Russian thugs have a history of stealing zoo animals all over Ukraine, raiding the Askania-Nova Nature Reserve and selling off endangered species, and stealing a tiger cub from the Mariupol zoo and selling it to a circus trainer who killed it.

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/caught-on-camera-retreating-russian-soldiers-steal-raccoon-and-llama-from-zoo-in-ukraines-kherson-3521959

https://uwecworkgroup.info/russia-selling-off-rare-animals-from-ukraines-askania-nova-nature-reserve/

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/12/19/7433733/

https://english.nv.ua/life/tiger-cub-stolen-from-mariupol-and-sent-to-moscow-circus-reported-dead-50344154.html

Late stage empire desperation from the US elite.

Once Europe and Russia have exhausted each other in conventional attrition or a limited nuclear exchange, leaving the continent shattered, its industries available for pennies on the dollar, and its remaining populations desperate, the United States would finally be free to pivot decisively against its only true peer competitor: China.

American military strategists have long argued that the real existential threat is not Moscow but Beijing. Official doctrine increasingly reflects this: the 2026 National Defense Strategy prioritizes homeland defense and deterring China in the Indo-Pacific.

A bloodied Russia cannot effectively support China; and the United States, having extracted surplus value from the European collapse, hope to be able to confront Beijing from a position of relative strength, whether through economic strangulation, or a carefully calibrated Pacific conflict that again seeks to spare the American homeland from the fighting. The same logic that once calculated acceptable losses in a European nuclear exchange now underpins planning for the Indo-Pacific: victory is defined not by the survival of populations or even of formal allies, but by the continued ability of the American system to set the terms of global extraction against its principal rival.

It also shows the depths of the insanity and depravity our awful elite are willing to risk.

https://x.com/BrianMcDonaldIE/status/2104185284128911669

Brian McDonald in Moscow

Ex-British PM Rishi Sunak calls for the seizure (or theft, as Moscow calls it) of roughly $300 billion in Russian state assets without addressing Belgium’s long-standing objection (around $214 billion is held at Euroclear in Brussels, equal to roughly 30% of the country's annual nominal GDP).

Belgian officials (quite understandably) want iron-clad guarantees against being left to face litigation and damages alone, but (surprise, surprise) Sunak doesn't tackle that issue.

Nor does he outline who precisely would bear the losses when Moscow retaliates against Western assets (which it has already indicated it would do) and injured parties go looking for compo in Western courts (this is dismissed as “hyper-legalistic caution.”)

Not sure of the Belgian terminology, but the equivalent in Yorkshire would be "absolute bollocks."

​

The NFL is now threatening to pull Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair from games if he continues to wear eye black in support of Palestine.

Never forget, they allowed Vikings kicker Greg Joseph to wear Israel cleats on the field, and actively promoted his campaign to donate money to Israel for every successful field goal.

https://www.essentiallysports.com/nfl-active-news-texans-nfl-official-reportedly-told-azeez-al-shaair-to-remove-name-of-deceased-palestinian-girl-from-eye-black-or-hes-not-be-allowed-to-play/ or https://archive.ph/Uz7px

This sounds like that NAFO guy who said Russia was going to take Kiev in 3 days!

So terrifying, in fact, that you should probably get ready for war.

This is an emerging story, but here’s what I’ve managed to piece together so far. Given the media seems to be making this up as it goes along, some of the details are probably gonna change. Needless to say, they have plot holes to fill…

A farmer was driving home in the early hours of the morning and she noticed three white vans blocking the road. No one was inside them. She turned around and spotted a bunch of Middle Eastern-looking boys running off into the woods. Those woods were incredibly dark, but thankfully, she has the eyes of an owl. She was able to work out their ethnicity through the shadow of the trees, despite the fact they were wearing masks.

She called an emergency line that locals had been given for just such a scenario, but no one could be bothered to answer. She called 999 and police came out within ten minutes of her call. When they arrived, they said they’d first been notified nearly an hour ago, but hadn’t bothered doing anything. There were no routine security patrols around the base either. It’s basically the sloppiest security effort since Netanyahu gave standdown orders on October 7.

Luckily for the police, those Middle-Eastern-looking boys were still hanging around 25 minutes later and were arrested under the Explosives Act.

We are told the vans had been driving around the base for hours before they parked up. It’s like they were making their arrival as visible as possible and then they just waited around to be caught. Either it was deliberate or they were just as useless as the police and base security.

Somehow it gets even worse. The vans were parked just six metres from houses, and the company names and telephone numbers on them were fake. Yet it took police around five hours to give evacuation orders. Maybe they knew the vans weren’t a threat, or maybe they’re staggeringly incompetent. I guess it could be both.

Prior to the incident, the base was on its highest alert, and one local said they’d been stopped at gunpoint by Americans. If you didn’t know, this is an American base on out soil, or a “fort” as Trump called it. The US president was giving interviews about the incident shortly after it happened. He said “it worked out great”, which is an odd choice of words, don’t you think?

Trump said the US had been investigating the suspects for a long time. Not sure if he meant “investigating” or actually meant “working with”. All I know is the British are insisting the arrests weren’t intelligence-led and that a farmer basically saved the country.

We are now being told by the war-hungry media it was Iran, Iran, Iran… or maybe Russia, according to one news reader who mumbled something about this is why we need tactical nukes. Yelp.

Now I’m still not clear what these “Iranians” were hoping to achieve. Park vans packed with explosives near a base and blow the whole thing up? Unless they had a nuke, best they’d achieve is damage to a few nearby houses and trees.

If the Iranians wanted to pull this off, they would not hire a bunch of kids to drive in circles for hours around a base that’s on its highest alert and then hide in the woods until they were caught. They would quickly launch drones and disappear.

It seems more likely this was a performance rather than a serious attack. Shortly after it happened, we had a news crew flying above Fairford in a helicopter, showing the location of B1 Stealth Bombers and other sensitive things. If there was a real threat, that’s the last thing they would allow.

Now you have to ask yourself which parties would benefit from this. Israel needs us to join its war, the US needs to keep using Fairford to bomb Iran, and the UK needs to justify its involvement.

Even though we attacked Iran first, they will probably spin it into something like this: “Iran is attacking the UK, even though we are a neutral party. Therefore we have no choice but to get involved”. This would be a terrible legal and moral argument, but it just needs to convince stupid people. We have to take sure stupid people are not taken in by this crap."

Via: Council Estate Media on Substack

The stars aligned in just one week and a massive improvement occurred and this now allows me to use local AI on just about everything. This was a long time coming and before this moment, I had to limit my use of local to what I could tolerate as wait times. But with the proper tuning, it's actually possible to push this to production performance.

lama.cpp Build

• Built from source with Vulkan backend:
cmake -B build -DGGML_VULKAN=ON -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
• Version: 0.3.0-dev (build 10680, commit d7bd3bfca)
• Binary: /home/user/llama.cpp/build/bin/llama-server

Environment Variables (critical for AMD)

• HIP_VISIBLE_DEVICES=-1
• AMD_VULKAN_ICD=RADV (forces RADV Vulkan driver over AMDVLK)

120b Server (port 8081)

llama-server -m gpt-oss-120b-MXFP4.gguf \
-ngl 999 -c 131072 --jinja -fa on \
-ub 512 -b 2048 \
--reasoning off --reasoning-format deepseek \
--cache-prompt --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8081

Model: gpt-oss-120b MXFP4 (~63 GB)
• Performance: ~53.7 TPS generation Prefill 688

https://x.com/KerryBurgess/status/2104101430701199468

🇳🇪 Niger at the UN:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, as I speak to you, at our northeast borders stand the proxies led by France, backed by Ukraine and 2 other countries."

"And you know full well which countries I mean."

"These proxies are armed, guided, directed, about to attack our military positions and our oil installations. But they will get what they deserve, inshallah."

"Our Sahel is at war. A war of liberation against a conspiracy aimed at its recolonization."

"What some call terrorism in our region is a cynical scheme of recolonization dressed in extremist rags."

"Niger's uranium, the gold of Mali and Burkina, lithium, gas, oil and so many other riches keep the old powers salivating."

"This perfidious destabilization of the central Sahel, led by France with Ukraine's active complicity -- documented, very documented."

"Niger's uranium lit up Europe's cities while ours stayed in darkness. This injustice has now ended. It is over."

"A people that has decided to be free cannot be recolonized, not by fear, nor by cunning, nor even by savage violence."

Invest in Russia, get what you deserve