Sam Bankman-Fried Calls for Shorter Prison Sentence, Citing Autism

Sam Bankman-Fried’s attorneys suggested a sentence of five to six years in prison, sharply lower than the roughly 100 years that he faces for stealing billions of dollars from FTX customers.

Lawyers for Bankman-Fried argued for 63 to 78 months in jail, citing medical conditions, including autism, and his intentions to better the world with his now-fallen crypto exchange.

A New York jury found Bankman-Fried guilty on all seven counts he faced last year. Prosecutors called the case one of the biggest financial frauds in U.S. history. Bankman-Fried’s sentencing is scheduled for March 28.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Digital Currency", Crime

The terror of the right

The Oct. 7 atrocities produced a profound sense of disorientation for progressives because the Palestinian Arabs whose cause they had promoted as the acme of conscience and enlightenment turned out to be savages.

There’s a fixed belief in progressive circles that if only Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, were to be removed from office, there would be at least a sporting chance of peace in the Middle East.

On Monday night, in an appearance on an NBC show, U.S. President Joe Biden said that Israel must make peace with the Palestinian Arabs to survive. He warned that Israel’s “incredibly conservative government,” which includes the ultra-nationalist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and others, was “going to lose support from around the world. And that is not in Israel’s interest.”

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Oct 7 2023"

Christians in the Crosshairs

The Left pretends to want to save Christians from themselves.

The left hates Christians, even the liberal, nonjudgmental ones in nondenominational megachurches with pastors in skinny jeans. But because this is an election year and their presumed candidate and his vice-presidential backup option are such pathetically weak choices, the panicked left cannot afford to alienate all those Christian deplorables and drive them toward the Republican candidate. So their strategy, as always, is to divide and conquer. Thus, the left is ramping up hysteria about a segment of the Christian population they are painting as a clear and present danger to “democracy” (i.e., Democrat hegemony): Christian nationalists.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inChristian "progressives", Christian Persecution, Christianity, Christianity and the left

Islamist denialism has reached crisis levels

Why can’t they say the i-word? Last week, when House of Commons speaker Lindsay Hoyle spoke about the ‘frightening’ death threats against MPs that led him to rip up the parliamentary rule book, he could not bring himself to say who was making them. This week, UK prime minister Rishi Sunak warned of ‘mob rule replacing democratic rule’, as ‘increasingly and intimidatory behaviour’ prevents ‘elected representatives from doing their job’. He gestured to the protests over Gaza, but he did not say anything too specific about the makeup of these mobs.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Islamophobia", "Oct 7 2023", Islam, Islam and violence, Islamization of the West

Demographic Collapse and Hungarian Family Policy, Part I

In 1992, P. D. James published Children of Men. The novel is set in 2021 in the United Kingdom. James’ world is one in which no children have been born since 1995. Male fertility has since been zero and no woman has been able to have a baby. James’s dystopia is one of economic, societal, and political collapse, driven by the lack of children.

Our own world is not teetering on the brink of this scenario. However, birth rates are plummeting across the globe, especially in OECD countries. Conservative estimates put the global population peak at around 2060, followed by a decline into the twenty-second century. Many nations are already in the midst of a demographic collapse, with modernized Asian economies leading the way. Japan’s fertility rate in 2020 was 1.34, whilst South Korea’s was an appalling 0.78 as of 2022. This rate is appalling because the minimum replacement fertility rate is 2.1. For a population to sustain itself, women need to, on average, bear 2.1 or more children. This low-fertility scenario might sound attractive if your environmental policy boat is floated by the idea of fewer human beings. However, James’ dystopia ought to make us think twice about the virtues of population collapse.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inDemography

They fell for the pro-Bin Laden 9/11 propaganda… now they glorify the deranged airman Aaron Bushnell who burned himself to death. Is there no end to the gullibility of the purple-haired leftist Gen-Zers who will inherit America?

US airman Aaron Bushnell, a man so clearly deranged and mentally unwell, burnt himself to death this weekend outside the Israeli embassy in DC in an apparent ‘protest’ against the war in Gaza.

Terrifying footage – that Bushnell livestreamed – shows him dousing his Air Force uniform in lighter fluid before igniting himself and screaming ‘Free Palestine’ as his flesh literally melts away.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Oct 7 2023", WTF?

Drugs 1 – Oregon 0

“Fuck no, I wouldn’t vote for it again,” says a previous proponent of Measure 110, the 2020 law that decriminalized drugs and which the Oregon legislature reeled back this week. How did we get here?

When I moved to Portland in 2004, the junkies in downtown’s Pearl District, romanticized in Gus Van Sant’s 1989 Drugstore Cowboy, had been replaced by farm-to-table restaurants and a flagship REI store. Portland was on the up, a media darling poised to become the next great American city.

Then came the record scratch that was 2020.

Via Hotair

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Progressive Paradise"

Surrey schools pull To Kill a Mockingbird and other books from recommended reading curriculum

Surrey public school educators have pulled four classic books from the recommended reading curriculum over concerns about racist content.

The Surrey school district quietly decided to remove Harper Lee’s 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill A Mockingbird, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, John Ball’s In the Heat of the Night, and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck from the list of books recommended for students Grade 10 and older.

… “We did a comprehensive review of these resources that determined that the merits of these novels do not outweigh the potential trauma and harm they may cause to some students,” she said.

They’re not “banned” but a teacher must have permission to use them in the classroom.

I was reading about WW I, WW II and the Holocaust in elementary school. Are kids that fragile today?

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Peak Woke", WTF?

Douglas Todd: Population growth squeezing Canada’s young adults like never before

Wondering why rents in Canada are breaking records?

The Bank of Montreal’s chief economist, Douglas Porter, says there is “zero mystery.”

The population of people 20-to-29-years-old in Canada has suddenly shot up 6.2 per cent in a year. That’s nearly double Canada’s recent overall population jump, which is also breaking records.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Mass Immigration - Follow the money", Canada's Corporate Welfare Class, Canada's Corrupt Liberal Government

Under the right conditions, Canada open to sending noncombat troops to Ukraine, Defence Minister Bill Blair says

Putin warns West against sending troops to Ukraine

OTTAWA—Canada is open to sending a limited number of military personnel to train Ukrainian troops within Ukraine, so long as such an operation took place far from the front lines of the war with Russia in a clear, noncombat role, Defence Minister Bill Blair says.

In an interview with the Star, Blair said the idea was discussed earlier this week in Paris, where he attended a security summit alongside Canada’s NATO allies and fellow supporters of Ukraine. After the meeting, French President Emmanuel Macron floated the prospect of sending troops into Ukraine, prompting a series of statements from Western allies — including Canada — who shot down the idea of sending combat soldiers into the war-torn country.

On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned of “tragic” consequences for countries that deploy troops to support Ukraine, including the risk of global nuclear war.

h/t Mauser

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

Poilievre claims Trudeau is covering up lapses at high-security lab, PM accuses rival of spewing conspiracies

Facing questions about how scientists who were intentionally sharing information with China were cleared to work at a Winnipeg lab studying deadly diseases, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau deflected criticism to his chief political rival and accused the Conservative leader of weaponizing national security.

During a Thursday news conference in Thunder Bay, Ont., Trudeau was asked how scientists working on high-security viruses at the Winnipeg-based National Microbiology Lab were able to collaborate with the People’s Republic of China.

After a years-long fight for access, the federal government dumped hundreds of pages of documents about the dismissal of Dr. Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Keding Cheng. The two were marched out of the facility in July 2019 and were stripped of their security clearances. Their dismissals were announced in January 2021.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Canada's China Class", "China - Communist Slave State", Canada, Canada's Corrupt Liberal Government

Car Wars and Other Progressive Fantasies

Some left-leaning cities are hatching plans to make large swaths of their communities off limits to personal vehicles.

SACRAMENTO — Thanks to the wonders of social media, it’s easy to find large communities of car-loathing, bicycle-riding, transit-loving urbanists who view cars as “death machines” and insist they are the cause of every woe known to mankind. Many of these progressive scolds would love to ban them, or, at least, strictly limit their use. For instance, some left-leaning cities are hatching plans to make large swaths of their communities off limits to personal vehicles.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Environmentalists"