Ten tanks that changed the world

Lord Kitchener thought the tank would never catch on. More than a century later, they’re still a vital weapon on the front line. Mark Urban salutes ten monstrous machines that rewrote the rules of war

When he was invited to a demonstration of a new secret weapon at Hatfield Park, Hertfordshire, in February 1916, the secretary of state for war was distinctly underwhelmed. Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, having watched the prototype tanks chugging along at walking pace, left early, dismissing what he had seen as “a pretty mechanical toy, but without serious military value”.

To its advocates this new machine was an answer to the prayers of those fighting and dying in the trenches. The argument between sceptics and enthusiasts never stopped — indeed it is still going on today, as Ukrainian troops try to gain an advantage over their Russian invaders.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inMilitaria

Trust me: Trump’s revolution is coming to the UK

What I learned from debating at Oxford and Cambridge

When I was growing up, people often said British politics were where America’s would be in five, ten or 20 years. What this meant was that Britain was more to the left of America: more secular, more socially liberal, more environmentalist, more globalized. The assumption was that, over time, the left would always win out, so wherever Britain was now, America would soon be.

I traveled to the United Kingdom in May to debate the students and faculty of Cambridge and Oxford Universities in large part because that old assumption is dead and gone. Donald Trump’s political revolution has destroyed it. Now, Britain is the country trailing behind America. Make no mistake: Trump’s revolution is coming to the UK. But as I learned, just like in America, the students of elite universities may be the last to realize.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inUK

Occam’s Razor Gardening, Cooking & Canning – French Toast

Occam’s Razor Gardening, Cooking & Canning – French Toast

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inA Slice Of Life

Thousands fear for their jobs as major city is forced to break up with ‘best friends’ across Canadian border

Detroit has become one of the hardest hit cities in the fallout of America’s deteriorating relationship with Canada.

The Michigan metropolis on Canada’s border has seen traffic from neighboring Windsor drop and suffering businesses slash jobs.

Business leaders and elected officials are concerned that the White House’s policies are forcing the sister cities in to an unwanted ‘break up.’

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Liberation Day", Canada, USA

Practicing witch ‘thrown off druid training course after member accused her of being transphobic’

Victim witch in custom witch hat

A practising witch has been left horrified after she claims she was thrown off a druid training course after being accused of transphobia when she spoke up about single-sex spaces.

Angela Howard, a second-generation witch whose mother was a high-priestess who ran a coven in the 1980s, turned to the religion hoping to find ‘spiritual healing’ in 2020 from the faith – even training to become a bard, a division focusing on storytelling, poetry and performance.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inWTF?

It’s time for the truth. Here’s the Covid Paper they don’t want you to read

All the evidence on the Wuhan lab leak, properly organised

Although the world has largely moved on from Covid-19, a lot of trust was destroyed including – unfortunately and worryingly – in science itself. I can think of few things worse for progress than for the public to lose faith in science, which is why I’ve made it something of a personal mission to get to the bottom of the origin of Covid-19. We need to rescue science’s mission of seeking the truth at all costs, even when it comes with an uncomfortable lesson about the dangers of irresponsible experiments.

As readers may know, I began by thinking a lab leak was unlikely, even impossible, as the source of the virus that emerged suddenly in Wuhan at the end of 2019. But during the late spring of 2020 I saw evidence that this hypothesis was in fact quite plausible and needed investigating at the very least. I teamed up with the molecular biologist Alina Chan to write Viral, our book about the search for evidence on both sides of that question. I remained unsure what happened at that stage. Then in the autumn of 2021 more startling evidence emerged to support the lab leak. I now think that is by far the most likely explanation.

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

ALBERS: Alberta’s inevitable rise to independence

By any measure of common sense — and I emphasize common, not the boutique intellectualism of think tanks or the jargon-fed corridors of Ottawa — Alberta stands today at the most consequential fork in its history.

One road loops endlessly through subservience and stasis; the other leads toward dignity, prosperity, and self-determination. The real question echoing across the Prairies is not “Why would Alberta leave?” but “Why on earth would it stay?”

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Western Alienation Separation", "Western Independence"

This U.S. fugitive lived in Toronto for 21 years without a passport or bank account

A longtime fugitive wanted for manslaughter in Florida admits it was “a mistake” to flee to Toronto, where he was recently arrested after spending more than 21 years on the run.

In a sworn affidavit obtained by CBC News, Patrick Lutts Jr. publicly outlines for the first time how he hid from U.S. authorities after his involvement in a drunk-driving crash in Orlando, Fla., that killed two teens.

Lutts has no passport, he said, no Canadian bank account and had stayed in the same apartment in Toronto’s Church and Wellesley neighbourhood since 2004.

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

New WA law is ‘brazen’ discrimination, Catholic leaders say in lawsuit

Washington’s Catholic leaders sued state leaders and county prosecutors Thursday, alleging that a controversial new law requiring priests to break the confessional seal to report suspected child abuse is “a brazen act of religious discrimination.”

The new law adds clergy to a list of other professions, such as health care workers and school personnel, who are mandatory reporters of abuse. But the church’s lawsuit pushes back on a provision of the law that does not allow carve-outs for things said during confession, and exposes priests to potential arrest.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inIslam and violence

What White House reportedly said about the future of Mark Carney’s daughter at Harvard

As Harvard University remains the focus of the Trump administration’s ire, the fate of its international students hangs in balance, including Cleo Carney, the daughter of the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

A little over a week ago, the Trump administration cancelled Harvard’s ability to enroll international students, leaving current foreign students to transfer to other colleges or risk losing their visa status.

The Horror!

Globo Homo thrives at elite schools like Harvard all of them well funded by the Likes of Communist China and Qatar.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCanada, USA

What about the “Systemic” commission of crime by the usual suspects?

Judge tosses seized gun over racial profiling of Black driver, cites ‘systemic’ problem inside Peel police

A Peel Regional Police officer engaged in the racial profiling of a Black motorist in an example of a “systemic” problem within the service, a judge has ruled.

The case, which resulted in the unravelling of a firearms prosecution, adds to a list of similar incidents that demonstrate a “systemic and intractable problem” within the police service, Superior Court Justice Renu Mandhane said in a sharply worded ruling that excluded a rifle discovered in an unlawful search of a Jeep driven by a Black man.

Const. Anand Gandhi stopped the Jeep in Brampton on a Sunday afternoon in October 2023 after an automated licence plate reader on his cruiser detected that the owner of the Jeep was facing drug charges in Toronto and was under a licence suspension for medical and administrative reasons.

h/t Mauser

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Black Fatigue", "Identity Politics", "Justice", "Law and Order", "racial justice", "Soft racism of lowered expectations", Crime

The Extreme Tolerance For Black Racism

Piers Morgan, in a February podcast, accused his guest, “trans activist” Blossom Brown, of “race-baiting.” Brown replied, “Black women cannot be racist to white women.” Brown then added this inability to be racist to white women extended to Morgan: “How am I racist to you? I’m Black. I can’t be racist to you.” Brown also accused Morgan of lacking “the intellectual capacity to understand” this position.

Ryan Clark is a black ESPN host. After Donald Trump won reelection, he posted a video in which he said he voted for Kamala Harris, that former President Barack Obama’s administration was “scandal free” and that Obama conducted his presidency with “grace and with elegance and with decency.” As for Trump, Clark said: “The difficult part is I do understand that not everyone that supports him believes in his rhetoric. Not everyone that supports him thinks bigotry is OK …”

Black fatigue is not exclusive to White people.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Black Fatigue"

Revisiting the Worst Prosecutors of 2022

Where are they now?

In 2022, I wrote a rundown of the worst prosecutors in America. Three years later, it’s time to check in—where are they now, and how have public views shifted on them and the George Soros–backed approach of progressive prosecution?

First on the list is Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby. Elected in 2014, Mosby, I noted, “was one of the first prosecutors to campaign on a platform of de-prosecution, decarceration, and denouncing the police—indeed, the entire criminal-justice system—as racist.” In her first year in office, homicides in Baltimore surged past 300. They never fell below that level during her eight-year tenure.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Justice"