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Russian missile strike wipes out Ukrainian security service building in Dnipro


Reuters
Fri, 28 Jul 2023 20:09 UTC
SBU strike
© Dnipropetrovsk Regional Prosecutor's Office via Facebook/Handout via REUTERSFirefighters work at a site of an administrative building damaged by a Russian missile strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Dnipro, Ukraine July 28, 2023.
A Russian missile strike hit a residential complex and a building of Ukraine's security service in the central city of Dnipro on Thursday, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.


Comment: Since Russia has demonstrated its skill for precision strikes, and Ukraine is notorious for using residential areas and buildings for conducting its warfare, until Russia has had a chance to comment, we can presume that this 'residential complex' was actually being used by the SBU, or that it was hit by Ukraine's air defense (because it wouldn't be the first time).


Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said five people were injured and emergency services had completed an apartment-by apartment search of the area.

"Dnipro. Friday evening. Multi-storey apartment building and a building of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) hit," Zelenskiy wrote on the Telegram messaging app. "Again, Russian missile terror."


Comment: It seems not many residents were home at this 'multi-storey apartment building'.


Comment: Footage and commentary of the strike/s:









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Cross

Details of report on Christian church crackdown in Ukraine revealed


RT
Thu, 27 Jul 2023 10:52 UTC
priests
© Dimitar Dilkoff/AFPOrthodox priests from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Kiev Pechersk Lavra
A Russian Foreign Ministry report highlights Kiev's discriminatory religious policies and explains Washington's silence on them...

The Russian Foreign Ministry has released a scathing report on what it says has been a years-long campaign by Kiev to dismantle the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (OUC). Its clerics and the church faithful are being persecuted in various ways, from discriminatory legislation in the parliament to direct violence, the document reports.

The crimes are being ignored by international human-rights organizations and tacitly endorsed by Washington, the ministry has also claimed.

Ukrainian schism

The UOC was historically part of the Russian Orthodox Church. After Ukraine obtained statehood in the 1990s, it became a de-facto self-governing organization with symbolic and spiritual ties to its progenitor. There were some schisms in Ukrainian orthodoxy from the start, but the trend escalated after the 2014 armed coup in Kiev.

Then-President Pyotr Poroshenko oversaw the creation in 2018 of a new Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which included old schismatic clerics and new defectors from the UOC, a key part of his re-election campaign.

The OCU was recognized in 2019 by the Constantinople Patriarchate, which caused a major split among Orthodox Churches of the world.

The Russian Foreign Ministry report identifies 2018 as the year when a "full-scale, system-wide pressure" campaign against the UOC started. Since 2022, it has escalated further and has been backed by the Ukrainian government at all levels, it said.

Comment: Britain is afraid of 'bad publicity' - the kind that reveals an inconvenient truth:
Russia's deputy head of mission Dmitry Polyansky said on Wednesday:
"Britain's move to block Bishop Gedeon from testifying before the UN Security Council about the persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church by Kiev was 'scandalous and shameful'. They were afraid of this man, they were afraid of the facts that he could cite, of his own personal experience of persecution by Ukrainian authorities. They just try not to see what's really happening on the ground in Ukraine."
Presiding over the UNSC, British diplomats used procedural votes to block Bishop Gedeon's testimony because he could have delivered "a number of very awkward facts" for the government in Kiev and its Western sponsors, according to the Russian diplomat.

The Security Council held back-to-back meetings on Wednesday. The first, requested by Russia, was supposed to address the 'crackdown of the Kiev regime on Orthodox Christianity in Ukraine'. The UK, which presides over the council this month, decided to call another meeting right afterward, requested by Ukraine over the recent Russian missile strikes on the Black Sea port city of Odessa. The British chair then announced that Bishop Gedeon would not be given a say at the first meeting, citing "a lack of time."

Polyansky objected, saying that Russia had agreed to the second meeting on the understanding that its briefers would be allowed to speak at the first one.
"By censoring the bishop, Western delegations actually expressed solidarity with the repressive policy of the Kiev regime against [the] canonical Orthodox Church. The US and its allies seem committed to free speech only when it comes to 'prejudiced pro-Western NGOs'."
In protest to Britain's actions, Polyansky refused to participate in the second meeting. The Russian Permanent Mission to the UN has since published online the testimony Bishop Gedeon intended to deliver.

See also:

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Ambulance

Multiple fatalities in Damascus mosque bombing


RT
Fri, 28 Jul 2023 20:10 UTC
syria bombing
© Syrian Interior Ministry
At least six people have been killed and another 23 wounded in a motorcycle bombing near the Sayeda Zeinab mosque, in a southern suburb of the Syrian capital, the Interior Ministry has said.

A motorbike carrying explosives detonated on a crowded street in the Damascus countryside on Thursday evening, according to Syrian officials, who later shared photos of the aftermath on social media.

One resident cited by Reuters said he heard a blast at around 5:30 pm local time, after which security forces quickly sealed off the area. The Interior Ministry said multiple agencies responded to the "terrorist explosion," including officers with Syria's Criminal Security Directorate.

Another local told AFP that the explosion took place "near a security building" meters from the Sayeda Zeinab mosque, adding that they "heard a huge blast and people began to run."
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NPC

Top journal: "Being woke is just doing good 21st-century science"

Noah Carl
Daily Sceptic
Fri, 28 Jul 2023 19:39 UTC
Science journal, AAAS
A major theme here at the Daily Sceptic is the politicisation of the world's 'top' scientific journals, Nature and Science. Over the last few years, both of these publications have handed over an increasing amount of editorial space to woke activism.

In the summer of 2022, Science ran a piece about how astrophysics helped the author embrace her "non-binary" gender identity. Meanwhile, Nature published an article claiming that fat people contribute to "diversity".

Science has now run a piece on "systemic racism", which has very much the same flavour. The author is Agustin Fuentes, who in 2021 wrote an article on Darwin's The Descent of Man, which described Darwin as "an English man with injurious and unfounded prejudices". Lest you doubted his credentials, Fuentes's latest piece comes under the heading 'Expert Voices'.

He begins by referring to "massive amounts of data" and "countless analyses" which "demonstrate unequivocally" that racism persists in the United States, including in higher education. Yet he laments that "six of the nine justices on the US Supreme Court recently chose to disregard these facts and argue for a "race neutral" approach in college admissions."

Where to start with this one? Even if racism does persist in the United States, why would that imply colleges shouldn't follow a race neutral approach to admissions?

After all, affirmative action is pretty much the definition of a racist policy. It says that two students with the same grades and test scores should be treated differently because of their races. For Fuentes, however, it's being neutral with respect to race that is racist - or at least tantamount to ignoring racism.
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Yoda

Former NYPost editor details coordinated social media censorship of Biden family corruption in House hearing

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Thu, 27 Jul 2023 19:29 UTC
Emma-Jo Morris ny post breitbart testimony house hearing biden corruption media censorship
© YouTube / ScreenshotJournalist Emma-Jo Morris said the censorship of her story on the Hunter Biden laptop exposed “the unholy alliance between the intelligence community, social media and legacy media platforms.”
Emma-Jo Morris, editor at Breitbart and former editor at the New York Post, testified before the House Weaponization Committee about the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, including the coordinated nature of the social media blackout as well as the potential collusion with federal agencies working with media outlets like Politico to derail the story as "Russian disinformation" right before the 2020 election.

It should not be easy to forget the level of mass censorship on display in 2020-2022, with widespread violations of free speech rights by government's using Big Tech as a corporate hitman. From the blatant spin in favor of BLM's "fiery but peaceful" riots, to the attempted deplatforming of websites like Zero Hedge in retaliation for coverage of Covid's potential Wuhan Lab origins (In light of congressional investigations, we now know it was Anthony Fauci that organized the suppression of the lab leak theory), to the complete erasure of the Hunter Biden laptop from public view - Social media has been a tool for controlling public perception rather than a means of free communication.

However, the populace has been bombarded with so many crises and scandals in the past few years they may need reminding of the numerous trespasses that took place not long ago.

Comment:

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NPC

A worrying new poll reveals what students really believe about censorship

John Bitzan
Fox News
Fri, 28 Jul 2023 19:18 UTC
censorship
© iStockA worrying 72 percent of students who don’t feel comfortable speaking out cite concern over their opinions being deemed unacceptable.
There was a time when universities were heralded as the epitome of free thought and critical dialogue. But the times have changed.

Speakers being disinvited, shouted down or persuaded to withdraw have become increasingly common. Bias reporting systems, meant to protect, are now casting a wide net, catching even innocuous conversations in the dragnet. At Virginia Tech, a student reported hearing male students chatting about a snowball fight and the athleticism of their female peers. Should this be a cause for alarm?

Skeptics may dismiss the concerns surrounding free speech as mere hyperbole. But our new nationwide survey of 2,250 college students from 131 universities paints a different picture. The statistics are disconcerting - 74 percent of students think professors should be reported to the university for saying something offensive, and 58 percent believe the same for other students.
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Briefcase

US drops campaign finance charges against FTX founder


RT
Thu, 27 Jul 2023 19:06 UTC
Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX founder
© Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty ImagesFile photo: Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and CEO of FTX, testifies before Congress in December 2021.
Federal prosecutors will not prosecute FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried for violating campaign finance laws, according to a court filing revealed on Thursday. The US Department of Justice cited "treaty obligations" to the Bahamas, which extradited the disgraced crypto investor last year.

"The Government has been informed that The Bahamas notified the United States earlier today that The Bahamas did not intend to extradite the defendant on the campaign contributions count," US Attorney Damian Williams wrote in a Wednesday night filing, informing federal Judge Lewis A. Kaplan that he was dropping the charges. "Accordingly, in keeping with its treaty obligations to The Bahamas, the Government does not intend to proceed to trial on the campaign contributions count."

This is the second charge the Southern District of New York prosecutors have dropped against the FTX founder. Bankman-Fried's attorneys have successfully appealed to Bahamian courts to block the prosecution on a charge of bribery, which was added after he was extradited. They have also sought to dismiss charges of bank fraud and conspiracy.

Comment: How many more charges will be dropped before the court date arrives? One hopes it's not all of them and that this criminal spends the rest of his days in a cell that prevents him from enjoying any of his ill gotten gains. See also:

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Comet 2

SOTT Focus: The Cosmic Context of Greek Philosophy, Part One

Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Sott.net
Wed, 19 Jul 2023 19:31 UTC
comet
Most of what is included in this post is directly from the book, Comet and the Horns of Moses, though selected and edited for brevity. I intend my main focus to be on the philosophers but I find that what I have written on that topic would be incomprehensible without the background and context. It seems to me that none of what the various early philosophers were saying, doing, or writing can be easily comprehended if one does not have a good grasp of the history of the time. And that history is not just social and political, it is also environmental. Even with such knowledge, you are handicapped because the Christian scribes who took charge of literature for centuries made sure that their story was as consistent as they could make it. One has to pay attention to everything in order to adduce anything sensible about historical matters.

The general theme of Horns of Moses is that cyclical, cosmic catastrophes have played a major role in the shaping of the history of our planet and its civilizations. A lot of scientific research is covered in the first half of this book. I will review that as briefly as possible. It can't be avoided because the facts on the ground mattered and had considerable influence on the thinking of the Greek philosophers.

Though there has been a lot of resistance to the idea of catastrophism (probably mostly by the authoritarian-follower-type scientists), a few years ago the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science published a study by an international team of scientists who reached general agreement that a meteorite or comet fragment storm hit the earth a little more than 12,000 years ago and is likely to have been responsible for the extinction of megafauna and many prehistoric peoples that occurred at that time. It is also now being said that evidence for the extreme heat produced by the equivalent of thousands of overhead nuclear explosions has been found on at least two continents.
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Question

Mystery deepens: Police call log for Tafari Campbell's drowning at Obama estate left BLANK, cops refuse to say who second paddleboarder was


The Post Millennial
Thu, 27 Jul 2023 00:01 UTC
Tafari Campbell
Martha's Vineyard was rocked by the death of Tafari Campbell, the private chef of former President Barack Obama, earlier this week. Campbell reportedly drowned while paddleboarding on Great Edgartown Pond.

Details surrounding the distress call to 911 have emerged, but puzzlingly, the reason for the call remains conspicuously absent from the official logs, as reported first by DailyMail.com.
tafari campbell call log

Comment: See also: Man found dead on Obama estate identified as Obama's personal chef

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Bizarro Earth

Theft from UK supermarkets up 26% in just one year, incidents of gangs looting shops rising

Dan Sales
Daily Mail
Fri, 28 Jul 2023 12:10 UTC
theft shop uk
The footage showed gangs of yobs running wild in shops unchecked by any police presence
These are some of the shocking moments where supermarkets have been targeted by crooks in an epidemic that has seen an average of 1,000 incidents a day.

Major chains including John Lewis, Asda and the Co-op have been targeted by organised criminal gangs as crimes with shoplifting soaring by 26 per cent in the past year, according to the British Retail Consortium.

Many of the stores blame police for the surge in the disturbing crimes as families struggle amid the cost of living crisis.

One survey by the BRC says 56 per cent of retailers rated the police response as 'fair' - with others declaring it even worse.

Comment: One only need to look to the US to see how dire the situation can become:





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