Report: Hezbollah preparing for war with Israel

Report: Hezbollah preparing for war with Israel

Israel National News

Hezbollah is preparing for a possible war with Israel, Al-Arabiya reported.

The report follows assessments that Iran is pressuring the terror group to join the fighting if the US strikes Iran.

Sources who spoke with the Al-Arabiya claimed that the Friday airstrikes carried out in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley were a “prelude" to an Israeli military operation - one that appears likely to be conducted in parallel with strikes on Iran.

The report quoted sources close to Hezbollah who told Al-Arabiya and Al-Hadath, both Saudi news outlets, that Hezbollah is no longer run by Lebanese leaders, but rather by officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, some of whom were already present in Lebanon.

According to the sources, the Iranian IRGC officers are not only responsible for rebuilding Hezbollah’s capabilities, but are also personally overseeing operational plans and meeting with Hezbollah teams in various areas in order to issue instructions.

The report added that these Iranian officers also met with members of the missile unit that was targeted Friday in the Beqaa region.

Hezbollah now managed by IRGC officers as it prepares for US, Israeli strike - report

TOBIAS SIEGAL

Hezbollah is currently being overseen by officers from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), rather than its traditional Lebanese leadership, according to Saturday reports from Arab media outlets.

In anticipation of a possible Israeli or American strike, Hezbollah has significantly intensified its military and security preparations under the close supervision of IRGC personnel who have recently arrived in Lebanon, sources close to the group told Al Arabiya and Al Hadath.

This shift in leadership comes amid growing concerns that both Hezbollah and Iran are bracing for an imminent military confrontation with Israel and the US.

Sources told Al Arabiya and Al Hadath that the IRGC officers are not only supervising the rebuilding of Hezbollah's military infrastructure but are also personally managing and executing strategic war plans.

These officers are reportedly holding regular meetings with Hezbollah operatives across Lebanon, offering direct instructions and guidance in preparation for a potential military conflict, which many analysts believe is inevitable.

A recent Israeli airstrike on Friday, which resulted in the deaths of several Hezbollah terrorists, was seen by both Tehran and Hezbollah as a possible precursor to larger Israeli operations targeting Iran’s regime and its regional proxies, reports said.

One such meeting reportedly took place at a Hezbollah command center in the Beqaa Valley, which housed a missile unit that was targeted in Israeli airstrikes on Friday night. Sources close to Hezbollah have speculated that the Israeli attack was merely the beginning of a broader Israeli military campaign against the group.

Back in Lebanon, political leaders are growing increasingly worried about the country’s role in the escalating regional tensions, according to Arab reports. Influential political figures are calling for an official stance of neutrality, urging the government to prevent Hezbollah from dragging Lebanon into a wider conflict, according to a report by Lebanese newspaper Nidaa Al-Watan.

Amid growing pressure on the Lebanese government to act decisively and distance Lebanon from the intensifying crisis, Israel has stated time and time again that it will not allow Hezbollah to rebuild and pose a threat to Israel's northern border.

On Wednesday, 91st Division Commander Brig.-Gen. Yuval said the IDF would stay “on the attack” in Lebanon.

“I am here to tell you that we are preparing for various scenarios. We have operational plans to act immediately, and our forces are distributed along the entire border and deep into the territory,” he said.

Thousands of French Patriots Rally in Lyon After Antifa Killing of Conservative Student (VIDEO)

Thousands of French Patriots Rally in Lyon After Antifa Killing of Conservative Student (VIDEO)

Ben Kew

Thousands gathered in Lyon on Saturday to demand justice following the murder of 23-year-old conservative Catholic student Quentin Deranque.

Deranque suffered a fatal brain injury after being beaten by Antifa thugs as he was providing informal protection for a protest of the identitarian-feminist Collectif Némésis. 

Seven individuals have been charged in connection with the attack, which took place on the margins of a protest targeting far-left MEP Rima Hassan at Sciences Po Lyon.

According to local media, several of the suspects are believed to have ties to the Young Guard Antifa group established in Lyon in 2018 by La France Insoumise (LFI) lawmaker Raphaël Arnault.

Among those charged include Jacques-Elie Favrot, a parliamentary assistant to Arnault, and Adrian Besseyre, who previously worked for the MP.

The case has drawn national attention to the violence of the far-left, who bring violence with them everywhere they go.

Authorities reported that at least 3,200 demonstrators took part in Saturday’s march, held under the banner “Justice for Quentin.”

Chants heard during the rally included “LFI complicit, Antifa murderers” and “Young Guard in prison, free the city of Lyon.”

Additional rallies were reported in Rennes, Brest, Saint-Brieuc, and Châteauroux.

Despite tensions and the presence of counter-protesters, the demonstrations were peaceful and ended without major incident.

More, videos

Brutal Murder of Conservative Activist Quentin Deranque by French Antifa Thugs Unleashes Fierce Debate Between Failing Macron and Conservative Italian PM Meloni

Paul Serran

Political extremism on the left is every bit as problematic in Europe as in the bluest US states, if not worse.

Last week, the world was rocked by the news that French conservative activist Quentin Deranque was brutally murdered by a group of Antifa thugs in Lyon.

Rightwing leaders all around the world weighed in on the tragedy, including Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

This led to a series of contrasting statements by failing French President Emmanuel Macron and Meloni, as the murder fanned the tensions in France before municipal elections in March and the 2027 presidential race.

The Telegraph reported:

“On Wednesday, Ms. Meloni, a Right-wing nationalist, said the killing was ‘a wound for all of Europe’ and lamented a ‘climate of ideological hatred’.

‘Let everyone stay in their own lane’, Mr. Macron shot back in New Delhi during an official visit to India. The French president told Ms. Meloni to stop ‘commenting on what is happening in other people’s countries’.”

The idea of Macron complaining that leaders must not meddle in other countries’ issues is absurd, since he does that all the time, be it in environment, rearmament, economy, immigration… all the ‘Petit Roi’ does is meddle in issues not his own.

More...

The War in Ukraine Could Go Nuclear

The War in Ukraine Could Go Nuclear

J.B. Shurk

With all eyes on the U.S. military buildup around Iran right now, the Russia-Ukraine War has been temporarily upstaged.  It will not play second fiddle for long.  The recent trilateral talks in Geneva involving the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and the United States have been unable to resolve a principal issue of disagreement: Ukraine’s martial-law-president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s refusal to cede any land and Russia’s insistence that the Donbas region — specifically the four eastern territories that have already held a referendum in support of becoming part of the Russian Federation — be acknowledged as sovereign Russian territory.

As the war heads into its fifth year, dangers mount for Europe.  While President Trump wants to end the bloodshed before the violent conflict transforms into something even more catastrophic, too many parties seem committed to ratcheting up the butcher’s bill a while longer.  Unfortunately, there are numerous reasons for prolonging the war that have nothing to do with protecting civilian lives or securing Ukrainian territory.

There is the political reality that a growing embezzlement scandal is taking down high-ranking Ukrainian officials with close relationships to Zelenskyy and the prospect that general peace would mean not only an end to the hold-over-president’s power but also an end to his legal immunity. 

There is the dogged determination of the European Commission and certain European nations — particularly the United Kingdom and its Ukraine-obsessed MI6 — to drag the fighting out as long as possible as part of a larger effort to weaken President Vladimir Putin’s control over the Russian Federation.  There is the long-term European Union goal of absorbing Ukraine into the continental federation and eventually welcoming it into NATO — or at least to use the present war as an excuse for positioning European troops close enough to Ukraine’s current battle lines to trigger a U.S. military response once the lives of NATO-allied soldiers are threatened. 

There is the dire financial need for the European Central Bank and discrete national Treasuries to use the war as a publicly digestible excuse for fabricating new war bonds, cutting welfare programs, further integrating Europe’s separate national economies, subsidizing Europe’s defense industries, and printing enormous sums of money.  There is the relentless goal of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (selected by the elite members of the European Council and elected not by the European people but rather the European Parliament) to use the War in Ukraine as a justification for expanded powers for her office and the formation of a European-wide military under her putative authority. 

For many reasons that have nothing to do with saving lives or resisting invasion, Europe seems committed to prolonging war and forestalling peace.

At the same time, there is a growing sentiment among Russians that a larger war in Europe has become inevitable.  While European political leaders have spent more than a decade publicly framing (1) Russia’s annexation of Crimea, (2) its military assistance to Russian separatist groups in the Donbas region, and (3) its “special military operation” in Ukraine as completely unprovoked instances of “Russian aggression,” most Russian citizens view them as legitimate responses to (1) the U.S.- and E.U.-led coup d’état of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 (an event that the West euphemistically calls the “Maidan Revolution” or “Revolution of Dignity”), (2) the Ukrainian military’s attacks on ethnic Russians, and (3) NATO’s decades-long advance right up to the Russian Federation’s borders.  

If European and American leaders intended to weaken President Putin’s domestic support so severely that he would be removed, betrayed, or killed, those efforts have failed.  Instead, a rally-around-the-flag patriotism for “Mother Russia” has swept across the world’s largest nation state.  

A prospect even more unsettling than the current War in Ukraine now takes shape: the quickening drumbeat toward nuclear confrontation.  What U.S. and former Soviet Union leaders spent half a century working to avoid is now discussed too openly for comfort.  American senators, such as Lindsey Graham, have occasionally suggested that effective nuclear deterrence requires U.S. willingness to use the nuclear weapons in its arsenal.  

France’s President Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Chancellor Fiedrich Merz have held not-so-secret talks on creating a European-managed “continental nuclear shield.”  Turkish President Recep Erdogan wants nuclear weapons of his own.  Polish President Karol Nawrocki says that his country needs nukes in order to defend against the “Russian threat.”  Meanwhile, one of the most influential intellectuals in the Russian Federation believes that President Putin must be willing to utilize “limited but decisive nuclear strikes using operational-strategic weapons” should European Union powers refuse to retreat.  

Russian political scientist Sergey Karaganov says that the E.U. is playing with nuclear fire and must be taught a lesson.  Karaganov is no ordinary academic.  He holds a reputation in Russia similar to Henry Kissinger’s in the United States.  Karaganov is a founding member of Moscow’s prestigious Valdai Discussion Club, the honorary chairman of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, a supervisor at the School of International Economics and Foreign Affairs at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, and a personal confidant of both Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and President Putin.  When Professor Karaganov suggests that the time is approaching when his country must contemplate using nuclear weapons against strategically important areas of Europe, people should listen.

In a lengthy and polemical essay for the foreign-policy journal Russia in Global Affairs, Karaganov argues that Europe’s political “elites” are pushing the continent toward a nuclear confrontation.  He says the War in Ukraine has “dragged on longer than necessary” because of a “lack of determination to employ active nuclear deterrence.”  He argues that nuclear weapons represent the “only mechanism capable of resolving” the “European problem,” a problem that he describes as, “an existential threat to our country.”  Furthermore, “Targets should include places where elites gather, including in nuclear states.  Governments must feel personal risk.”

Striking Ukrainian targets, Karaganov argues, is not a “strategic solution” because “E.U. elites” represent the real threat.  “The conflict will continue until its true source is addressed: Western Europe’s degenerated ruling classes, intellectually, morally, and materially exhausted, who cling to power by fueling war.”  He insists that Russia must “break” Europe’s “will” to keep fighting.  He argues that effective nuclear deterrence is the only way to prevent a larger U.S.-Russia war.  Furthermore, he believes that France and the United Kingdom must be deprived of nuclear weapons because “they have forfeited the moral right to possess them.  Any Western European move toward nuclear proliferation must be treated as grounds for preemptive action.”

Tokenized Tyranny: Digitizing Our World for Total Control

Are We Being Borged?

Whitney Webb

The tokenization of nature and humanity represents a deliberate strategy by the world’s most powerful financial institutions. Figures like BlackRock’s Chairman and CEO Larry Fink have openly championed turning the planet’s resources, and increasingly aspects of human existence, into fractionalized, tradable digital assets on blockchain-based ledgers. This creates new avenues for elite profit and unprecedented surveillance and control.

With Fink now serving as Interim Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Board of Trustees (alongside André Hoffmann), the technocratic elite have gained an ideal global platform to accelerate this agenda. What better forum than the WEF to mainstream and fast-track “total control” from cradle to grave.

The process begins with assigning unique digital identifiers to virtually everything: land, water, forests, carbon credits, even personal behaviors and biological data. These are then logged on universal ledgers, where ownership is sliced into tradable fractions, much like stocks. But this goes far beyond traditional finance. It encompasses the Earth’s finite resources and, ultimately, the very essence of human life, all reduced to programmable, monetizable units in a centralized system of power.

This is tokenized tyranny in action: a quiet revolution that could redefine ownership, freedom, and existence itself.

Nature on the Chopping Block: From Forests to Fractional Shares
For nature, tokenization means chopping up wild places like the Amazon rainforest into digital securities. Each token represents a piece of land or ecosystem service such as clean air or biodiversity. Companies like O.N.E. Amazon, which is tied to U.S. intelligence and crypto investors, plan to issue these tokens backed by preservation deals. They cap the supply to make them scarce like digital gold. They install massive sensor networks and satellites to monitor every hectare in real time and collect data on everything from tree growth to animal movements. The data feeds into AI systems that manage the assets:

Whitney calls this tokenization of nature “borgifying” the environment (Remember Star Trek and the Borg). It turns planet earth into a controllable grid. Involved parties include former BlackRock executives, Trump administration figures, and firms linked to stablecoins like Tether. They push this under the banner of sustainability while securing profits through inequitable deals with indigenous groups. Those groups get minimal shares and lose autonomy over their lands.

Greenwashing in Action: Tokenized Nature Happening Now
This is already unfolding through initiatives like Natural Asset Companies (NACs), backed by the Intrinsic Exchange Group and the Rockefeller Foundation. They aim to list ecosystems on stock exchanges as new asset classes. This assigns financial value to untouched nature and creates markets for trading shares in forests or rivers. Clean Air and Water Are Worth Money as ‘Natural Asset’ Companies Attract Cash

The WEF (World Economic Forum) is involved in turning nature into a commodity for investors to profit:

 Finance Solutions for Nature: Pathways to returns and outcomes is out now! This insight report by World Economic Forum and McKinsey & Company provides a practical framework for investors to unlock capital for nature. Key takeaways: A portfolio approach is essential: 10 priority solutions can offer investors and issuers pathways to investable returns and nature outcomes at scale. Model transactions need to be replicated: Over 20 examples of existing transactions show that success in nature finance isn’t just theory — but needs replication. Markets can’t solve nature loss alone: Traditional finance has a central role, but needs enabling policies, robust data, better de-risking mechanisms, and shifting norms to recognize nature’s full value.

Eco-Dystopia Ahead: When Nature Becomes a Profit Machine
In a future society under this system, nature becomes a Wall Street product where investors buy fractions of forests or rivers without ever setting foot there. Any “conservation” is dictated by profit motives rather than ecological needs. Entire regions could be locked into debt-like swaps where countries trade resource rights for loans. This leads to foreign-owned wind farms or bioenergy plants that displace locals. Whitney explains that this creates a tokenized world where natural disasters or climate events can spike token values. It encourages exploitation disguised as green finance. Ecosystems are managed by algorithms that prioritize financial returns over life itself.  In the guise of saving ecosystems, they are tokenizing the world and making profit from their exploitation of planet earth.

Humans as Assets: The Financialization of Flesh and Blood
When it comes to human resources, Whitney extends tokenization to the financialization of people themselves. Human potential, data, and behaviors are tokenized into investable assets. This builds on impact investing where elites bet on social outcomes like reducing poverty or improving education through human capital bonds. It turns individuals into data points on a ledger. Personal information, health records, DNA, and even daily actions get digitized and fractionalized and linked to digital IDs and programmable currencies that track and control spending. It all connects to broader agendas from groups like the World Economic Forum. Humans are seen as resources to be optimized. Blockchain ensures every aspect of life from skills to biometrics becomes a tradeable commodity.

From Blockchain to Ball and Chain
Blockchain is often sold as a liberating technology. It’s sold as a super-secure, shared digital notebook where transactions get recorded in unbreakable blocks that form a chain. These spread across thousands of computers worldwide so no single boss can tamper with it. It promises privacy and freedom from banks or governments. But from my skeptical angle, like the one Whitney Webb takes, it’s actually shaping up to be a high-tech ball and chain designed to track and control every aspect of our lives. This happens despite those privacy boasts. While blockchain claims to be decentralized and anonymous, most versions, like Bitcoin’s, create a permanent, public ledger where every transaction is traceable forever. This makes it easy for powerful entities from governments to corporations to follow your money trail. They link it to your identity through exchanges or data leaks. They can build detailed profiles on your habits, associations, and whereabouts.

Elites are co-opting this tech. They push for things like central bank digital currencies built on blockchain that tie your finances to digital IDs with biometrics. This turns everyday spending into a surveilled activity. In the future non-compliant behavior like buying the “wrong” things or associating with certain people could get you flagged, frozen out, or punished.  This could mean a world where your blockchain-tracked data feeds into AI systems that predict, manipulate, reward or punish your actions.

The ultimate goal is to enforce rules through programmable money. The programable money can expire, restrict purchases, and track everything you purchase automatically. This is being pushed under the guise of security and efficiency.  Critics on X say that because blockchains are so public and open, it’s easy for others to watch everything you do and even jump ahead of your trades to make quick money off you.

They argue that without true privacy, decentralization just hands control to the most resourced spies. This echoes Webb’s expose on how Bitcoin’s traceability makes it a tool for destroying real financial privacy in favor of elite-controlled systems.

The Blockchain Enabler: Fueling Human Tokenization at Scale
This blockchain backbone is exactly what’s needed to make the tokenization of human resources possible on a massive scale. Without it, you couldn’t reliably slice up and trade fractions of someone’s skills, behaviors, or biometric data. Blockchain provides the immutable ledger that records every tokenized “share” of human capital. Whether it’s your work output, health metrics, or social compliance, it links them permanently to your digital ID so the elites can monitor, value, and manipulate them in real time. It turns abstract human potential into concrete, programmable assets that can be bought, sold, or penalized without escape.

More...

AI: America’s Newest Savior. Or, Is It?

AI: America’s Newest Savior. Or, Is It?

J. Matson Heininger

Somewhere in America, an executive is on a stage unveiling the future. Behind him, a gleaming electric car rotates under perfect lighting. The screens show swooping animations, the crowd murmurs in admiration, the financial press types the usual adjectives: “revolutionary,” “transformative,” “game‑changing.”

There is only one problem. The car has no battery. It will never move an inch under its own power. It can be photographed, worshipped, hyped, and securitized. It just can’t go anywhere.

That is exactly what the United States is doing with artificial intelligence.

We are pouring fortunes into the shell of a technological future while the real source of power—our infrastructure and our people—is corroded, underfunded, and intellectually exhausted.

We are trying to bolt a glittering top floor onto a building whose foundations are already failing, and we are congratulating ourselves on the view. You can’t build the top when the bottom is rotten.

In this metaphor, the “battery” isn’t a block of lithium under the floorpan. The battery is everything we have systematically neglected for the last twenty years: the physical infrastructure and the general quality and competence of our citizens.

Our roads are potholed and crumbling. Our bridges are crumbling, patched and posted, many quietly unsafe. Our water systems and grids look more like artifacts from a previous civilization than the backbone of a leading one. We pass emergency spending bills to keep the lights on, then call it “investment.”

At the same time, we have turned education into a debt‑financed sorting mechanism instead of a public good. We’ve spent two decades distracting children, hollowing out curricula, and training entire cohorts to consume glowing rectangles instead of reality.

The result is a population that is, quite visibly, falling behind every month and every year—less numerate, less literate, less capable of concentration, less capable of distinguishing truth from spectacle.

That curve is not steady.

It is rising.

Decay compounds, just like interest.

Every year of neglect produces a citizenry a little less able to repair what was left undone the year before.

Into this landscape we introduce AI… The Savior.. tech will save us. No it won’t, And China will do it better anyway.

But ask a simpler question: what, exactly, does this AI sit on top of?

We have offshored our manufacturing. We have dispersed and weakened our supply chains. We have allowed our rail, port, and logistics systems to age. We have treated the trades as an embarrassment. We have trained a generation to type on glass and live in debt.

We are not a country overflowing with strong foundations looking for clever tools. We are a country whose foundations are cracked, whose tools are rusted, and whose elites believe that if the software is shiny enough, the concrete will magically pour itself.

AI, in this context, is not a lever; it is wallpaper. It generates images, text, and valuations. It offers endless distraction and a new vocabulary of buzzwords.

But it cannot substitute for bridges, transformers, machinists, welders, nurses, lineworkers, plumbers, or teachers. It cannot keep the lights on when the grid fails or the pipes burst. It cannot rebuild a country that no longer knows how to do basic things.

We are building an electric car without a battery and convincing ourselves that if the entertainment system is sophisticated enough, no one will notice there is no power.

Now compare this to China and parts of Asia.

More...