Author: Blazingcatfur

China Plays the Iran Card and Calls Washington’s Bluff

China last week signed a $400 billion, 30-year investment deal with Iran. American sanctions against Iran are effectively nullified. China’s state press declared, “As it stands, this deal will totally upend the prevailing geopolitical landscape in the West Asian region that has for so long been subject to US hegemony.” As former Indian diplomat MK Bhadrakumar reports in Asia Times, Chinese state media declare that China will trade with Iran and other Central Asian currencies in its own currency, bypassing the dollar-based world banking system. U.S. leverage against Iran is gone. It was obvious for the past year that China might play the Iran card.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"China - Communist Slave State", Iran, USA

The Appeal of the New Totalitarians

The Appeal of the New Totalitarians

It’s easy to understand and reject the horrors of totalitarianism. It is much less easy to grasp its inexorable logic or its seemingly implacable attractions.

I am not a follower or a fan of baseball. But I understand that it is, or has been, an important national pastime, beloved by many, not least, as Andrew McCarthy observes in a recent column, because it offered its acolytes a respite or oasis from politics, an arena where our differences of opinion could be redeemed or at least temporarily forgotten in the benign if intense partisanship of fandom. 

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Corporate Social Justice Warriors"

Kurds in ‘mountain prison’ cower as Turkey fights PKK with drones in Iraq

It took 10 days to find Muhsin Speri’s body. The 64-year-old had left his town in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan along with friends Hassan Sadiq and Safar Sini on a dry, windy day in December last year to fish and forage for wild honey and mushrooms.

Life in the Amedi region of the Zagros mountains is hard and physical, but the area has been home to Kurdish and Assyrian communities in sync with the rhythms of the mountains for thousands of years. Many locals like to roam and camp for several days at a time, but after Speri’s family failed to reach him by phone for more than a week, a search party was launched.

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

Rochdale grooming ringleader shops in town where he abused children SIX YEARS after he was supposed to be deported

Qari Abdul Rauf – rapes children

A CONVICTED grooming gang ringleader goes shopping in the town where he abused kids — despite being told he was going to be deported six years ago.

Qari Abdul Rauf was warned he would be kicked out of Britain after being jailed for his part in the Rochdale scandal, in which dozens of girls as young as 13 were assaulted or raped.

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

U.S. and Its Allies Must Focus on Access Denial Against China’s Military

Beijing may be deterred if it is clear that moving its naval and air force assets to attack Taiwan puts them at risk of humiliating losses.

If China is going to start a war, they are going to do it on their terms. All of our wonderful stuff won’t get there in time. You need to get your stuff there on Day Zero of the fight,” Adm. James “Sandy” Winnefeld, a former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told me last fall.

China has escalated “gray-zone” attacks against Taiwan in recent months. “Gray-zone” activity advances a state’s objectives outside the realm of accepted diplomacy, but below full military conflict. This can include disinformation campaigns, political or economic coercion, cyberattacks, or using proxies.

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

Cause of death at issue in Chauvin trial as prosecution questions medical examiner’s findings

Cause of death at issue in Chauvin trial as prosecution questions medical examiner’s findings

Prosecutors trying the former Minneapolis police officer charged with murder in George Floyd’s death appeared to distance themselves last week from the medical findings on his cause of death, issued by the only doctor who performed an autopsy.

Special Prosecutor Jerry Blackwell told jurors last Monday that while Hennepin County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Andrew Baker ruled Floyd’s cause of death cardiac arrest, prosecutors would prove he died of asphyxia, or, lack of oxygen, while Chauvin knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes.

“This was … not a fatal heart event,” Blackwell said in his opening statement. “He died one breath at a time over an extended period of time.”

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in#BlackLivesMatter

‘Get out!’: Crowd chants health inspectors out of B.C. restaurant breaking COVID-19 health order

The owner of a Vancouver restaurant is vowing to continue defying a provincial health order banning indoor dining for three weeks, despite being served with an individual order to close.

Vancouver police said a liquor coordinator and provincial health officers attended Corduroy Restaurant on Cornwall Avenue, Saturday and issued a full closure order.

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

Canadians warming to prisoner swap with China, split on balancing budget: Nanos survey

Canadians warming to prisoner swap with China, split on balancing budget: Nanos survey

TORONTO — New polling data from Nanos Research, commissioned by CTV News, reveals Canadians’ thoughts on the upcoming federal budget, carbon pricing and the idea of returning Meng Wanzhou to China in exchange for the freedom of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.

On the latter point, Nanos found that far more Canadians are in favour of the prisoner swap than they were when that idea was floated last June.

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

Woke Battle Brews At PBS: Why Does One White, Male Filmmaker Get All The Support?

Is it time to cancel Ken Burns at PBS? It’s not easy being a white, male, cisgender filmmaker these days over at the taxpayer-funded public television network. Burns has achieved immense success for his documentaries made for PBS and has been generously rewarded for his work there. A group of nearly 140 filmmakers and other professionals is blasting PBS for a lack of diversity behind the scenes. Their complaint says there is just too much Ken Burns.

If I recall correctly Burns was pressured to include the “Black experience” in his WW II documentary. That production was such a dud they should probably ask that those segments be cut. The sound track alone turned me off and I have never been able to watch the whole thing.

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

An Avalanche of Misdirection

An Avalanche of Misdirection

The World Health Organization’s report on Covid-19’s origins dances around the likely timing of the first outbreak.

The World Health Organization released its joint report on the origins of Covid-19 on Tuesday, but historians of science will study it for decades—if for no other reason than the obvious discomfort of its 34-author team. Even before the report’s publication, the origins of the virus were a matter of dispute among current and former political and public health figures. In time, these controversies will be lost to history. What will remain is the truth: the original Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan occurred well before the disease rose to international awareness and lockdowns began—most likely in October 2019.

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

Joe Biden, Hunter’s laptop & media lapdogs

Joe Biden, Hunter’s laptop & media lapdogs

On a corner of my desk, there is a small pile of newspaper clips, notes and documents. They date back to last October and are part of the scandalous information contained on a laptop abandoned by Hunter Biden.

Normally I would have thrown the papers away or stored them by now. But I kept them handy because I knew the day would come when they would be needed again.

Friday was that day.

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

LEVY: Toronto Police stats show crime surged after Roehampton shelter opened

LEVY: Toronto Police stats show crime surged after Roehampton shelter opened

In the three months after the Roehampton hotel shelter opened in July 2020, crime in the surrounding neighbourhood skyrocketed by 30% compared to the summer before, an FOI obtained by the Toronto Sun shows.

The Yonge-Eglinton and Mt. Pleasant East neighbourhoods — the two neighbourhoods most drastically impacted by the hotel shelter — saw increases in all the major crime indicators, except assaults, compared to the summer of 2019.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Homelessness & Affordability Crisis"