Rebuilding Ukraine will need new Marshall Plan, says Germany

Germany has called for a “new Marshall Plan” to rebuild Ukraine even as Russian forces continue to bombard a blacked-out Kyiv with cruise missiles and Iranian-made drones.

Tomorrow Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, hosts a meeting of international aid organisations and experts on the “recovery, reconstruction and modernisation of Ukraine”.

The Ukrainian government has complained that the European Union has so far paid up “zero” in financial aid that was already promised.

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

The President Slowly Deteriorates Before Our Eyes

Please stop telling me that this man, who turns 80 next month, is fine, that he’s sharp as a tack, that he’s not showing signs of old age in his ability to think and speak, and that he’s got so much energy, not even press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre can keep up with him. The president is old, and he’s tired no matter how little he travels and how light his schedule, and he struggles to get through mundane interviews and brief question-and-answer sessions with reporters.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"President Dementia AKA Joe Biden"

Continental Breakfast (Open Thread)

Hurrahing in Harvest via Osumashi

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?

I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And eyes, heart, what looks, what lips yet give you a
Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?

And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
Majestic – as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet! –
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.

To go from the Hopkinsy sublime to the pop culture whatever, All The Leaves Are Brown:

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by Black Mamba••0•Posted inContinental Breakfast

Disposable Humans

“Assisted suicide” continues to prosper.

Back in 2014 I wrote here about a healthy two-year-old giraffe named Marius, who, amid much controversy, was euthanized by the Copenhagen Zoo to make room for “a genetically more valuable giraffe,” as the zoo’s scientific director rather indelicately put it. An international zoo official supported his decision, saying that critics (most of them, apparently, American) should think less about Marius and more about “the bigger picture.” As I commented at the time, these two zoo folk weren’t – aren’t – alone; they belong to a contemporary breed of people, particularly thick on the ground in northern Europe, who think this way not just about animals but, yes, about human beings.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inMAiD Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

Even the hostesses at ‘The View’ are fed up with leftist protesters

I don’t know whether Ted Cruz was foolish or brave to appear on The View, that redoubt of crazy, shrill, and almost invariably uninformed leftist women (along with a changing cast of token RINO women). For this appearance, though, the hostesses were willing to give him a chance to speak; it was some in the audience that sought to silence the discussion and abuse him—but, to their credit, the ladies on stage weren’t amused and turned on their audience.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inBatshit Crazy Eco-Luddites

Alamein 1942, the turn of the tide

EIGHTY years ago tonight, the silent darkness of the Egyptian desert erupted in flame and hellish noise as the Second Battle of El Alamein began.

A four-hour artillery and aerial bombardment starting at 9.40pm opened the massive assault by the Eighth Army against their German and Italian foes.

Although the bulk of the troops going forward were British, their comrades in arms included divisions from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India, as well as soldiers from Greece, Poland and the Free French.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inWW II, WW II History

Russia is planning major battle in Kherson despite creating ‘illusion of withdrawal’

Ukraine’s military spy chief has said that invading forces are intent on drawing the local army into urban combat in the city

Russia’s army has not abandoned Kherson city and is instead reinforcing it ahead of a major battle, Ukraine’s military spy chief has said.

Major-General Kyrylo Budanov told the Ukrainska Pravda newspaper that Russian forces wanted to draw Ukraine’s army into urban combat in the south Ukrainian city.

“They are not leaving right now. They are preparing to defend,” he said. “They are creating the illusion that all is lost. Yet at the same time, they are moving new military units in.”

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

Most children who think they’re transgender are just going through a ‘phase’, says NHS

Most children who believe that they are transgender are just going through a “phase”, the NHS has said, as it warns that doctors should not encourage them to change their names and pronouns.

NHS England has announced plans for tightening controls on the treatment of under 18s questioning their gender, including a ban on prescribing puberty blockers outside of strict clinical trials.

This is a good news, sanity is returning.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inBig Tranny

Climate protesters smear cake on King’s waxwork model at Madame Tussauds

Environmental activists have thrown chocolate cake on the face of the King’s waxwork at Madame Tussauds in central London.

Eilidh McFadden, 20, and Tom Johnson, 29, are being investigated on suspicion of criminal damage after they stepped over the barrier and appeared to smear cake on the model, which is valued at £220,000. It can take artists four months to create a Madame Tussauds figure.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Woke Royals", Batshit Crazy Eco-Luddites

Premier Doug Ford’s government set to challenge his summons to appear at Emergencies Act inquiry

… “It was our hope that Premier Ford and Minister Jones would agree to appear before the Commission voluntarily,” the letter reads.

“However, given that the repeated invitations were all declined, the Commission has issued summons this day to Premier Ford and Minister Jones.”

The commission has the legal authority to call witnesses to testify before the inquiry. A spokesperson for the Ontario attorney general’s office said the government will be challenging the summons, arguing that Jones and the premier are covered by parliamentary privilege.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Criminalizing Dissent"

Ottawa police made enforcement promises during Freedom Convoy it could never keep: acting chief

OTTAWA – From blocking gas supplies to protesters to closing interprovincial bridges, former Ottawa Police Service (OPS) chief Peter Sloly kept making “very damaging” promises of enforcement against the Freedom Convoy that the force was never actually able to deliver.

That’s according to acting OPS chief Steve Bell, who succeeded Sloly as head of the force after Sloly resigned in the days before police massively mobilized and cleared out the protests on Feb. 19.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Criminalizing Dissent"