Canadian military can work in Europe, Asia at same time: defence minister

OTTAWA – Defence Minister Anita Anand pushed back on Friday against suggestions that growing Canada’s military’s footprint in Asia will come at a cost to the country’s long-standing commitments to Europe, where NATO allies are expecting to see more Canadian troops.

The issue emerged after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced at an international summit in Bangkok that the government’s new Indo-Pacific strategy will include “increased defence investments” to ensure peace and stability in the region.

While the prime minister did not offer further details, the statement followed the government’s decision in the summer to send two Royal Canadian Navy frigates to the Asia-Pacific region at the same time, as a sign of Canada’s increased engagement.

What colour is the sky in Anand’s world? No ships, no planes, no personnel. Sounds right.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCanada, WTF?

Russia’s Elite Know Putin ‘Lost The Real War’: Report

Some of Vladimir Putin’s closest confidants are being blunt about what the retreat from Kherson means for them and the war with Ukraine moving forward.

Elites are coming to grips with the Russian military’s withdrawal earlier this month, the Russian independent news outlet Meduza reported. Sources close to the presidential administration (AP) and the Russian Federation called recent events “very painful.”

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

Two Canadian men charged with shooting animals at safari park

Two Canadian men have been charged with entering a safari park in Quebec and shooting three wild boar and an elk, brazen killings that have left staff at the family-themed park in shock.

Police say Mathieu Godard and Jeremiah Mathias-Polson broke through a barrier at Parc Omega on the evening of 10 November.

A security guard on duty at the time noticed a vehicle had illegally entered the park and alerted police. Moments later he heard gunshots.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inWTF?

Tories Want to Know If Alleged Chinese Funding to Candidates Was Reported to Elections Canada

Conservative MPs asked during question period in the House of Commons Friday if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau informed Elections Canada after he was briefed by intelligence officers in January that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) covertly funded 11 candidates in the 2019 federal election.

“The prime minister had a choice: He could report this illegal activity to Elections Canada so that they could investigate or he could cover it up. What choice did the prime minister make?” asked Conservative MP Michael Cooper on Nov. 18.

Trudeau is continuing his trip to Southeast Asia and wasn’t in the House to respond, nor was Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino, but his parliamentary secretary Pam Damoff said the alleged Chinese funding of candidates “never ever compromised” Canada’s election process.

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

FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried Cashed Out $300 Million During Funding Spree

When FTX raised $420 million from an array of big-name investors in October last year, the cryptocurrency exchange said the money would help grow the business, improve user experience and allow it to engage more with regulators.

Left unmentioned was that nearly three-quarters of the money, $300 million, went instead to FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who sold some of his personal stake in the company, according to FTX financial records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and people familiar with the transaction.

Mr. Bankman-Fried’s cashout was large by startup-world standards, where such sales historically were taboo because they allow founders to reap profits before investors. Mr. Bankman-Fried told investors at the time it was a partial reimbursement of money he spent to buy out rival Binance’s stake in FTX a few months earlier, according to some of the people familiar with the transaction.

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

Hawaiians guilty of hate crime in beating of white man

Hateful Hawaiian

Two Native Hawaiian men have been found guilty of a hate crime for the 2014 vicious beating of a white man in a remote Maui village.

Prosecutors alleged at trial this month that Kaulana Alo-Kaonohi and Levi Aki Jr. were motivated by Christopher Kunzelman’s race when they punched and kicked him and beat him with a shovel in Kahakuloa village, where he had purchased a fixer-upper.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inhate crimes

A gender imbalance emerges among trans teens seeking treatment

Adolescents assigned female at birth account for a significant majority of minors receiving gender-affirming care, including top surgery, fueling debate about the influence of peer groups and social media.

Ayear after moving to Bridge City, Texas, 8-year-old Samuel Kulovitz thought his life couldn’t get any worse. He had made no friends in the swampy oil refinery town and spent most of his time in his family’s mobile home. He missed Florida and playing on the beach there with other children.

But life did get worse. He hit puberty. For Kulovitz, who was assigned female at birth, “growing into being a young woman horrified me,” he said. “I kept crying and crying, and I didn’t know why I didn’t like it.”

Then, at age 11, Kulovitz started venturing onto social media. There, he came across a cosplayer on Tumblr who said he realized he was a transgender boy from the euphoria he felt while dressed as the hero of an online comic. Kulovitz was transfixed. “I kept asking myself, ‘Why do you want to look like him?’” he told Reuters. In the online community where Kulovitz spent more and more time, he adopted the pronouns “he” and “him,” and he liked it.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"They really do want your children", Big Tranny

Populism is bigger than Trump

America’s populist revolt must free itself from the mire of Trumpism.

It’s been more than seven years since Donald Trump first announced his candidacy for US president. Remember him waving, as he glided down that big gold escalator in Trump Tower? The prospect of a Trump presidency was essentially a joke back then. Among the journalists present, many of them were new on the job, given the assignment as a bit of a laugh. ‘I was thinking this will be something goofy and funny to cover’, one reporter who was there told Politico in 2019, in a piece looking back on that fateful day. Fast forward to 2022 and Trump has just launched his bid for re-election, following his ousting by Democrat Joe Biden at the 2020 election, to a crowd of adoring fans and hangers-on at his Florida resort.

I love Trump but DeSantis may be the stronger candidate. But never count The Donald out.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inPresident Trump

The (Latest) Moderate Gun Group

A report from a new group, 97Percent, seeks common ground on gun-control legislation.

The idea of a centrist version of the National Rifle Association—a group for gun owners that would be open to at least some gun-control legislation—is not new. It’s also not been particularly successful. Have you heard of the Independent Firearm Owners Association? Did you know Gabby Giffords’s gun-control group has a Gun Owners for Safety spinoff?

The latest iteration of this concept is 97Percent, which seeks common ground between gun owners and the rest of the country. It doesn’t purport to be a grassroots organization, but it uses polls and focus groups to guide its policy recommendations, giving special attention to gun restrictions that even gun owners support.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inGun Control, Gun Rights

Former Russian mercenary: the truth about the Wagner Group

In 2015, Marat Gabidullin, a Russian airborne forces veteran and former bodyguard, joined the Wagner Group. The private military company (PMC), infamous for their ruthless military tactics and elite soldiers, is funded by oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin. It first emerged in the Donbas region of Ukraine, stirring up separatist action after the Maidan Revolution of 2014.

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

Two women tied up and shamed by China Covid security for not wearing masks to collect a takeaway

Two women were tied up and left in the street after they reportedly picked up a takeaway meal without wearing masks, in a humiliating abuse of power by officials enforcing China’s strict Covid rules.

A video showed the two visibly distressed women with their hands tied at a checkpoint near the entrance to a residential compound in the southern city of Guangzhou on Thursday.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"China - Communist Slave State", "China eats weird animals disease"

Elon Musk Restores Babylon Bee to Twitter, Promises to Shadowban Wrongthink

Today Elon Musk announced that Twitter’s new policy is “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach,” then explaining that the platform would be using the same shadowbanning system that has unfairly affected conservatives and has been criticized for years. Musk also announced that the Babylon Bee, Jordan Peterson, and Kathy Griffin had been restored to the platform, but that the “Trump decision has not yet been made.”

Business as usual. Never think an oligarch is your friend.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inTwitter, Twitter is Evil

White supremacist mass-murderer ‘agrees to plead guilty’ to state charges six months after killing 10 black people at Buffalo supermarket

The white supremacist who killed 10 people in a racist mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket plans to plead guilty to all of the state charges against him, according to lawyers representing families of the victims.

Payton Gendron, 19, is scheduled to appear in court Monday, according to court records. His lawyers didn’t respond to phone messages or emails Thursday and prosecutors declined to comment on the nature of the court appearance.

John Elmore, an attorney for the families of two of the 10 Black people who were killed in the shooting, said Gendron´s lawyers disclosed in recent weeks that he planned to plead guilty to all of the counts in the state indictment and waive his right to appeal.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Mass Shooting"

The college mass murder being all but ignored

The UVA shooting is making a lot of headlines right about now. The shooting already has its own Wikipedia page and is a major topic of discussion in political circles. Some are calling for gun control and other legislative efforts to try and prevent this from happening again.

I get it.

But it’s always funny to me how mass murder is apparently only bad because of the gun.

Only the Post is giving the Idaho murders much coverage.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCrime

Time for Ukraine to talk to Russia? ‘Nuts!’

‘Ukrainians do not want any negotiations,’ Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says. This time, he’s right.

LVIV, Ukraine — “One thing is for sure: the Ukrainians do not want any negotiations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Thursday in Moscow.

And never has he uttered a truer word.

They don’t.

No one wants to sit down with foes who bomb their homes indiscriminately and target their energy infrastructure, plunging households into darkness and forcing surgeons in hospitals to perform operations by torchlight.

Did Zelensky Try to Dupe the World Into WW3? It Sure Looks Like It…

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