'Netanyahu denounces tactical pauses in Gaza fighting to get in aid'

 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized plans announced by the military on Sunday to hold daily tactical pauses in fighting along one of the main roads into Gaza to facilitate aid delivery into the Palestinian enclave.

The military had announced the daily pauses from 0500 GMT until 1600 GMT in the area from the Kerem Shalom Crossing to the Salah al-Din Road and then northwards.

"When the prime minister heard the reports of an 11-hour humanitarian pause in the morning, he turned to his military secretary and made it clear that this was unacceptable to him," an Israeli official said.

The military clarified that normal operations would continue in Rafah, the main focus of its operation in southern Gaza, where eight soldiers were killed on Saturday.

The reaction from Netanyahu underlined political tensions over the issue of aid coming into Gaza, where international organisations have warned of a growing humanitarian crisis.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who leads one of the nationalist religious parties in Netanyahu's ruling coalition, denounced the idea of a tactical pause, saying whoever decided it was a "fool" who should lose their job.

DIVISIONS BETWEEN COALITION, ARMY

The spat was the latest in a series of clashes between members of the coalition and the military over the conduct of the war, now in its ninth month.

It came a week after centrist former general Benny Gantz quit the government, accusing Netanyahu of having no effective strategy in Gaza.

The divisions were laid bare last week in a parliamentary vote on a law on conscripting ultra-Orthodox Jews into the military, with Defence Minister Yoav Gallant voting against it in defiance of party orders, saying it was insufficient for the needs of the military.

Religious parties in the coalition have strongly opposed conscription for the ultra-Orthodox, drawing widespread anger from many Israelis, which has deepened as the war has gone on.

Lieutenant-General Herzi Halevi, the head of the military, said on Sunday there was a "definite need" to recruit more soldiers from the fast-growing ultra-Orthodox community.

RESERVISTS UNDER STRAIN

Despite growing international pressure for a ceasefire, an agreement to halt the fighting still appears distant, more than eight months since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas fighters on Israel triggered a ground assault on the enclave by Israeli forces.

Since the attack, which killed some 1,200 Israelis and foreigners in Israeli communities, Israel's military campaign has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians, according to Palestinian health ministry figures, and destroyed much of Gaza.

Although opinion polls suggest most Israelis support the government's aim of destroying Hamas, there have been widespread protests attacking the government for not doing more to bring home around 120 hostages who are still in Gaza after being taken hostage on Oct. 7.

Meanwhile, Palestinian health officials said seven Palestinians were killed in two air strikes on two houses in Al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza Strip.

As fighting in Gaza has continued, a lower level conflict across the Israel-Lebanon border is now threatening to spiral into a wider war as near-daily exchanges of fire between Israeli forces and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia have escalated.

In a further sign that fighting in Gaza could drag on, Netanyahu's government said on Sunday it was extending until Aug. 15 the period it would fund hotels and guest houses for residents evacuated from southern Israeli border towns.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/israeli-military-announces-tactical-pauses-044039948.html

Be Prepared for Chaos

By Clarice Feldman

I suggest you start preparing for a great deal of left-wing civic violence, supply disruptions (including food shortages) and widespread urban chaos. I say this because it is my sense that the Democrats, deep state, and their media enablers are all in rough shape and have no other way out but to fall back on their usual criminal methods of retaining power.

I find it impossible to believe that President Biden will be the Democrat nominee, and if he is, that he can win. What do the Democrats do? They certainly can’t substitute Kamala Harris for Biden; she’s tanked in opinion polls even lower and faster than has Biden. There are no nationally known non-geriatric substitutes in the wings, save for California governor Gavin Newsom, whose record for screwing up is at least as bad as Biden’s. Youth and a good haircut can only go so far outside Newsom’s home state. Even liberals are now conceding the West Coast has lost its way and become dysfunctional, and who is a better avatar of West Coast progressives than Newsom?

In an opinion piece in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof asks if they have lost their way. He decries the lack of sensible governance, arguing that good intentions aren’t enough and good governance has demonstrably been lacking: 

[M]y take is that the West Coast’s central problem is not so much that it’s unserious as that it’s infected with an ideological purity that is focused more on intentions than on oversight and outcomes. ...

Politics always is part theater, but out West too often we settle for being performative rather than substantive.

For example, as a gesture to support trans kids, Oregon took money from the tight education budget to put tampons in boys’ restrooms in elementary schools -- including boys’ restrooms in kindergartens.

The inability of progressives, particularly in the Portland metro area, to deal with the nitty-gritty of governing and to get something done is just staggering. ...

One of the passions of the left, drawing partly on Ibram X. Kendi’s book “How to Be an Antiracist,” has been that if a policy leads to racial inequity, then it’s racist even if it wasn’t meant to be. But by that standard, West Coast progressivism abounds in racism.

We in the West impeded home construction in ways that made cities unaffordable, especially for people of color. We let increasing numbers of people struggle with homelessness, particularly Black and brown people. Black people in Portland are also murdered at higher rates than in cities more notorious for violence, and Seattle and Portland have some of the greatest racial disparities in arrests in the country. [snip] It’s absolutely true that good intentions are not enough. What matters is improving opportunities and quality of life, and the best path to do that is a relentless empiricism -- which clashes with the West Coast’s indifference to the laws of economics.

The basic reason for homelessness on the West Coast is an enormous shortage of housing that drives up rents. California lacks about three million housing units, in part because it’s difficult to get permission to build. [snip] Public sector efforts to build housing are often ruinously expensive, with “affordable housing” sometimes costing more than $1 million per unit, so the private sector is critical. Yet one element of progressive purity is suspicion of the private sector, and this hobbles efforts to make businesses part of the solution. Business owners who earn an income from their company are effectively barred from serving on the Portland City Council. [snip]

Without opposition party oversight, problems aren’t always fixed expeditiously.

His experience is largely in Portland, but the Portland experience is as relevant to all of Newsom’s California. 

Here’s Jillian Michaels, a fitness guru who’s a lesbian, daughter of a Jewish woman and an Arab father, and an adoptive mother of two children -- one black and one part Hispanic -- on why she moved to Florida from her home state of California:

"I hold a million cards in your game of woke victimology poker. And when I leave California, maybe you've lost your f---ing mind. Just maybe! Like when you have me running from home, maybe it's gone way too far." She says she can’t stand Newsom as for the laws under his governance she displays utter contempt:

"Some of these laws that are passing here are absolutely f---ing mind-boggling," Michaels said. "In relation to crime, protecting our kids, like, we're decriminalizing everything, which arguably I would probably be okay with but we're not regulating any of it. So it's like, okay, you're gonna decriminalize sex work but only so women can loiter on the streets, not to keep them safe, not to have them pay taxes, not to make them, you know, regularly check for STDs, not to take away the pimps out of the equation. Like if you made that argument to me, I'd be like, ‘well, yes, of course.’ I could be liberal! I could go there with you! I grew up this way!  Or the fact that a 12-year-old child can be put on off-label cancer drugs to irreparably change their body. Again, if my son came to me and said, ‘Mom’ -- or my daughter -- 'I think I'm trans.' I'd say okay, you know, like, you want to dress this way. You want me to call you whatever the heck you want, dress, fine. Explore it. I love you. I'm cool, do you as long as we're safe, but we're not changing your body until it's fully developed. I'm sorry. Conversation's over. Can't get a f---ing tattoo!

So, even someone you’d suppose would ignore the dysfunctionality of the West Coast left finds it a bridge too far.

I think I’m not far off the mark when I suggest that the Democrat-run institutions and cities, which regularly are tolerating, if not encouraging, violent demonstrations by demonstrably linked green, pro-Palestine, Antifa gangs, are setting the stage for November’s elections, with the federal government’s apparent connivance. There’s no indication that the FBI is seriously investigating these groups for criminal behavior or even foreign influence. No one seems to be stopping the road and highway blockages and as the left’s election prospects grow dimmer, I see them upping their game.

Of course, using the easily mismanaged and hacked electronic voting machines they will make every effort to rig the results. But the gambit best used in 2020 -- changing (illegally) the voting rules on the pretext of a pandemic -- seems less likely this time around. And the Republicans say they are upping their game to minimize election cheating. Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump reports, that she and the RNC are working to raise a veritable army of “over 100,000 poll watchers and over 500 lawyers” to “deploy” at election sites across the country in November. “

The economy stinks, the administration’s foreign policy endeavors have been counter to American interests and made the world more dangerous. Although many blue cities are not reporting crimes to the FBI, we all have eyes and can see that urban crime is out of hand now as the Democrats defund the police and no-bail policies are in effect. Moreover, just as Biden is about to announce even more benefits to illegal immigrants, the tide against his open-border policies is continuing to crest to flood stage. His grassroots support is slim, while Trump’s keeps growing. In sum, I see no nationally known Democrat who can alter that or who can persuade voters that he or she is capable of undoing the mess this administration has put us in. So, what remains: chaos, disruptions and more unpunished criminal behavior. Buckle up and start stocking up on essentials.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/06/be_prepared_for_chaos.html

 

"Don't Buy Into This Crap", Catherine Austine Fitts Warns "AI Is Digital Control"

Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

Catherine Austin Fitts (CAF), Publisher of The Solari Report, financial expert and former Assistant Secretary of Housing (Bush 41 Admin.) is sounding the alarm about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how it will impact your world in very negative ways. 

It’s all in a new report called “The AI Revolution: The Final Coup d’Etat.”  CAF explains, “This is a very serious look at Artificial Intelligence and how it’s going to be used to implement control..."

"This past week, there was this huge open board meeting at OpenAI.  There were board members put there to make sure OpenAI and its products were in alignment with the best interests of the human race.  Some of them got booted out. Now, we see the former head of the NSA (National Security Agency) get put on the board. 

I just realized it today, and I had not realized it before. 

Edward Snowden just tweeted out and said you should never use any of these products, which include ChatGPT.  Snowden also said, ‘You have to understand where this is going.  You have been warned.’

“The AI Revolution” also warns that:

AI “. . . will alter the prospects for a free society, even free will. . . and . . . attempt to seed the idea human-only decision-making will become a rarity and, in time, cease to exist.”

Don’t think sophisticated AI is some idea that is far into the future.  AI is here now, and CAF points out:

“I just see more and more companies using this type of technology to institute financial fraud and make money from financial fraud in their pricing. . . . You also have thousands of companies to track you for their benefit...

It is trying to extract data from you to accomplish whatever its goal is. . . . It’s like a swarm of invisible locusts that are all trying to surveil and track, and none of them are trying to optimize your life and give you a free and inspired life. 

They are just trying to get their piece.”

AI will also be used to ignore and break all laws.  After all, it’s robotic and can’t be held accountable.  CAF says,

“By removing moral obligations and legal and obedient respect for laws, the speed at which you can do evil is extraordinary...

One of my concerns, and I have said this for many years, I think this kind of technology allows interdimensional intelligence to act as material reality so that, literally, demonic intelligence can have far more influence and impact in our world.  

It operates at such high speed, and then you combine that with the payment systems in the financial system. . . the things that can go wrong are phenomenal.  One of the main problems that we have seen in the past year is artificial intelligence takes off on its own, and it starts functioning in a way it makes no sense. . . . and it’s just lying.  It’s just making stuff up and lying.  

It’s literally like it’s under demonic possession.”

CAF says, no matter what, “AI can’t beat God.”  

And instead of worshiping Jehovah and Jesus (like you should), the creators of AI want you to trust whatever this tech tells you to do.  CAF says, “They want an AI Religion Revolution.” 

Don’t buy into this crap because AI is a disaster for humanity and your freedom.

CAF thinks the Democrats will be forced to replace Joe Biden come November, and she explains why. 

Now, more than ever, CAF thinks physical gold and silver are good investments.  She encourages people to expand the use of cash.  CAF thinks two of the best weapons against this sort of artificial intelligence used for control and tyranny is to enforce the US Constitution and, above all, do not lose your faith in God the Father and Christ Jesus.

There is much more in the 61-minute riveting in-depth interview.

Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with the Publisher of The Solari Report, Catherine Austin Fitts, for 6.15.24.

*  *  *

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/dont-buy-crap-catherine-austine-fitts-warns-ai-digital-control

China’s Exclusion From New EM Stock Funds Persists Even After a Rebound

• Fifteen funds that exclude China launched as of June 14
• New funds include those that are offered by BlackRock, Tisco

 

The Chinese equity market’s rebound from its January lows has done little to curtail its exclusion from several new developing market equity funds.

Fifteen emerging-market excluding China equity funds have already been launched this year as of June 14, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s just four less than the annual record last year.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-16/china-s-exclusion-from-new-em-stock-funds-persists-even-after-a-rebound

Biden Campaign Claims Trump Said He Will "Throw Women With Beautiful Children In Mass Detention Camps"

by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

The Biden campaign has used a deceptively edited clip from a speech Donald Trump made Saturday at Turning Point USA’s Detroit conference, claiming that he said he wants to “throw women with beautiful children in mass detention camps.”

Here is what the Biden campaign posted on X:

Firstly, he didn’t even say that.

Secondly, watch the full clip.

They edited out the beginning where Trump is specifically saying that leftists will twist him saying he’s going to incarcerate “terrorists” before deporting them, and instead claim that he’s doing it to women and children.

They just proved his point.

He then went on to describe some of the despicable actions of illegal immigrant gang member murderers.

The Biden camp doesn’t realise that people are not buying this crap anymore, that Trump is a dictatorial Third Reich loving racist who is going to round people up and put them in camps.

It’s utterly stupid and betrays how desperate they are.

*  *  *

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/biden-campaign-claims-trump-said-he-will-throw-women-beautiful-children-mass-detention

'Global audiences suspicious of AI-powered newsrooms': Reuters

 Global concerns about the use of AI in news production and misinformation are growing, a report published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found, posing fresh challenges to newsrooms already struggling to engage audiences.

The institute's annual Digital News Report published on Monday, which this year is based on surveys of nearly 100,000 people across 47 countries, offers a picture of the hurdles news media faces in lifting revenue and sustaining business.

Newsrooms globally are working to address a new challenge with generative artificial intelligence, as tech giants and startups like Google and OpenAI build tools that can offer summaries of information and siphon traffic from news websites.

But the report found that consumers are suspicious about the use of AI to create news content, particularly for sensitive subjects such as politics.

According to the survey, 52% of U.S. respondents and 63% of UK respondents said they would be uncomfortable with news produced mostly with AI. The report surveyed 2,000 people in each country, noting that respondents were more comfortable with behind-the-scenes uses of AI to make journalists' work more efficient.

"It was surprising to see the level of suspicion," said Nic Newman, senior research associate at the Reuters Institute and lead author of the Digital News Report. "People broadly had fears about what might happen to content reliability and trust."

Concerns about false news content online rose by three percentage points from last year, with 59% of survey respondents saying they were worried. This figure was higher in South Africa and the U.S. at 81% and 72%, respectively, as both countries hold elections this year, the report said.

Another challenge facing news organizations is the general unwillingness of audiences to pay for news subscriptions. Following some growth during the pandemic, 17% of respondents across 20 countries said they paid for online news, a figure that has been unchanged for the past three years, the report said.

A significant proportion of news subscribers in the U.S. were also likely to be paying discounted rates due to trials or promotions, with 46% paying less than the full price for their subscriptions.

TURNING TO ALTERNATIVES

News influencers are playing a bigger role than mainstream media organizations in delivering the news to users of popular online platforms like TikTok.

In a survey of more than 5,600 TikTok users who said they used the app for news, 57% said they mostly paid attention to individual personalities, versus 34% who said they mainly followed journalists or news brands.

The findings show that newsrooms need to build a direct relationship with their audiences while also "strategically using the platforms to connect with people who are trickier to reach, like younger audiences," Newman said. "We see that these influencers have a bigger role on the platforms."

Vitus "V" Spehar, a TikTok creator with 3.1 million followers, was one news personality cited by some of the survey respondents. Spehar has become known for their unique style of delivering the top headlines of the day while laying on the floor under their desk, which they previously told Reuters is intended to offer a more gentle perspective on current events and contrast with a traditional news anchor who sits at a desk.

The Digital News Report surveyed people in the U.S., UK, France, Argentina and Brazil, asking them to name up to three mainstream or alternative accounts they follow for the news.

The top 10 individuals cited by respondents in the U.S. are most known for offering political commentary rather than original newsgathering, the report noted. These personalities included Tucker Carlson, a former Fox News anchor, Joe Rogan, who hosts the top podcast on Spotify and David Pakman, a progressive talk radio host.

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism is funded by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Thomson Reuters.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/global-audiences-suspicious-ai-powered-230353242.html

'H5N1 Is Highly Lethal, but Only in Some Animals. Scientists Want to Know Why'

 In the last 2 years, bird flu has been blamed for the deaths of millions of wild and domestic birds worldwide. It's killed legions of seals and sea lions, wiped out mink farms, and dispatched cats, dogs, skunks, foxes, and even a polar bear.

But it seems to have hardly touched people.

That's "a little bit of a head scratcher," although there are some likely explanations, said Richard Webby, PhD, a flu researcher at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. It could have to do with how infection occurs or because species have differences in the microscopic docking points that flu viruses need to take root and multiply in cells, experts say.

But what keeps scientists awake at night is whether that situation will change.

"There's a lot we don't understand," said Tom Frieden, MD, MPH, a former CDC director who currently heads Resolve to Save Lives, a not-for-profit that works to prevent epidemics. "I think we have to get over the hope-for-the-best-and-bury-our-head-in-the-sand approach. Because it could be really bad."

Some researchers theorize that flu viruses that originated in birds were the precursors to terrible scourges in humans, including pandemics in 1918 and 1957. Those viruses became deadly human contagions and spread in animals and people.

A number of experts think it's unlikely this virus will become a deadly global contagion, based on current evidence. But that's not a sure bet.

Just in case, U.S. health officials are readying vaccinesopens in a new tab or window and making other preparations. But they are holding off on bolder steps because the virus isn't causing severe disease in people and they have no strong evidence it's spreading from person to person.

The flu that's currently spreading -- known as H5N1 -- was first identified in birds in 1959. It didn't really begin to worry health officials until a Hong Kong outbreak in 1997 that involved severe human illnesses and deaths.

It has caused hundreds of deaths around the world, the vast majority of them involving direct contact between people and infected birds. When there was apparent spread between people, it involved very close and extended contact within households.

Like other viruses, however, the H5N1 virus has mutated over time. In the last few years, one particular strain has spread alarmingly quickly and widely.

In the United States, animal outbreaks have been reported at dozens of dairy cow farmsopens in a new tab or window and more than 1,000 poultry flocksopens in a new tab or window, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Four human infections have been reported among the hundreds of thousands of people who work at U.S. poultry and dairy farms, though that may be an undercount.

Worldwide, doctors have detected 15 human infections caused by the widely circulating bird flu strain. The count includes one death -- a 38-year-old woman in southern China in 2022 -- but most people had either no symptoms or only mild ones, according toopens in a new tab or window the CDC.

There's no way to know how many animals have been infected, but certain creatures seem to be getting more severe illnesses.

Take cats, for example. Flu is commonly thought of as a disease of the lungs, but the virus can attack and multiply in other parts of the body too. In cats,opens in a new tab or window scientists have found the virus attacking the brain, damaging and clotting blood vessels, and causing seizures and death.

Similarly gruesome deaths have been reported in other animals, including foxesopens in a new tab or window that ate dead, infected birds.

The flu strain's ability to lodge in the brain and nervous system is one possible reason for "higher mortality rate in some species," said Amy Baker, DVM, PhD, an Iowa-based USDA scientist who studies bird flu in animals. But scientists "just don't know what the properties of the virus or the properties of the host are that are leading to these differences," Baker said.

Unlike cats, cows have been largely spared. Illnesses have been reported in less than 10%opens in a new tab or window of the cows in affected dairy herds, according to the USDA. Those that did develop symptoms experienced fever, lethargy, decreased appetite, and increased respiratory secretions.

Cow infections largely have been concentrated in the udders of lactating animals. Researchers investigating cat deaths at dairy farms with infected cows concludedopens in a new tab or window the felines caught the virus from drinking raw milk.

Researchers are still sorting out how the virus has been spreading from cow to cow, but studies suggest the main route of exposure is not the kind of airborne droplets associated with coughing and sneezing. Instead it's thought to be direct contact, perhaps through shared milking equipment or spread by the workers who milk them.

Then there's the issue of susceptibility. Flu viruses need to be able to latch onto cells before they can invade them.

"If it doesn't get into a cell, nothing happens. ... The virus just swims around," explained Juergen Richt, DVM, PhD, a researcher at Kansas State University.

But those docking spots -- sialic acid receptors -- aren't found uniformly throughout the body, and differ among species. One recent study documented the presence of bird flu-friendly receptors in dairy cattle mammary glands.

Eye rednessopens in a new tab or window has been a common symptom among people infected by the current bird flu strain. People who milk cows are eye level with the udders, and splashes are common. Some scientists also note that the human eye has receptors that the virus can bind to.

A studyopens in a new tab or window published this month found ferrets infected in the eyes ended up dying, as the researchers demonstrated that the virus could be as deadly entering through the eyes as through the respiratory tract.

Why didn't the same happen in the U.S. farmworkers?

That's a hard one to answer, experts said. Perhaps people have some level of immunity, due to past exposure to other forms of flu or to vaccinations, Richt suggested.

A more menacing question: What happens if the virus mutates in a way that makes it more lethal to people or allows it to spread more easily?

Pigs are a concern because they are considered ideal mixing vessels for bird flu to potentially combine with other flu viruses to create something more dangerous. Baker has been studying the current strain in pigs and found it can replicate in the lungs, but the disease is very mild.

But that could all change, which is why there's a push in the scientific community to ramp up animal testingopens in a new tab or window.

Frieden, of Resolve to Save Lives, noted public health experts have been worried about a deadly new flu pandemic for a long time.

"The only thing predictable about influenza is it's unpredictable," he said.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/generalinfectiousdisease/110663