Author: Blazingcatfur

Israel targets Iran’s leaders with lethal expertise using new AI platform

TEL AVIV — As U.S. and Israeli military commanders met to map out war with Iran, they deliberated over how to divide responsibility for an array of targets, including missile batteries, military bases and nuclear sites.

It was clear from the outset, however, that one grim mission would belong to Israel: hunting and killing Iran’s leaders.

Israel has pursued this assignment with ruthless efficiency, killing Iran’s supreme leader in the opening salvo of the war and more than 250 other “senior Iranian officials” since, according to a count maintained by the Israeli military. The latest blow came Thursday when Israel said it had killed the naval commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"US Israel Iran War"

Iran’s Wealth Is Parked on London’s Billionaires’ Row

Years of Western sanctions haven’t prevented money flows out of Tehran: ‘They probably learned from the Russian oligarchs’

On a leafy residential stretch of North London dubbed Billionaires’ Row, Saudi royals and wealthy Russians have long come shopping for high-end real estate. The Iranians were a more surprising addition to the neighborhood.

Several sprawling mansion plots along the thoroughfare more formally known as The Bishops Avenue make up a chunk of the extensive London property holdings funded by Iranian money that Western officials have linked to the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Iranian banker Ali Ansari acquired the Bishops Avenue plots and other nearby property in 2018 for around 90 million pounds, equivalent to around $120 million today, according to people familiar with the deal. The transaction took place offshore through an entity registered in the Isle of Man, the people said.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"US Israel Iran War"

Pro-Palestine activists wanted to test the limits of a residential protest ban in North York. Here’s what happened

A small group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators was met by a large police presence on Sunday, as they marched in North York to test a directive banning them from residential parts of a local Jewish neighbourhood.

At 1 p.m., about 20 people carrying Palestinian flags and shouting anti-Israel slogans walked west along Sheppard Avenue from its intersection with Bathurst Street, the site of competing weekly rallies about the Mideast conflict since at least fall 2024.

A line of Toronto Police Service (TPS) officers and cruisers blocked off each side street along the main thoroughfare. At each one, organizers asked if they would be allowed down the street, and officers instructed them to keep moving.

That’s a lot of cops and firemen to deploy. The cost of policing these cranks is unsustainable.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inWTF?

AfD demands US troops leave Germany

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has called for the withdrawal of all US soldiers from the country.

Tino Chrupalla, the far-Right party’s co-leader, told a meeting on Saturday that it was time to remove allied troops and nuclear weapons from Germany in order to pursue an “independent” foreign policy.

“Let’s start implementing this with the withdrawal of US troops from Germany,” he told supporters in Saxony.

Long a popular opinion in Germany, it may hasten the end of NATO.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inGermany, Germany - AfD party, NATO, USA

Nope. Not worried one bit …

A major immigration reform bill is now law in Canada. Some worry it rolls back refugee rights

A major bill reforming immigration powers is now law in Canada, giving Ottawa powers to mass cancel groups of visas and setting time limits on asylum claims in the name of bringing immigration numbers under control.

But the legislation, passed Thursday, has also raised concerns from a coalition of civil society groups, including Amnesty International, immigration lawyers and public sector unions, that says it places too much authority in the government’s hands and is vowing to fight it.

“Bill C-12 attacks the rights of refugees and migrants,” Julia Sande, a lawyer specializing in privacy and migrant rights at Amnesty International Canada, said in an interview with CBC News. “It makes it harder for people to have their claims for refugee protection fairly assessed, so it puts people at risk of being deported to face persecution and torture.”

Just the usual scammers dislike this and frankly it doesn’t go far enough.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Mass Immigration - Follow the money", "Mass Immigration Weaponized As Electoral Strategy", Canada's Corrupt Liberal Government

Europe’s pre-revolutionary conditions are taking shape

A few days ago, I had the opportunity to address members of the European Parliament. Many of the things I said will sound familiar to regular readers of my column, but I believe I was able to deepen some of my thoughts, and would like to share them with you here.

Revolutions make for fascinating case studies in hindsight. We like to imagine them as eruptions of grand philosophical discontent, the oppressed masses rising against an unjust order in the name of some great principle. And there is always a philosophical dimension lurking in the background. But the spark that actually ignites a revolution is often far more mundane than historians care to admit.

Closer to home …

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Civil Unrest", "Civil War", Europe

‘Expect extremely high grocery prices,’ farmer warns as diesel costs rise

Farmers around the world are feeling the squeeze of the Iran war. Gas prices have shot up and fertilizer supplies are waning due to Tehran’s near shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for U.S. and Israeli bombing.

Iran is seriously limiting shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow passage that usually handles about a fifth of the world’s oil shipments and nearly a third of global fertilizer trade.

Canadian farmers are also bracing for higher costs and warning consumers could soon feel the impact at the checkout line.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inUncategorized

The First Alt-War: Online Fantasy vs. Reality in the Iran Campaign

While commentators trade in familiar fears, events on the ground point to a far more decisive outcome than the online debate suggests.

A commentator in (mirabile dictu) The Washington Post made an excellent point about how the war in Iran is being understood. “We are living through the first alt-war,” the Tel Aviv University scholar Jen Brick Murtazashvili wrote. On the one hand, we have the war as it is fought online. On the other, we have the war as it is fought in reality, on the ground. The two “have diverged so completely,” Murtazashvili noted, “that they might as well be happening on different planets. It’s not that people lack information; it’s more that they are constructing an entirely different alternate reality—one that confirms what they already believe.”

The white liberal woman’s war

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"US Israel Iran War"

Anthony Furey: Toronto copies Mamdani’s worst idea — socialized grocery stores

It’s hard to say what’s the worst part about Toronto City Council voting in favour of government run grocery stores. Perhaps it’s just that, shockingly, it’s a real thing that actually happened, taking valuable time and resources away from serious governance that could improve the livability of Toronto.

Last week, Councillor Anthony Perruzza put forward a motion that “City Council establish a pilot project to open four municipally operated grocery stores within the City of Toronto.” The locations would be chosen with “priority given to neighbourhoods with limited access to full-service grocery stores and where residents have lower average household incomes.”

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Toronto - Canada's version of a Democrat run city"

How could US forcibly reopen strait of Hormuz and what are the risks?

Kharg Island – sounds like a Klingon retirement resort

The arrival of American ground invasion forces in the Middle East over the weekend provides Donald Trump with the muscle for a perilous attempt to forcibly open the strait of Hormuz, Iran’s biggest pressure point in the war.

Iran’s chokehold on the strait, through which a fifth of the world’s oil trade normally passes, gives Tehran leverage that Trump understands, sending oil prices rocketing to more than $100 a barrel. The American president says he’s prepared to give diplomacy a chance, though bombing of Iran continues.

But even for talks, the dealmaker will seek a better hand. Trump said on Sunday that he wants to “take the oil in Iran”.

From the Commander and Chief …

h/t Mauser

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"US Israel Iran War"

Raymond J. de Souza: Canada’s long, sad history of non-policing police

The Toronto police have announced that henceforth, and forthwith, to better serve and protect, they will commence … policing!

Pro-Hamas, anti-Israel protesters will no longer be permitted to parade through Jewish neighbourhoods hurling antisemitic invective at the residents. As this deliberately aggressive harassment has been going on for more than two years, the minimal comfort offered by the Toronto police comes rather late in the day, but it is something. Protesters will retain the right to air their grievances — against Israel, against Jews — on the main streets and intersections. No longer can they disturb the peace on residential streets.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCanada

Oh No!

Crimson-clad clown flings shredded Quran at NYC mosque, smears feces on building: cops

A fit-challenged vandal dressed in red from head-to-toe flung ripped-up pages from the Quran at a Brooklyn mosque — then disgustingly smeared feces on the building, cops said.

The monochrome maniac unleashed the sickening attack on the Islamic Mission of America in Brooklyn Heights around 4:30 a.m. March 9 as the piggish perp threw the shredded pages on the mosque’s front steps, according to investigators.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inWTF?

Jewish advocacy presses Ottawa to boost community security spending

A major Canadian Jewish advocacy organization is pressing Ottawa to substantially increase spending on security for synagogues, schools and community centres in the upcoming spring economic statement.

In a letter to Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, or CIJA, said additional money is urgently needed after national security agency warnings of a possible extremist attack against Canadian Jews.

Programs of this sort have been around for years. What happens is that Muslims always demand funding as well.

But don’t worry those church arson’s have really slowed down.

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