🇮🇱❌🇮🇷 Israel’s leaders believe they now have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape the Middle East, one that goes well beyond pulverizing Hamas and Hezbollah.
Even before Israel launched what it described as a “limited” ground offensive into Lebanon Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear that his ultimate target in the regional power shift is to undermine the authority of Tehran’s clerical leadership, defanging the Iranians who are the bankrollers, trainers and supposed protectors of both Hamas in Gaza and the Lebanese Shi’ite militia Hezbollah.
In an address in English on Monday, Netanyahu promised the “noble Persian people” that the day when they were free of rule by “tyrants” and could have peace with Israel would come “a lot sooner than people think.”
“There is nowhere in the Middle East Israel cannot reach,” he warned ominously.
For Iran, that will not sound like idle posturing. Israel is not just fighting Tehran by smashing its allies and proxies — such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen — but is showing its supremacy both in terms of technology and espionage on Iranian soil.
Ground offensive in Lebanon. On Tuesday Israel made it clear it won’t stop there.
Netanyahu’s once electorally fatal opinion poll numbers are rising since Nasrallah’s assassination, meaning there’s every political inducement for him to prolong the offensive and ignore repeated cease-fire calls from Western allies and aid groups, who fear a humanitarian crisis worsening in Lebanon.
“The elimination of Nasrallah is a very important step, but it is not the final one,” Gallant told troops serving with the army’s Golani Brigade. “We will employ all the capabilities at our disposal, and if someone on the other side did not understand what those capabilities entail, we mean all capabilities.”
U.S. officials believe the Israeli incursion will be limited, targeted and not as extensive as 2006, which triggered a short but fierce war that hurt both sides. But there remain fears in Washington of an Iranian attack against Israel, prompting some U.S. forces being moved “to defer and defend as necessary.” And there are worries of Israeli overreach.
It isn’t only domestic political logic driving Netanyahu — but military rationale, too. “The military incentives for Israel are to continue,” observed Matthew Savill of Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, a think tank, speaking before the incursion.
“It has destroyed Hezbollah’s senior leadership, compromised its ability to coordinate and has the initiative. In spite of the risks a ground incursion would face, the long-range threat from ballistic missiles, and the stretched nature of current IDF operations, it is possible to imagine that many would argue there will never be a better time to go into southern Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah’s military infrastructure there,” he added.
Yanis Varoufakis (former Greek Minister of Finance) describes AI as a new form of capital that produces not goods, but behavioral modification. This is achieved by engineering perceptions.
The answers provided by ChatGPT, or the images rendered by StableDiffusion — as these increasingly inform our perceptions, they in turn define the reality we experience.
This is what makes AI so powerful — he who controls the AI, defines the reality of tomorrow.
⚡️🇺🇸 Some more things coming out for the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
Under the preliminary drafts of the bill, the USAF is requesting a release of $57,000,000 USD ($57.0 Million) to retire all remaining 162 A-10 Thunderbolt IIs in current service. Apart of the 2023 NDAA, there was a clause for a few million dollars to be released every so often to gradually retire the (then) 250 airframes by 2034; however due to the push by the Dept of Defense to ‘shed’ obsolete or obsolescent airframes that cannot be overhauled or upgraded further without a whole new airframe, it appears the USAF wants to retire all 162 remaining A-10s by the end of 2026.
The USAF plans to fully divest the 340-total remaining A-10s entirely, including those that currently serve in a handful of Air National Guard units in some states; which will be replaced by F-15EX Eagle IIs (like what is already happening with the Michigan State Air National Guard’s A-10s), or F-35A/Bs.
Included ...
My older sister lives in the country in between Velma Oklahoma and Duncan Oklahoma near the Fuqua Lake area, this story was told by a rural mail delivery woman who delivers the mail in the country.
The incident happened while she was on her route, when she came upon to the mailbox a male Chinese nation came out brandishing a, AK-47 rifle being very hostile,
I don't know if he pointed it at her since it is against the law to do so but she was terrified and said she was never going back and that the location that had a guard tower. Was the sheriff department notified, I don't know, did she notify her supervisor, don't know. But word is from the country folk who live in the area they have seen the guard tower at the pot place;
I refuse to call it a farm because it is an insult to farmers.
And yes she was traumatized by that ordeal