Author: Blazingcatfur

A New Refugee Crisis Stirs Uncomfortable Issues for Europe

The war in Ukraine has sent the numbers of refugees seeking shelter in Europe soaring, pushing those from other conflicts to the end of the line.

In Brussels, asylum seekers are forced to shelter in cardboard boxes on the street. Across southern Germany, small-town mayors are opening gyms and auditoriums to house ever more refugees. And in the Netherlands, where a 3-month-old baby died this year, the government is being sued for inhumane camp conditions.

With Russia waging war on its doorstep, Europe has taken in 4.4 million Ukrainians this year, in addition to more than 365,000 first-time asylum applicants, many fleeing threats in Syria and Afghanistan.

That is more even than in 2015, which stood out as the landmark period of migration in contemporary European history, when 1.2 million refugees fleeing wars in the Middle East arrived, the bulk of them in Germany. The country’s former chancellor, Angela Merkel, encouraged their welcome with her now-famous line: “We can do it.”

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

Twitter to start layoffs on Friday – internal email

Nov 3 (Reuters) – Twitter will tell employees by email on Friday about whether they have been laid off, temporarily closing its offices and preventing staff access, following a week of uncertainty about the company’s future under new owner Elon Musk.

The social media company said in an email to staff that it will alert employees by 9 a.m. Pacific time on Friday (12 p.m. EDT/1600 GMT) about staff cuts.

“In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” said the email sent on Thursday, seen by Reuters.

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

Was Alex Jones right about hormone disruptors?

He had a unique explanation for physiological changes in men and women

The age at which a girl first starts her period can reveal a great deal about both her physical health and her social context.

In Western countries, the average age at menarche fell from 16.5 years in 1840 to 13 in the 1990s. Most medical historians believe this to have been the result of improved nutrition and reduced impact of infectious disease in childhood. The richer societies became, the earlier girls began puberty.

But, peculiarly, since the turn of the century that relationship between affluence and age at menarche has gone into reverse. Now it is girls of lower socioeconomic status who get their periods first. 

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inScience, WTF?

Inside Putin’s bunker: how he kept the plan to invade Ukraine secret

By the beginning of 2020 the only men in Putin’s inner circle were his oldest, most trusted and – tragically for Russia and Ukraine – most hawkish and paranoid allies. The invasion of 2022 was, in the minds of the Soviet-era fantasists who planned and pushed it, first and foremost a pre-emptive strike to save Russia from a looming strategic threat from the West.

Ukraine was merely the battlefield where the two former superpowers’ interests came into direct confrontation – the location for what Putin’s closest circle imagined was a millennial battle between the two sides. “Ukraine does not exist,” Viktor Zolotov, Putin’s former bodyguard who now heads the powerful Russian National Guard, told Alexei Venediktov, the editor-in-chief of the Echo Moskvy radio station. “It is the border of America and Russia.”

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

‘Needless’ deaths of 30,000 heart patients in England since Covid

More than 30,000 heart patients in England have died needlessly since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, amid continuing ambulance delays, inaccessible care and soaring waiting lists, a report says.

The British Heart Foundation (BHF) said significant and widespread disruption to heart care services was still driving a surge in excess deaths.

Its analysis of official data reveals that there have been, on average, more than 230 extra deaths a week over and above what would be expected for heart disease since the start of the pandemic. Since the arrival of Covid there have been just over 30,000 excess deaths linked to heart disease.

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

New York Times Admits No Solution To “Climate Change” Unless China Reduces Coal Consumption

China Is Burning More Coal, a Growing Climate Challenge

China is poised to take advantage of the global urgency to tackle climate change. It is the world’s dominant manufacturer and user of solar panels and wind turbines. It leads the world in producing energy from hydroelectric dams and is building more nuclear power plants than any other country.

But China also burns more coal than the rest of the world combined and has accelerated mining and the construction of coal-fired power plants, driving up the country’s emissions of energy-related greenhouse gases nearly 6 percent last year, the fastest pace in a decade. And China’s addiction to coal is likely to endure for years, even decades.

… “There is no solution to climate change without reducing China’s coal combustion,” said David Sandalow, a senior energy official in the Obama and Clinton administrations.

Screw China and Screw Trudeau for forcing a reduced standard of living on Canadians with a green-scam program that will have zero positive effect.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inGreen-Scam

Ottawa police thought the ‘Freedom Convoy’ would end quickly — but intelligence reports reveal other police agencies were increasingly alarmed

OTTAWA— The federal government produced daily intelligence briefings by RCMP and senior public servants on the so-called “Freedom Convoy’s” growing ranks and fundraising — reports that flagged rising concerns as copycat protests sprang up across the country and around the globe, and the Ottawa police appeared powerless to contain it.

Unlike the Ottawa police — whose chief and some subordinates predicted the protest might only be a weekend-long event — federal officials flagged from the get-go that its likely duration was unknown, and that the RCMP had concerns about possible “lone actors” or ideologically motivated individuals who might join in.

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

‘A joke that went out of control’: crowdfunding weapons for Ukraine’s war

In just nine hours, the Prytula Foundation raised $5.5m from private donors to buy 50 FV103 Spartans used by the British Army

By Christmas, 50 hardly used FV103 Spartan armoured personnel carriers (APCs), until recently the property of the British army, and currently in warehouses in secret locations across the UK, will arrive on the frontline in Ukraine’s war with Russia in time for the toughest winter conditions.

The transfer, the largest of such APCs to Ukraine, is not due to British munificence nor to procurement by the Ukrainian ministry of defence.

It is instead just the latest example of the extraordinary scale and indeed speed of the crowdfunding campaigns that have been powering the Ukrainian military since the early days of the war.

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

Can the US live in Xi Jinping’s world?

Ten days ago Xi Jinping walked out in front of the world’s media – depleted somewhat by his government’s growing intolerance of foreign reporters – as the most powerful Chinese leader in decades.

A tradition that limited his recent predecessors to two terms had been broken. And third term in hand, he had cemented his power over China, perhaps indefinitely.

But even as Mr Xi’s grip tightens at home, on the international stage the situation has rarely looked more unsettled.

The more the Communist Party leader has reinforced China’s authoritarian model, the more he has challenged a defining assumption of our age of globalisation – as China got richer, it would become freer.

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

Manipulated By Reality

New Yorkers angry about crime aren’t being misled by dodgy data—they are reacting to the evidence of their own eyes.

Governor Kathy Hochul appeared on television over the weekend, informing New Yorkers worried about rising crime and eroding public safety that they are all victims of a “conspiracy,” engineered by “master manipulators” bent on deceiving them. Calling her opponent Lee Zeldin and the Republican Party “data deniers,” the governor explained that “Democratic states” like New York are the “safer places” in America. She cited this year’s decline in Gotham’s murder rate as proof that she is keeping New Yorkers safe, though she neglected to mention the sharp rise in total crime across the city, including a 30 percent rise in all “index” crimes.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCrime

A Surprising Threat to the US Power Grid Could Plunge the Country Into Darkness

The importance of a strong power grid cannot be emphasized enough. Often, when a grid fails, the results are terrifying. Of all the major power grids in the world, the United States’ is one of the more vulnerable to attack.

State-sponsored hackers from the likes of Iran, Russia, and, unsurprisingly, China pose a real threat to the United States’ electrical transmission lines. However, there’s another (far less obvious) threat to the grid: electric vehicles (EVs).

Yes, you read that right.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inGreen-Scam

Germany Selling Critical Infrastructure to China

Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz has apparently learned nothing from Germany’s fatal mistake of becoming dependent on Russian gas.

On October 26, Germany’s government decided to let the Chinese state-owned enterprise COSCO Shipping Ports, which has links to China’s People’s Liberation Army, buy a stake in the Port of Hamburg. COSCO is the world’s third-largest container carrier measured by capacity, and the fifth-largest port terminal operator in terms of the amount of cargo and vessels that it handles, according to German think-tank Merics. The Port of Hamburg is Germany’s largest port and the second-largest port in Europe, making it part of Europe’s most critical infrastructure.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"China - Communist Slave State", Germany, Germany: Not Bombed Enough?

Google Buries Big Tech Critics’ Campaign Websites Ahead of Midterms

Google is burying the campaign websites of its fiercest critics on Capitol Hill.

Shortly after MRC Free Speech America released its study showing that Google suppressed Senate Republicans’ campaign websites in its search results, it now appears that Google is hitting members of both the House and Senate who have been critical of Google’s tactics. This is happening just as the country is gearing up to vote during the midterm elections on Nov. 8.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inGoogle, Google is Evil

Freeland introduces mini-budget that promises support for low-income workers, students

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland tabled her fall economic statement Thursday — a roadmap of what’s to come from the federal government as the economy stands on the brink of a recession.

While Freeland has promised fiscal prudence in this era of sky-high inflation, the budget proposes billions of dollars in new spending to help some of the people hit hardest by rising prices — including students and low-income workers — and to launch what she called “a real, robust industrial policy” to position Canada for economic growth.

The upshot: $30.6 billion in new spending over the next six years.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCanada's Corrupt Liberal Government