Author: Blazingcatfur

America’s great cities are gripped by decline and disorder

Voters have had enough of ‘progressive’ leaders who are presiding over spiralling violence and crime.

For the past decade, America’s urban centres have been increasingly run by ‘progressive’ activists. Yet today, as US cities reel from collapsed economies, rising crime and pervasive corruption, there’s something of a revolt brewing, the success of which may well determine the role and trajectory of our great urban centres.

This emerging conflict is coming to a head next week in Los Angeles, the US’s second-largest city, in the Democratic primaries for LA mayor. Next week’s vote is likely to lead to a head-to-head between moderate billionaire developer Rick Caruso and progressive congressperson Karen Bass, once considered a potential vice-president for Joe Biden. On the same day, ultra-liberal San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin faces a potential recall amid rising crime rates.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Urban Dystopia"

Former New York Times Reporter Denies in New Book That Hugo Chávez Was a Socialist

A new book vividly portrays human beings coping with daily existence in a disintegrating society but offers an incoherent analysis of what went wrong.

The Bolivarian Cable Train was an elevated railroad planned for a poor neighborhood in Caracas, Venezuela. It ended up running for only three-fifths of a mile and connecting to nothing.

By 2012, four years into the project, the government had spent about $440 million on it and the project was only partly finished. But the country’s socialist leader, Hugo Chávez, decided that he wanted to take a ride on live television. The contractors told his handlers the train wasn’t ready yet; the cable, motors, and machinery had not even been installed.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inNew York Times, Venezuela

What if the Ukraine war is never won?

In late March, roughly a month into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an unnamed Nato official told NBC News that the conflict was turning into a meat grinder for both sides. ‘If we’re not in a stalemate, we are rapidly approaching one,’ the Nato official said at the time. ‘The reality is that neither side has a superiority over the other.’

Sure enough, a month and a half later, the Pentagon’s top intelligence official testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that ‘stalemate’ is exactly what is occurring. ‘The Russians aren’t winning, and the Ukrainians aren’t winning, and we’re at a bit of a stalemate here,’ Lieutenant General Scott Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said on May 10.

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

The Uncensored Canadaland Collision

The Mendacity of Jesse Brown, Lies about ‘Year of the Graves’, and Other Misadventures from the Dark Side of the Looking Glass

“… There are two important things to keep in mind here.

The first thing is Year of the Graves wasn’t even about the legacy of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools – about which I harbour no particularly heterodox views. It certainly wasn’t an exercise in “Residential Schools Denialism,” that sinister construction a certain creepy and clownish professor persists in claiming about Year of the Graves.

I’m not going to be nice about this anymore. Anyone who tells you that’s what’s going on in Year of the Graves is – tenured university post or not – a fool, a liar, someone who simply lacks the gene for embarrassment, or one of those well-meaning types who are susceptible to the faddish excesses of the Words Are Violence community.”

Barn burner of a story.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inAboriginal Issues

Hedley’s Jacob Hoggard found guilty of sex assault against woman, acquitted on two other charges

Justin Trudeau catches up with his buddy.

TORONTO – Jacob Hoggard, the frontman for the Canadian band Hedley, has been found guilty of sexually assaulting an Ottawa woman but acquitted of the same charge against a teenage fan.

Hoggard, 37, has also been found not guilty of sexual interference, a charge that relates to the sexual touching of someone under 16, in an incident involving the same fan when she was 15.

The singer, who wore a dark suit, hugged his wife in the courtroom after the verdict was read.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCrime

Men take first and second place in new ‘non-binary’ race – leaving young mother in third

An ‘inclusive’ cycling race that saw male-born trans athletes trounce women competitors has been condemned by critics.

The event on Friday finished with two transgender women in first and second places, with a young mother in third.

Gold in the ThunderCrit race at Herne Hill velodrome in South-East London went to Emily Bridges, a trans cyclist who was barred from a woman’s race in March and who had competed in men’s events only the month before.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inBig Tranny

Big Shots

Modern school shootings are an exceptionally abhorrent phenomenon that we got along just fine without for the first couple of centuries of U.S. history.

So, it’s wholly reasonable to want them gone. It’s not like America was suffering from any lack of the beneficial side effects of school shootings before the man with the brain tumor climbed the U. of Texas clock tower in 1966 and the “I Don’t Like Mondays” girl opened fire at the San Diego elementary school in 1979.

School shootings and other heavily publicized mass killings are an intensely grotesque problem, often engineered by obsessive notoriety-seekers specifically to elicit maximum outrage from you and me. (For example, Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats says cornerstone K–12 shooter Brenda Spencer wrote to him to say “she was glad she’d done it because I’d made her famous….”)

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

What is the ‘dead suspect loophole,’ and how will it affect what we know about Uvalde?

DALLAS — In the days since an 18-year-old gunman barricaded himself inside an elementary school classroom in Uvalde and fatally shot 19 students and two teachers, the police’s narrative of the events leading up to and during the massacre has shifted by the day.

As more shocking details are revealed about police action — and inaction — during the slaying, the Uvalde community has been desperate for answers.

Journalists and lawmakers have called for the release of 911 calls, body-camera footage and other evidence to determine what happened May 24, but Texas open-records laws may prevent the public from ever seeing important evidence.

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

We need the truth’: the campaign to ‘de-Russify’ Odesa

Darth Vader replaces Lenin statue in Odessa, Ukraine

Standing in front of a statue of a gruff-looking Soviet general, Peter Obukhov explained his plan to purge Russian names from the city of Odesa. “The things written here are unacceptable. You can see the word ‘Kremlin’. And there’s Lenin’s face as well,” he said, pointing to an inscription beneath the monument to Rodion Malinovsky.

Obukhov is a deputy in Odesa’s city parliament. He said he did not want to pull down Malinovsky’s statue, a fate that has befallen Lenin sculptures all across Ukraine. The Soviet defence minister was born in Odesa and liberated the city from the Nazis during the second world war. “I would rewrite the sign and get rid of the communist symbols. We need the truth,” Obukhov said.

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

NATO Should NOT Pay Ransom to Turkey; Instead, Should Amend Rules to Expel It

Just when, after years of idling around, NATO appears to be gaining some strategic prominence following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the only Muslim member of the alliance is holding 29 other members as hostage, blocking the most critical move in its history. Surrendering to an Islamist’s well-known oriental bargaining tactics will mean the demise of the alliance.

In a historic move, Sweden and Finland recently submitted their written applications to join NATO but Turkey’s Islamist strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is threatening to use his country’s veto power to block the Nordic nations coming under the Western security umbrella. This is putting NATO’s renewed credibility at stake, presumably to the delight of NATO’s nemesis, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inNATO

Nigeria – Muslims set man ablaze for blasphemous remark, others attack Catholic church murdering dozens & kidnapping a priest & parishioners

Nigeria clash: Abuja mob burns man to death over row with Muslim cleric

Nigerian police say a man who had a row with a Muslim cleric died in the capital, Abuja, after being set ablaze by a mob supporting the cleric.

Ahmad Usman, 30, was in a local vigilante group and police say about 200 people were mobilised against him.

Eyewitnesses said the row was over an alleged blasphemous remark, but the police have not confirmed this.

Nigeria violence: Gunmen kill Catholic worshippers in Owo

Gunmen have killed worshippers in a Catholic church in Ondo, south-west Nigeria, the state’s governor has said.

Rotimi Akeredolu called it a “vile and satanic attack” on innocent people.

The armed men entered St Francis church in the town of Owo during a Sunday service. They fired into the congregation and then kidnapped a priest as well as some other church-goers, witnesses said.

Nigeria has experienced an upsurge in violence in recent months.

Kidnappings and attacks have been reported across the vast country.

Mohammedans having fun…

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Islamophobia", Islam, Islam and violence, Nigeria

Pope Francis fuels new speculation on retirement

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis added fuel to rumors about the future of his pontificate by announcing he would visit the central Italian city of L’Aquila in August for a feast initiated by Pope Celestine V, one of the few pontiffs who resigned before Pope Benedict XVI stepped down in 2013.

Italian and Catholic media have been rife with unsourced speculation that the 85-year-old Francis might be planning to follow in Benedict’s footsteps, given his increased mobility problems that have forced him to use a wheelchair for the last month.

Those rumors gained steam last week when Francis announced a consistory to create 21 new cardinals scheduled for Aug. 27. Sixteen of those cardinals are under age 80 and eligible to vote in a conclave to elect Francis’ successor.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inPope Francis

Students of color push back on calls for police in schools

After the mass shooting at a Texas elementary school, schools around the country pledged to boost security measures and increased the presence of law enforcement on campus — partly to reassure parents and students.

But police inside schools can make some students more uneasy, not less. Especially for Black students and other students of color, their personal experiences with policing can leave them feeling unsafe and alienated from school when they see officers on campus.

Cops get in the way of the mayhem – Teachers, parents want real discipline as NYC student suspensions fall

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