Israeli Military Poised to Enter Rafah, Hamas Keeps Dragging Out Hostage Talks

Israeli Military Poised to Enter Rafah, Hamas Keeps Dragging Out Hostage Talks

CHRIS MITCHELL

Israel’s military is poised to enter into Rafah, the last major stronghold of Hamas in Gaza, without a deal for the release of the hostages. But Hamas still wants to continue negotiations to end the war.     

Israeli troops and tanks continue to gather near Rafah for the expected military operation.  Rafah is where many believe the leaders of Hamas, including Yahya Sinwar, are hiding as well as the remaining battalions of Hamas fighters.  It’s also thought to be the location of the last remaining hostages. 

While Hamas seems to reject the latest ceasefire offer, it apparently wants negotiations to continue, a tactic that could be intended to forestall the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) Rafah invasion. 

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says they will move ahead with their plans for an assault.

“We will do what is necessary in order to win and overcome our enemies, including in Rafah, in order to secure our future,” Netanyahu pledged.

A top Hamas demand is that Israel ends the war against the terrorist group and that all Israeli troops leave the Gaza Strip.  But Netanyahu told visiting U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken that a deal to end the war without defeating Hamas is a non-starter. 

Meanwhile, along the northern border, negotiations to broker a peace deal between Hezbollah and Israel appear stalled. In light of that, the Israeli military's Chief-of-Staff Herzi Halevi told commanders Israel is getting ready for an attack on Hezbollah.

“You are doing an excellent job of operational defense in the north, and we are preparing for an offensive in the north,” Halevi said.

Samir Geagea – a prominent Christian politician in Lebanon – says Hezbollah's constant attacks on Israel since October 7th, are hurting Lebanon more than Israel. The tit-for-tat shelling and bombings have killed 22 Israelis, while the death toll is much higher in Lebanon itself – more than 350. Geagea says Hezbollah should pull all its militia forces away from the Lebanese border with Israel. 

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Bird flu's wild range

Bird flu's wild range

Alison Snyder

A polar bear in the Arctic, red foxes in Europe, penguins in Antarctica and a wide range of other wild animals have been infected with the flu virus strain currently spreading in dairy cattle in the U.S.

Why it matters: Up to 75% of new and emerging infectious diseases in people come from animals, and most of those can be traced back to wildlife. Monitoring wild animals for diseases can help scientists identify emerging health threats.

• Government agencies in the U.S. and around the world monitor wild birds for avian influenza, which spreads in bird populations without causing symptoms, and select animals for other pathogens. 
• But on the whole, there is "very little surveillance of wildlife for any diseases," says Thomas Gillespie, a disease ecologist at Emory University. An exception is animals that are commercially important — like deer that people pay to hunt.

Catch up quick: Outbreaks of avian flu in farmed poultry and wild birds started to increase around the world in 2020. 

• Soon after, the virus started to kill mammals — seals from Chile to Russia to Maine, red foxes in Europe and the U.S,. sea lions in Peru and other species.
• Bird flu has affected nearly 20 wild mammal species in the U.S. since 2022, including brown bears, skunks, mountain lions and a bottlenose dolphin in Florida.

Now cows are being infected. (They become ill but recover with treatment).

• There's been one mild human infection detected so far, in a person exposed to dairy cattle, but some researchers suspect not all cases in workers are being spotted. 
• A report published Friday suggests that may be "the first detected case of the H5N1 virus transmitting from a mammal to a person," STAT's Helen Branswell reported.
• The CDC has said the risk to the general public is low.

The intrigue: "We’ve been seeing bird-to-mammal transmission events in a diversity of wild and domestic animals for about the last 4-5 years," Gillespie says.

• Scientists are watching for evidence of the virus being transmitted from one mammal to another, which increases the risk of the virus for humans.
• The USDA has confirmed this version of influenza is being transmitted between different cows in the same herd — and between herds when they are moved — but exactly how is still an open question.
• There is also some evidence the virus was transmitted from mammal-to-mammal in farmed minks.
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Bird flu's big question: What's driving its spread

The bird flu outbreak in dairy cattle that's swept across nine U.S. states is posing perplexing questions about how the virus is spreading between animals and the risk posed to humans.

Why it matters: Detecting viral spread early and limiting how long the flu circulates in a population of animals cuts the odds it will mutate and adapt to other species.

• The fact that the virus has infected a range of animals and is already in more than 30 herds — and the resulting potential for contact with humans and other animals — has public health experts' radar up.

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How to explain World War III to normies

How to explain World War III to normies

Dr. David Hilton

We are living in interesting times, though. Lockdowns and shortages since 2020 have rattled the bars of the utopian Western mind prison we’d been living in since the Second World War. Idealism and self-indulgence had run rampant in the West since the 50s. We lived in a reality constructed by TV, movies and three-minute music hits.

That period of collective unreality is now ending.

Regardless of why our elites have betrayed us, Iran, Russia and China are choosing now for their strategic moves because they know that the economic foundations of Western power are crumbling.

After World War II, the victorious United States built a series of institutions to spread liberal democracy around the world. These days, those institutions spread perversion, financial slavery and oligarchic control around the world. They include the United Nations, NATO, the World Bank and the Bretton Woods monetary system.

It’s all a Ponzi scheme. Smoke and mirrors. There’s no wizard behind the curtain; just a bunch of overfed bankers and their cronies hoodwinking the world into giving them everything for nothing.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was an allegory of central banking

Yet those financial elites, a cabal if you will, control the politicians and the corporations and the institutions that run the West and the world.

For now. Until the Houthis or the Persians or the Russians or the Chinese or all of them shoot enough rockets to take the whole thing down. The Russians and Chinese also use the alchemy of central banking. However, their lack of significant public debt and welfare obligations means those nations won’t collapse in the coming crisis.

Now, the debt has reached its limit. Consumers are maxed out, and the supply of new debt-slave immigrants to the West has overstretched infrastructure and political will. There are no new markets to expand to, no new commodity fields to exploit. Cheap oil has also dried up everywhere except Iran and Russia, really, and we’ve hit natural extraction limits across multiple commodities the system needs for collateralisation and continued debt expansion.

This is why war is coming. The Western oligarchs owe too much to those proles dependent on the welfare state, and will be happy to thin the herd. Russia and China are also not willing to accept the Western elites continuing to rule the world.

This is the real great reset.

This is also why the Western oligarchs are pushing for energy de-carbonisation and the introduction of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). They’re desperate. They know they need to end liberal democracy and get the Western slave proles who survive World War III used to much lower levels of consumption, while thinking it’s a good thing.

Many ideological, religious and sentimental reasons will be provided to your normie coworker or brother-in-law about why we need to fight World War III. They will all be lies.

We’re going to war against Eurasia and Eastasia because we based an economic system on debt, and now reality has arrived, and it’s time to pay the piper.

This is the message to pass on to the normies in your life as they lose their minds and start wondering why the world they took for granted is disappearing around them.

Unlike the more enlightened elites of Oceania in 1984, our decadent elites are going to war with both Eastasia and Eurasia simultaneously. This is madness, and they will fail.

As they do, the normies are going to need help processing what’s happening. Be sure to lend a hand.

The "Axis of Resistance" Expands: "New" Shiite Group From Bahrain Launches Attacks Against Israel

The "Axis of Resistance" Expands: "New" Shiite Group From Bahrain Launches Attacks Against Israel

warnews247

The "Bahrain resistance group", the Al-Ashtar Brigades, announced its second attack on Israel "in support of the Palestinian people in the war-torn Gaza".

The group made the announcement on Saturday, saying it had carried out a drone strike against a key position in the Israeli port of Eilat two days earlier.

The Al-Ashtar Brigades stressed in their statement that they will continue attacks against the Israeli regime until it stops the war in Gaza and lifts the blockade of the Palestinian territory.

After the Shiite organizations of the Popular Mobilization Forces, Hezbollah, the Houthis and groups in Syria, one more organization is joining the "Axis of Resistance" against Israel.

Bahrain's "resistance group" carried out its first attack against Israel on April 30, targeting the port of Eilat with drones.

Other "resistance groups" in the region, including those in Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon, have also struck Israeli targets in recent months in an attempt to force the regime to end the war in Gaza.

All groups have promised to continue their operations until the war stops. At the same time, Israel, having F-35s and a multitude of drones and unmanned aircraft, is hitting all the organizations and Iran in turn.

Alice in Wonderland

Alice in Wonderland

Todd Hayen

I used to be shocked and amazed when weird things happened in the world that seemed to be connected to each other, but were too weird to be just a coincidence. Now I think it’s funny. Not in a “ha ha” sort of way, but in a “this is so strange, and so obviously connected with (fill in the blank) I feel like I am sitting ringside in a circus tent” sort of funny.

What is going on? Well, that is kind of a stupid question. You don’t sit in the audience at a circus and when a dozen clowns stumble out of a tiny clown car say, “What is going on?” You may not know how they pulled off the trick, but you know they did. And you laugh. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone at a magic show run out of the theatre terrified that something supernatural was going on.

Everyone laughs, and smiles, and is amazed. “Isn’t that something!?” they exclaim. That is sort of what this is like. Until you think about it carefully, then it isn’t funny anymore, and you start wondering what kind of magic is going on. And it is indeed scary. I guess that is where I am with all of this. But only if I think about it. If I don’t think about it, I then wonder when the theatre lights are going to come up and I can go home.

Ah, yes, these sorts of weird things have always happened, you may say. And that is true, to some extent. It does not seem they have happened as often as they are now happening, and they have not, in the past, seemed to be so elegantly correlated with other strange happenings.

Take the recent Key Bridge downing by a large barge-like ship. Many are relating this incident to incidents in the recent movie Leave the World Behind. There was indeed a large red barge as a key character in the movie, but not much else to match up the two incidents. What about the fact the movie was produced by Michelle and Barack Obama? Yeah, what about it? Seems like a stretch, eh? Sure it does, but there is more to it.

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