence

Corbella: A very good day for freedom from pandemic restrictions and division

“… He started off by condemning “the kind of hideous acts and symbols that we’ve seen on display by some demonstrators. Nazi flags and Confederate flags have no place in Canada.”

But then he pointed out that many of the protesters were concerned grandmothers, Sikh and Indigenous and Black people — not white supremacists, racists and misogynists as Trudeau has labelled them.

“I have enough respect for my fellow Canadians not to engage in these easy and absurd labels,” he said.”

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

Violent clashes over hijab ban in southern India force schools to close

The Indian state of Karnataka has shut its schools for three days after the regional government backed schools imposing a ban on hijabs, leading to widespread protests and violence.

The issue began in January, when six female Muslim students staged a weeks-long protest after they were told to either remove their headscarves or stop attending class at a government college in the district of Udupi.

Last week, other colleges in the state began to enforce bans after some Hindu students, backed by rightwing Hindu groups, protested that if hijabs were allowed in classrooms, they should be allowed to wear saffron shawls. Saffron is the colour that has become commonly associated with Hindu nationalism.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Islamophobia", India, Islam, Islam and violence